Modern gas engines are achieving 40-45% thermal efficiency and diesels 45-50%. 56% is a difficult goal, but I don’t think it’s impossible.

44% may seem close, but in reality it’s extremely far away. Improvements to engine thermal efficiency reached a point of diminishing returns many years ago. Research projects that cost tens of millions of dollars and go on for several years might achieve an improvement of 1-2% BTE and would consider that a huge…

You joke, but California is considering something like this for their next set of regulations! They want to limit NOx emissions of heavy-duty diesel trucks to levels lower than the background level seen in big cities like L.A.

NOx is the result of incomplete combustion...

It can and is being done!

No, it would pump for a while would probably run, but not very well. That is, until the pump seized up and then you’d have no fuel flow

Diesel is actually more resistant to ignition than gas. That’s why diesel engines have higher compression ratios and sometimes need to use glow plugs to get the fuel to ignite.

Diesel won’t knock in a gas engine...

You’ve got it the wrong way around. Diesel is even more resistant to ignition than gasoline is so the engine won’t knock at all. The problem will be that the spark plugs won’t always ignite the fuel-air mixture and you’ll get a lot of misfires.

Basically all modern diesel engines are direct-injected so the gasoline won’t be injected into the chamber until the correct time in the piston stroke. It will definitely ignite from the high compression, since gasoline is much more easily ignited than diesel. Gas does burn faster than diesel, so there could be some…

Agreed, I don’t see how a misfire could cause piston or head damage unless the combustion chamber became completely filled with diesel fuel and hydrolocked the engine. The engine runs rough because diesel is much more resistant to combustion than gasoline, so the spark will not always ignite the fuel-air mixture.…

Most modern diesel engines are direct-injected and the injection timing is controlled very carefully. Because of this, there would not be any gasoline in the combustion chamber prior to the start of injection so there would be no opportunity for preignition. The real issue is that gasoline has much lower lubricity…

Also, human hunting is The Most Dangerous Game...

I was replying to this sentence:

At night, my wife and I try to guess what car is ahead of us by its taillights. I typically drive a bit above average highway speed so we get a new challenge every minute or two. During the day, music and podcasts help the time go by.

Are you suggesting that the millions of people who shoot guns for recreation are using them improperly?

I know that back in 2012 when I did an internship there, the entry-level line workers at the Texas Toyota plant made ~$20/hr

Um, no...if you’re on a tight track where the added downforce isn’t going to hurt your top speed too badly, then you want as much as possible to be able to pull more g’s through the turns. Look at Pike’s Peak racers, for example.

What do you mean by mechanical drag? Tire rolling resistance? Rotational kinetic energy of the drivetrain components?

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