rScotty
Super Member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
- Messages
- 9,577
- Location
- Rural mountains - Colorado
- Tractor
- Kubota M59, JD530, JD310SG. Restoring Yanmar YM165D
Diesel most certainly will light with a lighter. Besides that gas is yellow and diesel is blue or dyed red. No lighter required.
Yellow? Blue? RED? .... How strange..... Perhaps it varies with the region. Around here, gasoline can be almost as clear as water. Diesel is also clear, but with an more amber hue. There is enough variation in the clarity of either one that I can never count on vision alone to decide which is which.
Please be very careful when lighting either one with a lighter. I confess to having done it myself to test what it is that I have in a 5 gallon jug. But think it through.
What I do is to take a paper towel and twist it into a long wick. Then I wet about half an inch of the end with the suspected fuel. Let it dry for few seconds while walking away from the container to an open area. Then I hold it well away from my face horizontally out at arm's length and try to light the wetted end of the twist. Gasoline lights with a Whoosh! and burns rapidly with a clear flame. Diesel lights more slowly and burns with smoky flame.
Hopefully someone else has a better test than mine. If so, I'd sure like to learn it.
rScotty