Once a regular presence among police fleets and on U.S. roads in general, the discontinued Ford Crown Victoria isn’t quite as common as it used to be. However, YouTuber Cleetus McFarland hosts an all Ford Crown Victoria race at his own track each year dubbed the Freedom 500, and this year’s installment was filled with drama and action. Some examples actually survived that grueling event, leaving McFarland with the opportunity to subject one, in particular, to an interesting science experiment.
That experiment, it seems, is to see if the Ford Crown Victoria and its gas-powered V8 could run on diesel fuel, and if so, how long it would do so before blowing up. Rather than just dumping a whole tank in there, however, McFarland decided to add around 10 percent at a time, then run the car on the dyno to see if it actually resulted in an increase or decrease in power.
After a baseline run resulted in an output of 212 horsepower, adding a small bit of diesel led to a very similar 210 horsepower, though the V8 did pick up five pound-feet of torque as it hit 260. A little more diesel resulted in some more horsepower and the same torque, but once the diesel mix reached 31 percent, power actually dropped. From there, power just kept declining and the gas V8 started running rather poorly, as one might expect, though the engine didn’t actually fail – it just wouldn’t start once there was too much diesel in the tank.
Regardless, this was certainly an interesting science experiment that proves a small amount of diesel isn’t necessarily a death knell for a gas engine, and in small amounts, it actually adds a bit of power. Of course, we’ve come to expect some pretty wild things like this from McFarland in the past, who previously spent time behind the wheel of the Bronco Fun Haver off-road racer and drag races his own Ford F-150 Raptor R when he isn’t hosting his Ford Crown Victoria race or another centered around older Ford Ranger pickups.
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