I found a sweet older wagon

[Padgett]

On the surface a diesel is just a gas engine running at detonation and with a high compression ratio. It was the need for diesel to not have any water present that was part of the issue. Another was gas stations trying to convert a gas tank to diesel again without concern for water.

Bottom line was that while the GM diesel shared the bore and stroke of the Olds 350 (so it could use the same tooling and assembly line) all of the major components were redesigned. Unfortunately GM was getting away from torque values on bolts and had gone to "torque to yield" e.g. torque to xxx lb-ft then another 1/4 turn. With a 22.5:1 compression, this is not a good idea.

But the real issue that brought the TTY issue and short crank bolts to light was the lack of a diesel/water separator (added later), get some water (incompressible) in a 22.5:1 compression and stresses go way up and anything marginal will fail - even in a real diesel.

Am a little opinionated (GMI grad) but GM is famous for pushing the envelope too far (Vega - aluminum engine with carbide wear particles in the cyl walls. Overheat and it was like pouring sand in the cyl. Today most engines are aluminum. Fiero - using a 3 gt crankcase when Americans are notorious for running 2 quarts low, & then when the crank failed a rod would go through the firewall size of the block and dump oil on the super hot catalytic converter. Did I mention that the plastic used in the Fiero body is toxic when burned ?

So as I said, if offered a late running diesel that had the water separator added, in a NY minute. (but was never very good at towing: only had 220 lb-ft of torque - was the other issue, they were slow, smelly, and back then diesel was not easy to find.