I'm not at the point to be making good power b/c I'm still fixin stuff before I do.

But I went and browsed some Diesel videos and people as well as my buddy just rave about their "Smoke".

Now it may be an idiot question but doesn't tons of smoke mean tons of unburned fuel...and unburned fuel is wasted power? (like a ideally tuned motor would have minimal smoke right?)

What am I missing?

 

Yes you are correct. unburned diesel = smoke and = less mpg.

when i first started modding my truck, i thought the same thing, that i wanted non smoke blowing truck. but once you see that smoke it makes you want more, its addicting.

 

Yeah....

Think of an acetalene torch. When you first light it, yellow to orange flame lots of sooty smoke. The flame is not very hot. Add the O2 and the flame gets bright blue to white and no smoke. The flame is hot enough to melt steel.

At any rate unburned probably is probably a poor way to describe the smoke, but thats what most people say. A better way to describe it would be incompletely burned. The big part is that the maximum energy is not released during combustion. So if just fa raction of what energy is available is utilized more fuel as to be burned than needs to be burned if the fuel was more efficiently combusted.

FWIW probably the biggest smoke show I ever put on was when I blew a charge air boot off and had to drive back to the shop. Three lanes at midnight with no moon would be a good way to describe that.

Jim