Intake gases other than air, which is composed of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and argon, are used to study their effects on the performance of the diesel engine experimentally. The engine is operated at constant speed and fixed fuel injection timing, and cylinder pressure and heat release rate are measured at various intake gas compositions. The results show that increase of oxygen concentration improves the performance of the engine generally. The adverse effect is observed when the oxygen concentration is increased over the critical oxygen concentration of this test, mainly because of the over-shortened ignition delay. Increase of carbon dioxide concentration degardes the performance of the engine, mainly due to the lower specific heat ratio of carbon dioxide. Adding argon gas to the intake gas improves the overall performance. Finally, it is found that two most influencing factors affecting the performance of the diesel engine in this study are ignition delay and speific heat ratio of the intake gas.