Veg Oil in a Diesel engine. Test Results.

[love machine]

Yes, it was veg oil with added white spirit (turpentine substitute) a synthetic terpene. Anyway, ing about with sodium methoxide is a waste of time. It's something hippies do for the environmenmenurment. Running cheap is the way to go. For this, you need Kerosene (paraffin) 85% and fresh veg oil 15%. Whack that in your tank and see how it goes.

For those in the know, kerosene is about 1/3 the price of the cheapest veg oil.

You need to pay attention to how it sounds when cold. If it knocks excessively, you need to back the injector pump timing off a bit. Slacken the bolts and move a tad and see how it goes..... Noise is the only penalty.....

[biggbn]

my experiences....i ran a 2.5 td pug engine powere umm jeep on teco vegoil/diesel mix for all the time i owned the behemoth...with no problems.....i changed the filter for an inline one and carried a spare at all times in case.....i used 60/40 diesel/vegoil in cold weather and the car always started and ran smoother and felt more powerful...and anything from 40/60 to 50/50 diesle/vegoil in warmer weatehr.....i covered about 350miles a week and saved a good few quid doing this...when i sold the jeep, the new buyers drove it to germany where, to my knowledge, it still runs about quite happily....its important to keep spare filter as the vegoil is quite abbrasive going thru the fuel system and acts as an 'internal engine cleaner'..which is good...but you may get a clogged filter after the first few hundred miles...also, 60/40 diesel/vegoil is actually a better fuel than straight diesel..it burns better...you can actually buy preheater kits to convert your car..these use seprate tanks and a preheater that heats the vegoil up to the required temperature...your engine starts on diesel and then switches over when the required temperature is met, and runs on 100% vegoil from then........also, using used vegoil, whilst environmentaly laudable, is a messy business as it has to be filtered first and really should have kerosene or the like mixed in to boost its octane level...that said, i personally know of two people who purposely bought the cheapest diesle cars they could and aimed to run them on free vegoil till the yblew up and repeat the exercise as often as neccessarry...one has covered 40k in his old mondeo diesl(£120....!!) and the other 20k in his pug 405..(£180..!!)...ya pays ya money and takes ya chance it seems...

[ELAN+2]

I've been looking into this for a future project, If you use old cooking oil you do not have to pay fuel duty on the first 2500litres that you use.....Correctly processed you end up with puka bio diesel, all European market diesel engines will run on it with out problems, it is after all diesel, correct viscosity and cetane rating. The process costs about 10p a litre.

Friends are using new veggie oil in discoveries and run the fuel line through a lump of ally with a glow plug in it and coolant to pre heat the oil to thin it, starting can be slow and performance is a bit slower than when on diesel. Aparently Lucas CAV pumps shear a pin internally if you use veg oil un treated(too much load on the pump) however bosch pumps are ok.

Theres an interesting article in Mechanics magazine on the subject.

[wildoliver]

Well I used to run Kero one tank in 3 in my old midget which due to me being verry verrrry poor at the time was running a marina van with nice low comp pistons and a single 1 3/4! It didn't used to like starting so you had to pour some petrol down the carb (yes ok I wouldn't do it now!) But would run fine if a bit sluggish.

I cleverly ran the bgt out of fuel last night and need to get to fuel station, tempted to try a couple of litres.

[trackcar]

ELAN+2 said:

I've been looking into this for a future project, If you use old cooking oil you do not have to pay fuel duty on the first 2500litres that you use......

is this true? that's a LOT of mileage in my transit van! where can you get the info on this no-tax threshold?

[Munter]

trackcar said:

ELAN+2 said:

I've been looking into this for a future project, If you use old cooking oil you do not have to pay fuel duty on the first 2500litres that you use......

is this true? that's a LOT of mileage in my transit van! where can you get the info on this no-tax threshold?

I know fifth gear mentioned it. I cant remember if the number quoted is right (It probably is), but certainly the first X thousand miles were tax free.

[RichardD]

trackcar said:

that's a LOT of mileage in my transit van! where can you get the info on this no-tax threshold?

Hello Joo

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/briefs/excise-duty/brief430...

Hopefully in a fortnight I should have a twin tank kit in my olde ZX TD installed at last and experiments with SVO (straight veg oil - ie new) and WVO (1 micron filtered waste veg oil from local pub) can begin

Let me know what fuel pump the transit has and I'll look it up to let you know Transit feasibility

All this is in the interest of long term cash savings to fuel TVR upgrades

[trackcar]

Thanks Richard .. Ive already had the transit trialled on veg oil on my dyno after previously investigating whether the pump was ok .. it's 1997 Transit so still the old mechanical type. Sadly when I was going for some power runs on it I found the cause of my vibration that had bugged me for a while and never been able to find the cause .. the propshaft front UJ shattered! It had made a massive 57bhp at that point though

[trackcar]

Ah so the legislation refers to producers of oil .. does that also include people buying either parafin or new cheap veg oil off the shelf then? It's not made clear from what i've read so far. ie is this a tax burden lifted from recyclers as opposed to users of alternative but new oils as some sort of green incentive for small volume users?

[rev-erend]

I bet the filter gets clogged with old chips and the odd bit of fish though..

[RichardD]

trackcar said:

Ah so the legislation refers to producers of oil .. does that also include people buying either parafin or new cheap veg oil off the shelf then? It's not made clear from what i've read so far. ie is this a tax burden lifted from recyclers as opposed to users of alternative but new oils as some sort of green incentive for small volume users?

Am certain the scope of "biofuels" means that parafin or white spirit isn't included.

It seems a strange situation that's been left, but I understand it to be the administration for the Inland Revenue wasn't worth the bother for small scale producers / users.

It does mean that anyone who wants to collect vegetable oil and then make biodiesel would have to charge duty (as 10 gallons a week is tiny in terms of manufacture and resale) - with the resulting fuel not being particularly competitive. Have seen B100 (pure biodiesel) prices and they aren't any less than "dinosaur diesel".

Oh, new vegetable oil seems to be going up in price, it was typically 57p a litre (from Netto to Sainsburys, no difference generally), but its heading over 60, supposedly due to the summer flooding (?)

[RichardD]

rev-erend said:

I bet the filter gets clogged with old chips and the odd bit of fish though..

Nooooo, just get a sieve from the poundshop and after you've filtered the fuel you've got free tea aswell as free food

[RichardD]

trackcar said:

...trialled on veg oil

If interested have a look here as it covers other complications on the use of WVO and issues with the "free fatty acids", it gets VERY technical

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=186108

One chap in the US has done 70k miles on used oil in a PD VW (!!!), but has recently started having troubles

[ATM]

I know a guy who runs a Transit minibus for a living. Its got the good old fashioned 2.5 Di and he uses straight forward veg oil from Asda or Csotco. He's done over 100,000 miles in it with no problems. He has registered with Customs and pays some duty but I'd guess his calculations are never accurate.

[AlpineAndy]

FYI : http://www.dieselveg.com/Vehicle%20List.htm

[DaveL485]

I Have a Renault 19 Turbo Diesel on a 1995 M reg with 126K on the clock.

Over the last year it has run on new Veg oil mixed with diesel about 50/50 saving me £30 a month.

Recently I have a supply of used oil for free, I filter it through Tesco Value tights (LOL) into another container. I Then top this container up with unleaded petrol (About 10L oil to 1L petrol) and give it a shake. It thins up nicely, then in the tank it goes.

Never had to do more than double heat the plugs to start it, it misses a bit and chucks some smoke out but after a few seconds it clears (needs some revs if its REALLY cold but only a few blips of the throttle)

It went through the emissions test last saturday with no issues.


Happy days

[Munter]

AlpineAndy said:

FYI : http://www.dieselveg.com/Vehicle%20List.htm

HUmmm. Those guys are literally just down the road from me. I'm tempted to pop over and see their stuff.

One thought is though that I have to submit VAT reciepts to the company for my diesel. With the allowance from the gov of no vat on the 1st X liters of bio fuel, how does that work with the VAT recipts/miliage i'm allowed to claim before being taxed on the miliage?

[ELAN+2]

My 940 td volvo has so far covered 500+miles on a mix of 75% cold filtered WVO and Diesel, it smokes and rattles on start up but seems smoother and quicker(if that is possible!) on the veg mix, As I've got hold of a decent quantity of used oil, I'm going to start processing it into bio diesel to EN100 standard, if the Volvo likes a straight diet of this, then its going into a couple of mates cars to trial(dont you just love company cars!), a PD A4 and TDCI Mundano......between 9 and 11p a litre, got to be worth a go!

[Jack_and_MLE]

I'm planning the install of a dual tank system on my Audi for this Xmas. I will loose the sapre wheel which is the only down side of the conversion.

The engine is a 2.5 tdi

Jack

[Cooper1999]

Good thread this, and one I'm interested in as I run a diesel (a 05 Honda CRV 2.2CDTi).
Reading through the comments, and what I've seen on TV it seems that the older technology diesels will have no trouble running on veg oil. But has anyone actually run the stuff in the newer high pressure common rail jobbies?
I'd be more than willing to pay 60p a litre for, say 30 litres of veg oil, topping up with 30 litre of diesel at £1.06! It cost £52 to fill up 3/4 tank the other day - money that I'd rather pay for petrol for the bike or w/end car!
But obviously I don't want to ruin the engine of my 2 1/2 year old diesel!
The websites mentioned/posted only seem to concentrate on the slightly older cars - does anyone out there have experience of a new car running on the stuff? (Will watch for what happens in the 2.5litre Audi diesel company car )