Cooking Oil - 1.7TD

[SeanW]

Hi Chaps,

Had an AA man yesterday tell me to look into running my '89 1.7TD on 50/50 (cooking oil/diesel); so I've read all I can find on here about it and was hoping to get three things clarified -

1. Which oil exactly is meant by 'cooking' oil? (Rapeseed, vegetable oil, etc.?)

2. If I'm running on a 50/50 mix, will I need a heater to run it in winter?

3. Is it as simple as putting the cooking oil into my fuel tank and off I go?

Merry Christmas to y'all!

Note - I'm fully aware of the tax issues; I don't want to begin another thread debating the state of Britain

[Swampy]

Hello.

The whole Veg Oil thing is a subject of lots of discussion. There's loads of ways of approaching this. [Please someone correct me if I make any errors on this! This is just from what I've looked into]

1. Veg Oil, Sunflower Oil, Rapeseed Oil. Any oil you cook with along these lines are what people use for this job.

You could use Peanut Oil (I believe Rudolph Diesel actually first ran his engines on the stuff), though this is of course nowadays far too expensive. Just not Olive Oil. Something to do with it's viscosity.

2. I'd add a heater for a 50/50 mix in Winter if I were you. There is a lot of chat on forums about what's a safe mix to put straight into your Tank. Because Waste Veg Oil (WVO) is usually to thick to start the engine with when cold, you could do some damage to your engine. Some people run on 50/50 during summer with no problems or heating. I personally run on about 70/30 WVO during these cold times.

Some people could say that even at that mix I'm doing damage to my engine...

3. I usually add my WVO in to the tank just after I've filled up at the station, to keep the 70/30 ratio. I just add it to my regular tank, simple as that.

However, I'm saving for a straightforward but effective Twin Tank kit from the Biotuning website

http://www.biotuning.co.uk/Home.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

once I've got a more regular supply of WVO.

I'd recommend using Waste Veg Oil from a restaurant or somesuch, & filtering it, rather than buying regular Cooking Oil. Simply down to the fact that Buying the stuff is as expensive as Diesel (almost) & you're doing no one any favours in terms of the environment etc.

And a Happy New Year to you!

[SeanW]

Excellent! Thanks for a spiffing reply.

Regarding WVO - how do you go about filtering it? Does it need to be finely filtered or just through a loose mesh? It sounds like a pretty messy job!

Thanks!

[steve o]

HI
one thing for sure is replace the seals in your pump,
ran 2 vans + pug 205 on various mix of oil /derv ,and all pumps began to leak after several mths,,did,nt before hand.forgot what type of seals to use, but its been talked about on here befor,
steve.o

[R0B]

http://forum.club8090.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... ls#p290968

forgot what type of seals to use

[Swampy]

Regarding filtering, as long as you have a few dedicated containers for the job + a bit of space it doesn't have to be too messy.

I got hold of 2 small bins. I use an old pair of jeans with knots in the bottom as my first filter. Get any major crap out of the oil. I do this all at ambient temp of my shed. Make sure any fatty globules are all congealed so as to not get through the filter.

Then I rig up an old newspaper filter. Can't remember the website I found this, but if you fold up a piece of newspaper & clamp the open sides with a few pieces of battening, you've essentially got a paper bag made of newspaper. Fill the newspaper bag with some oil & let the oil filter through the paper by capillary action. This filters the oil down to 1 micron, which is fine for use as a fuel. I've got a couple of hooks at the top, which allow the bag to sit in my other bin. I just let it drip overnight.

At the moment it is a bit messy, but when I can be bothered I'm going to find containers with taps at the bottom to save ladling the stuff etc. The only real issue with this method is that's REALLY slow. Also, if there's water in the oil the newspaper will weaken & break. I've never had this happen yet, but the website I found this idea on stated that it had happened to him a few times. Fortunately, it just breaks & the oil drops straight into the bin, so no great mess. He used broadsheets for the job, whereas I use smaller tabloids (I don't have that much oil for use at the mo).

This is just one option, there are many, many different ways of filtering & you can buy all sorts of stuff to take the mess out of this little job. It just depends on how much you want to spend for the convenience.

[HarryMann]

forgot what type of seals to use, but its been talked about on here before,

Viton seals (more easily obtained in the US I believe). See Rob's link above.

The best way to start filtering any real quantity of WVO is a settling tank, as large as you like with taps/drains at various levels up from the bottom to drain off water at the bottom and muck at the top. Then strain/filter. A friend of mine acquired a 450 litre oil storage tank from a garage (surplus top requirements). He put about 4 drain taps at foot intervals from the bottom upwards, leaves it about a week to settle and then drains the water.. water will alwasy get into WVO, but always colelct it in the large plastic ocntainers, not steel tins!

Unless you are set up for decent quantities it definitely gets messy and smelly

Making real biodiesel is another thing altogether, but that removes a lot of the more caustic components and specifically the soapy and waxy glycerides.

Vegetable oil has in fact more lubricity than mineral diesel. But its the viscosity that is a problem and its more acid and corrosive nature (Just drink some first pressing virgin olive oil neat to see that)

It might be possible to extend the WVO season by running your main cooling or heater hoses and pipes around the fuel tank. If the engine will start in cold weather it would be a good idea not to rev it hard or use high throttle settings until everything is warmed up, to lessen loads on the inj.pump mechanisms

[SeanW]

Ok, thanks for the ideas. I think I'm going to try and adapt a garden rain water collector with some extra taps and see how I get on

[marble]

Ran lorries on used cooking oil/diesel mix. Used more fuel it went to a solid lump in cold weather and the smell could be annoying. A company called SITA runs all their vehicles on new cooking oil (100%) with heaters in the tanks from America to thin the oil. Is that some help.

[Swampy]

Sounds interesting, especially in this weather.

Could you let me know where to get hold of one & how much they cost?