Been running on V100 biodiesel for a few weeks now and have come to a few conclusions:
1) It purges the fuel system - it's almost like running on pure Redex. You need to adjust the fuelling downwards otherwise you smoke like a sod and go through fuel like a bastard.
2) It's got a little more grunt than Dinodiesel in a 200TDI. It is rubbish in whatever lump (BMW?) is in a Rover 75.
3) It won't cold start worth a damn - 25 seconds of cranking to get it to catch on 2 cylinders and another 30 seconds nursing the accelerator to stop it stalling out. OK with a good battery, bad news if your battery is a bit weak. It's almost like trying to start a flooded petrol car.
4) It smells nice
I'm now mixing it 25/75 with dinodiesel to see if that helps the cold start problem. Failing that it's either Webasto time, or back to dinodiesel.
FWIW, my owners handbook for the BMW 330dSE (same engine as a TD6) states quite categorically that you must not run it on Bio-diesel or rape seed derived fuels or damage will happen. Not "might happen", but "will happen". I wonder if this has anything to do with the higher pressures used with the common-rail injection system? Any ideas, group?
There are, but for diesel they're quite high - bear in mind that home heating oil is nominally diesel/kerosene and can be in anything up to 3000l tanks.
Just for reference, a "200L" tank from Bio Power is actually a 45 gallon oil drum. The 1000l tank is an industrial minibulk.
If your SWB is a pickup then I'd figure you could probably get around
300-400l in 45 gallon drums in the back - I wouldn't want to try and drive around roundabouts though.
On or around Fri, 19 Nov 2004 17:49:33 +0000, "Paul S. Brown" enlightened us thusly:
200l of diesel-ish stuff in a drum should be about 200Kg, so i reckon you'd get 2 in a SWB, weightwise, provided there's enough floorspace to stand 'em on.
Diesel, and paraffin, are used as bulk heating oils and, while there are rules intended to minimise the environmental effects of a spillage, there's nothing unusual in storing 3000 litres.
Ive worked out that its cost effective for me to travel there and buy some of the stuff, so an probably going to try and get some over the next week or so.
However - I have trouble starting my landy on cold mornings with normal diesel. I think this is mainly due to my battery just not having enough kick in it first thing in the morning after it has sat all night.
I was considering leaving my landy hooked up to a battery charger overnight so that it has lots of go in the morning. Would this be sensible? I would be using one of the cheap low ampage chargers (machine mart sell a 4A one for ~£10)
On or around Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:01:16 +0000, Tom Woods enlightened us thusly:
it'd give the battery the best chance. In seriously cold weather your best bet would be to try to get the engine and battery warmer though.
check that all else is in order though - in the first place, a diesel landy should have at least a 644 or 645 "small truck/tractor" battery - if it's smaller than that it's not big enough. I forget what the next-size-up is, mebbe 664/665 and that's even better. These things are best bought from commercial suppliers or from farmers co-ops and the like - halfrauds et al charge too much for 'em. last one I bought was about 46 quid I think. If the battery's old (as in more than about 4 years) and giving you starting problems, then I'd replace it.
Check too that the alternator is producing the correct voltage and current.
also check your earthing and all connections.
if it's the kind of thing with manual preheat (i.e. by turning the key to half-c*ck) then make sure you give it enough preheat - an old sherpa I had with those preheaters needed at least 1'30" by my watch to start reliably, and sometimes more when it was really cold. Also check the glow plugs that they are all working. If it's the modern sort of preheat with a timer, then you can turn it off and on again to get several stabs at it.
Back to the battery charger, with a bit of effort you could adapt the charger and the land rover to have a suitable socket, and a double-ended plug lead which plugs the one into the other.
I understand it's a simple numeric increase hence 646 next.
I'd be tempted to get an intellegent one that'll reduce it's current as the battery charged and then stopped when it was full, or am I being over-cautous? probably...
nope, on 50/50 no mods needed. I'm going to be running on 100% and for that I will be fitting a system to warm the fuel pre-filter (electrically for the first few minutes then using coolant) to thin it to aid smooth running.
it does need to be cranking more to start it and it runs rough for 2-3 minutes after startup, I put that down to the fuel being thicker, once the engine is warming the pipes to the heater radiate heat to the fuel filter which helps thin it, also I know my injectors are in poor condition, I expect things to improve when I fit recons.
On or around Sun, 21 Nov 2004 10:12:38 +0000, Mr.Nice. enlightened us thusly:
yebbut, you'll likely find that's a different format or something. ISTR that 664 is the bigger brother of 644, with a hundred so more CCA. 644 should do about 750A CCA depending on which system it's measured by.
Cold Cranking Amperage: tested by putting a sodoff shunt and meter across it, I assume - there are a couple of standards. One is for 1 minute at -14C to 1.4V per cell, I think that IEC, then there's SAE which is 30 seconds at
-18 to 1.2V per cell. Represents the amount of oomph available in the battery from fully charged to mostly-flat. Not quite the same as the Ah figure, which is typically at a 20-hr rate, in other words, a 20Ah battery would do 1A for 20 hrs, but wouldn't necessarily do 10A for 2 hrs - the various losses increase.
On or around Sun, 21 Nov 2004 10:12:38 +0000, Mr.Nice. enlightened us thusly:
I think you'll find the cheapo 4A one won't harm a big battery overnight. They work by not having too much voltage available, I believe, so that once the battery gets up to about 13.5V the current reduces anyway.
Not for the stuff Bio-Power sell - it's pretty much 5 micron filtered chip fat and doesn't do much in the way of solventy stuff. Just slop it into the tank and drive on.
You may find yourself needing to have the fuelling adusted downwards as the biodiesel smokes a bit more than dinodiesel, also they recommend changing the in-line fuel filter after the first 500 miles or so because the stuff effectively cleans out the fuel system - as I've said before it's almost like running the car on pure Redex. Figure around a quid for the filter and ten minutes to fit it.
Depending on your car you *may* want to get one of their heat exchangers. I haven't grabbed one yet so I don't know how useful they are.
You may have to replace plastic parts if you end up with "Trans Esterified Waste Vegetable Fat" which is somewhat nastier to make and is a better solvent than brake fluid, however I doubt it.
Bio-Power will sell to you at 10ppl below pump prices if you collect it or
5ppl below if you want it delivered. Figure out your savings, but on 50/50 you're looking at a 2.5ppl saving over standard fuel, however you have to factor the cost of a pump (£25-150) in to the savings.
My local supplier is offering "futures" where I pay for 1000l now and have it delivered on request at the price I paid originally regardless of what's happened to pump prices in the meanwhile.
On my car the MPG went way down when I started using it, but seems to be returning with the fuelling turned down a bit - like I've said before it flushes the fuel system out quite thoroughly.
Power seems marginally increased although there's not much in it.
Suppliers can be found at
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If you've got the space and the time you can make your own for around £0.45 per litre including paying the money to C&E to keep yourself legit. There's somebody in the south of Wales somewhere (can't remember where) offers instructions on how to do it. It basically involves filtering the chip fat to remove the burnt crunchy bits, adding red lye and then letting it settle for a few weeks. You then end up with biodiesel on the top and about a third as much glycerine on the bottome - the biggest problem with this is that you end up with vast amounts of glycerine to dispose of - you could go into soap production if you wanted I guess.
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