A friend of mine in Silicon Valley switched over to B100 for all of his vehicles, including his 1983 MBZ wagon. He pays $3.00/gal. delivered.
Since diesel just hit $1.33/gal. here in Napa, I wanted to get feedback from the group. Any experiences, good or bad?
1987 300 SDL 1988 Audi Quattro 2002 Passat 4Motion
My girlfriend bought a 1984 300d turbo to run B100. She has had no problems whatsoever. I changed her fuel filter and that has been it. She had one hose start leaking, which I replaced. ( I have heard that is a common problem) $3.00 per gal is pretty good BTW.
Bernard
My "Frankenbenz" and I just switched over to biodiesel. (I run a 240D which has had an engine transplant from a 300SD). I had been getting around 22MPG on regular diesel, jumped to about 27-28 on bio. Normal prices around here range $1.99 - $2.17 at the moment for normal, $2.35 for bio. I have not noticed any behavioral changes to the old girl. I'll have to go back and check my records to see if the sniff test results are better. Our county is pretty lenient, only been testing diesels for about 3 years, but my 25 year old car passes well above the standard required for the new ones.
Rochelle
V> A friend of mine in Silicon Valley switched over to B100 for all of
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The calorific value of biodiesel is circa 5 per cent _lower_ than that of regular diesel so there _is_ a DEcrease im mpg when swithing from regular diesel to biodiesel.
Juergen
How about straight vege oil, Juergen? Guess what? I got one diesel now... not vege though.
Sorry, I am no expert in that field.
However, there is a followship of vegetable oil users here in Germany, as a start e.g. use
As veg oil is thicker than diesel he added a computer to his taxi which made sure the car always started with diesel when cold and only some time later when a certain temperature (oil? water? dunno) was reached automatically switched to vegetable oil. Jut two kilometres before he reaches home every day he manually switched to diesel again to make sure the fuel lines are filled with diesel for the next morning start.
The guy actually got the old oil from snack bars, hotels etc. pp. and had an oil mill in his garage where he cleaned the oil from any dirt - benefit of all this is that he nearly has no fuel cost at all, interesting for a taxi driver who - owner driver - otherwise would have to pay sth. like 3000+ Euros a year for fuel.
Also German car mag AUTO BILD had an old VW Golf II diesel which was driven with vegetable oil and they once reported about it regularly - they added a heating for the vegetable oil.
A secret tip once was sload (olive?) oil from big German discount stroe ALDI which one could use without any additional filtering (as opposed to the used oil described above): Open the bottles and pour it into the tank.
Juergen - simply using ordinary diesel in the W123 240D
Sorry, I am no expert in that field.
However, there is a followship of vegetable oil users here in Germany, as a start e.g. use
As vegetable oil is thicker than diesel he added a computer to his taxi which made sure the car always started with diesel when cold and only some time later when a certain temperature (oil? water? dunno) was reached automatically switched to vegetable oil. Jut two kilometres before he reaches home every day he manually switched to diesel again to make sure the fuel lines are filled with diesel for the next morning start.
The guy actually got the old oil from snack bars, hotels etc. pp. and had an oil mill in his garage where he cleaned the oil from any dirt - benefit of all this is that he nearly has no fuel cost at all, interesting for a taxi driver who - owner driver - otherwise would have to pay sth. like 3000+ Euros a year for fuel.
Also German car mag AUTO BILD had an old VW Golf II diesel which was driven with vegetable oil and they once reported about it regularly - they added a heating for the vegetable oil.
A secret tip once was salad (olive?) oil from big German discount stroe ALDI which one could use without any additional filtering (as opposed to the used oil described above): Open the bottles and pour it into the tank.
Juergen - simply using ordinary diesel in the W123 240D
Finest cold-pressed virgin olive oil may be great, so you can dip your baguette into your fuel tank.. but I doubt it is cheaper than the stuff from the pumps, even if it is from Aldi.
DAS
"Dori A Schmetterling" haute in die Tasten:
Actually I have heard guys telling that they have bought vegetable oil from Aldi at .69 Euro per liter. What I always wonder: Do they really buy two big cartons of oil bottles, unscrew them all and fill them into the tank, liter by liter, or do they also sell 20 litre canisters?
*For our foreign friends: Aldi is a chain of budget food supermarkets. They are famous to sell food at extremely low prices. Some years ago they also started to sell computer stuff every now and then. In the first time there were actually riots taking place when Aldi had chep PCs for sale. Most Aldi stores are located in Germany, although there also are some other stores in the rest of Europe.Frank
believe it or not the are a few Aldi stores in the US
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And in the UK. The big supermarket chains put enormous pressure on their suppliers not to supply Aldi when it first opened here some years ago, with the result that there are few big brands sold there. However, they promise that their product quality matches that of the brand leaders and I must say, with the (few) products I have tried that was largely true.
Back to Frank's msg about a litre of oil costing EUR 0.69, I doubt it's finest virgin --- unless the label says so and it has been supplied by the Siciliian Mafia...
DAS
"Dori A Schmetterling" haute in die Tasten:
Of course you are right, it is simple plain sunflower oil, sold in plastic bottles with one litre content. But how do the veggie drivers fill their cars? Do they really buy 60 bottles and unscrew them one by the other?
Frank
Noone knows it, but ALDI is in the US since 1976 (!):
Juergen
Yes, they filled in bottle after bottle... (leaving behind giant amounts of empty bottles)
Secret tip once was METRO where you could buy canisters - dunno the situation at ALDI.
In the US since 1976 - currently over 700 outlets
Juergen
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