Biodiesel

Is that straight veg oil bought from the likes of Tescos? What are you paying a litre?

AWEM

Simon Isaacs uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Whats it like for lighting BBQ's though? :-)

Daren't risk it with a TD and the V8 scuttles across the drive when I mention Veggie ;-)

Lee

Had a go with my disco td5. 50% mix @54p per litre. 50 miles so far, nothing noticeably different. I really really really hope its not doing anything nasty to the working parts.

madhatchetman uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Eww brave man, I've not heard any one else running a Td5 yet on it though some one will pop up now about

here =====>

Keep us informed how you get on please, I'm an interested TD5 owner

AWEM

Hi I'm interested in your experience, I thought you had to get a pre-heater to heat the veg oil first, or is that only for neat veg oil running? I'd like to run my 200TDi on pure veg oil. I've seen the pre-heaters for about 400 notes.

Searching the web I've found there's a lot of interesting reading here :-

Dave.

Straight veg oil, and got it from cash and carry (bookers) as I have a card, £9.79 for 20 litres or 49p a litre. Had toyed with the idea of supermarkets, but a 20 litre tub is a lot quicker and easier, and nobody bats an eye lid at some walking round cash and carry with 100 litres of veg oil, I did try to buy a lot at Morrisons and they made me put it all back, as there would be none left for other customers, and what was i "doing with so much oil, running my car on it?" Decided not to get to shouty, hence my trip to bookers, although I have seen people in the car park at Morrisons filling up using tiny bottles, and then wheeling a trolley of empty bottles straight to the recycle point!

Still, based on diesel at 95.9p/l, that give an effective fuel cost of approx 72.5p a litre. May try going to 80/20 if this is successful, which will be approx 58p/l

-- To reply direct rot13 me

bURRt the 101 Camper

200TDi Disco with rotten floor 200 TDi DIsco, "the offroader" 1976 S3 Lightweight

One slightly unexpected consequence of using veg oil that I found was that if you're not careful when filling up, the stuff collects around the filler cap and picks up a thick coating of flies! That was when I was using straight veg cooking oil, no dino-diesel at all.

thats very interesting and quite scary reading. I might not use a lot of veg oil in future. I expect that the odd half tank will not make a difference. Pity though. I reckon it saved me =A316 per tankful. I can't see myself modifying the car.

I've done over 10K this year in a TD usually running 50/50 (and quite often 80/20 ish veg/d) - other than the chippy smell the only affects i've noticed are smoother engine and more power.

When there's more veg than 50/50 in the tank it does take a few more cranks to get started on very cold mornings.

As soon as i get round to fitting the 200tdi i'll be running that on it as well.

I wish i was brave enough to try it in our year old Mazda 6.

I have been running 20% SVO in my 300 Tdi for the last 3 tank fulls.

20 litres from our local Costco (just under 50p/litre):60 litres diesel per tank.

I am very wary of running anything greater than 20% due to problems associated with running veg. oil in a cold engine on a Direct injection engine. Notably... gumming of the rings from poor atomisation as viscosity of cold veg. oil is much greater than diesel of hot veg. oil.

I'll be running @ 20% untill such time as I get the thing converted to a twin tank system with diesel for starting/warming-up & flushing veg oil at the beginning & end of journey.

Main thing is to keep a very close eye on engine oil level as any increase in sump oil level will indicate the stuff is going past the rings.

Those are the main points I have found to be aware of through my fairly extensive recent research.

HTH Pete

depending on how this trial goes, my dad (known to some on here) intends running their citroen berlingo and his rover 75 on the stuff, which will be interesting!

-- To reply direct rot13 me

bURRt the 101 Camper

200TDi Disco with rotten floor 200 TDi DIsco, "the offroader" 1976 S3 Lightweight

What sort of veg oil, or doesn't it matter? There's olive oil, sunflower oil, tesco's own brand non-specific "value" vegetable oil etc. So which, if any, is the one to use/experiment with?

Steve

Fortunately, Rapeseed oil is the cheapest and also seems to have the lowest viscosity of all the oils and is home-grown contrary to Palm(?) oil which is causing heavy deforestation in South East Aisa.

Not good for the environmentally friendlyness associated with non-fosil fuels.

Pete

All you've described there was exactly what I had when running my

300TDi on 100% cooking oil, I used rapeseed oil in mine. It ran much smoother on it, until the days started getting cooler, then it would chug for the first mile or so and smoke so badly you couldn't see behind you. After that it was OK. I did find that the fuel filter started clogging up so I fitted a heat exchanger between the fuel filter and the fuel filter mounting, plumbed into the hot water line for the heater, that sorted it. I only ran it for about 6 months like that, due to where I was living at the time and where the landy was parked there was a higher than normal chance of getting tank dipped by the boys in blue chasing up the all-important tax.

Tesco veg oil works for me - and their 3 litres square ish bottles are exactly the right size to fit into the square ish filler recess.

Lifting a 20 litre tin would be a bit of an arse.

I'd use an electric drill pump, or a hand-cranked drum pump available from places like Northern Tool. I found the plastic supermarket containers to be a bit messy, especially when the flies start becoming a problem.

Actually, it's not too bad at all. I have a big rectangular funnel that sits in the filler and is self supporting.

The stuff I get is a 20l plastic drum in a cardboard box. You keep the drum in the cardboard which keeps it rigid and soaks up any dribbles that may occur.

Easy peasy

Might be a bit more tricky if you're less than 6' and perhaps not quite as strong as you may have been.

:¬)

So is everyone here of the same opinion that it is now legal to run mixed fuels - if you register and you use less that 2.5k litres/year.