rapeseed oil mixture DIESEL?

Anyone with experience running your diesel mb on rapeseed oil in a mixture with diesel fuel?

************** No experience, but I've read about this stuff. You don't want to mix SVO (straight vegetable oil) with diesel. If you've gone through the process of turning the oil into biodiesel, then it's miscible, but not without. How do you do that, you mix sodium hydroxide with oil to break the bonds with glycerine. then separate it from glycerine. The biodiesel that's sold is B20, about 20% oil, the rest, petrodiesel. You can run your car with only SVO but you'll need to heat it up to make it thinner. Rapeseed oil might be thin enough at high temps, but you'll still need to heat it up before it enters the fuel injectors. You need a separate tank for the oil and several tubes. It's a project.

[a summary of the considerable hoops and jingles one would need to go through in order to convert a car to run on biodiesel]

Why would anybody of sound mind and average wallet go to the considerable trouble and expense of converting a perfectly serviceable diesel automobile to run on this contrived hippie-juice, when they could just drive down to the corner gas station, slip their evil capitalist credit card into the slot, and fill the tank with "store bought" diesel?

When I was looking at the immaculate, if overpriced, gold '84 300SD I mentioned in another thread today, the saleslady mentioned that a lot of diesel S-class Mercedes are being purchased by rich, liberal Hol- lywood types and converted to run on biodiesel in order to make a political statement. I'm curious how true that is -- or whether, having noted my short hair, clean-shaven face and buttondown shirt, she had my number and was just trying to get me to buy the car in order to spare it from such an indignity.

The cool thing about driving a (conventionally fueled) diesel is that you can have it both ways: you can get great mileage *and* piss off liberals.

Geoff

"Geoff Miller" skrev i en meddelelse news:c8c4vq$ snipped-for-privacy@u1.netgate.net...

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The first diesel engine ran on peanut oil:

The notion of running a diesel engine on basicly any oil I think is a good idea - political statement or not. If I could run my diesel on water that would be fine as well.

Price does matter surely. People might spend lots of money on a car but don't want to pay a lot of money for the actual "firewood".

Independency is good and to run a diesel on any type oil is fine. Why not.

"BanWarNow" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m12.aol.com...

I read (on groups.google.com) is is possible to mix 50/50 diesel and vegetable oil straight into the tank.

Actually, to run Biodiesel, you just put it in the tank, maybe change the fuel filter after a couple of tanks. the part that got you confused was getting the car to run on Veg. Oil, which is pointless, unless you are using WASTE veg oil, then the point is you get it for FREE!

Not much of an indignity, just smells less, and keeps your money in country, instead of going to Saudi Arabia to train new "pilots" and such.

pretty stupid liberals to be pissed off by a Merc Diesel. but that's a pretty weak rationale for a car purchase, huh?

Why is it that people choose to view Biodiesel as a dippy hippy thing, when it is one of the most promising ways IMO to wean ourselves from our bad habit of sending money to people who blow our stuff up? Is it so hard to see the connection?

Bernard

I didn't say it wasn't possible to run diesels on alternative fuels such as vegetable oil. It's common knowledge that it is. My point was to question why somebody would go to the trouble and expense of converting their car to run on the stuff. I'm a big proponent of the philosophy of "If it works, don't 'fix' it."

Not only would it take a long time to amortize the savings in the cost of fuel, but there'd be the downtime during the conversion as well as the fact that according to what I've read about these installations, trunk space would be sacri- ficed in order to accomodate all this extra apparatus -- presumably, one would want to retain the capability of using regular diesel fuel as well, which implies that a second tank would need to be installed somewhere; not to mention the special plumbling and heating stuff. All in all, the "PITA factor" is high enough that this idea doesn't strike me as a net gain.

It's great in principle, as far as I'm concerned. It's simply a matter of how much trouble one is willing to go through in order to obtain and make use of that capability. To each his own, of course, but I'd much rather go to a conventional gas station than drive around collecting used French fry oil from fast food restaurants.

Geoff

"Geoff Miller" skrev i en meddelelse news:c8dhs4$ snipped-for-privacy@u1.netgate.net...

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Good point all in all. The idea of running on like veg. oil just strikes me great.