Diesels running on Veggie Oil?

Is all that kit necessary? I seem to remember Top Gear ran a feature on it with an old bog standard diesel Volvo and all they done was adjust the timing plus added some form of additive, white sprit maybe? Or have I got it mixed up?

Steven.

No, the SDI is a direct injection engine. You need to go back two or three generations.

Yes, totally different.

The reason fuel is so expensive, is that the base price of the fuel has a duty put on top for the honour of running a road vehicle on it. You then pay VAT on the value of the fuel and the duty.

If you run a vehicle on the road on recycled chip fat, you'll have to pay the duty, and presumably the VAT on the duty to HMCE (or whatever they're called this week. HMIRCE?)

From the VAG POV, SDI is just a normal diesel, but with no turbo. WHY?

If it's modern common rail, I think you'd be better off not running it on biodiesel.

If it's an older TDI (normall indirect injection) you're probably OK.

I know VAG and Ford now say no more than 5%, but the problem is that normal diesel may be up to 5% biodiesel already, which means you can't put any more in.

I did a web search, and it looks like there's a split. Some people say "Never use it", and other say "No problem".

VAG only "warrant" B5 (5% biodiesel) in their PD engines (if you look at one site), but another site says they'll "warrant" B100 *if* it's rapeseed. For Soy, it's only B20. There are many people running B100 or B99 in PD engines for 10s of thousands of miles with no problems.

It could be that the limit on BD is actually because *some* BD is of very poor quality. Apparently, you can have problems with PD engines because of moisture in the BD. If you dry and filter it properly, there aren't problems.

Another site

says that many common rail injection systems will lunch the pump as soon as the veg oil hits it. *Unless the oil is heated first*. You've also got to make sure that no BD is left in the pump when it cools. It could be that in the future, many more vehicles will be diesel, because once they've figured out how to make BD which is compatible with new cars, and which they can make in large enough quantities, we'll be sorted.

Pete.

"Older TDI" engines are still direct injection. That was, like, the point - what made them good.

"John" wrote

Doubt it - there's no VAT on food.

All I can say is the local diesel specialist makes a lot of money out of people using frying oil from supermarkets. He told me

But oil from a supermarket is *not* Bio diesel. It's known as SVO (Strait Veggie Oil). It can be used, but it's much better if it's treated first.

Pete.

However with veggie oil it's very hard to prove you haven't.

whats the legal procedure of them trying to f*ck you for that then?

The message from "aussie bongo" contains these words:

I suppose if you pay for /some/ fuel there's no particular way of 'em knowing whether the fuel in your tank is the same lot you've paid duty on.

That's exactly it. Short of putting some sort of monitoring device in your fuel lines, or a 24/7 camera to monitor the fuel filler hole in your car/van, there's really bugger all they can do to properly tell how much fuel you're using compared to the amount you've declared that you've used. So just use your brain and declare some. If the same people stop you a second time and notice that you've done loads of miles since the last stop, and work out that you've only declared a very small amount of duty on veg oil, then it's perfectly realistic to claim that you use normal diesel 66% of the time or something, to protect your engine, plus sometimes it's not convenient to make up the veg oil/thinners mixture, or you were just in a rush and filling up at the petrol station was far quicker and easier.

i bet if it was looked into fully at the local dvla. they will insist on you handing in the reciepts from the filling stations every so often so that they can check and calcalate the milage and how much you owe them. and you can bet your a** that the milage per litre taht the say you have will be less in the long run than what you really do.

Or, they have no way of knowing if you bought it from someone who paid the duty.

The message from "aussie bongo" contains these words:

Ape?

Didn't say it was, I just said "All I can say is the local diesel specialist makes a lot of money out of people using frying oil from supermarkets." And I will add "mostly Taxis"

That wouldn't work with me - my ~90mile round trip commute is usually done cross country gives me between 600-680 miles on a brimmed tank.

Doing the same journey using dual carriageway/motorway every day I'd be lucky to get more than 550 miles from the same quantity of fuel (ca. 60litres).

I defy the DVLA to come up with an accurate figure for the amount of fuel I use given such a variation.

/John

How does your turbo petrol car fare on pence per mile wise when you are doing multidrop deliveries? (Start engine, accelerate as fast as vehicle will, brake as hard as vehicle will stop, stop engine, repeat)

Douglas

I wouldn't have a problem paying he duty on Bio or SVO. It is still going to work out about what? 25% cheaper than regular diesel?

I probably would hardly ever use it unless fuel prices increased drastically. At the moment, at least for Bio Diesel, it has got to be time consuming to get it all mixed and produced. Time is money, and that extra 25% or so you may save over the cost of regular diesel may not be worth it unless you made loads, or unless the cost or regular diesel increased quite a lot.

Will be interesting to try this though.

John

Douglas Payne ( snipped-for-privacy@cheerful.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Why on *earth* would you drive that badly?