running your car on vegtable oil

ive run a transit on veggie oil, used oil at that and it smelled but ran quieter, ive also added small amounts to my disco with no noticable effects.
My father in law runs a citroen on it he claims he run it for 2 years using a 50/50 mix with diesel and noticed a considerable improvement. locally more and more places are selling bio deisel, a product made from veg oil but with additives(not sure what) they pay the customs their share and you get a sticker to prove your doing it legit.
i say if they are charging less than than petrol station prices then why not use them, say yourself a pretty penny that way, 20P A LITRE. That will help pay for the extra taxes we'll all be paying for having safer cars

i know it's not the same as veg oil but i've had a look at bio deisel availability on fourcourts and if you follow the link below it'll take you to a site that lists garages all over the uk. it's not as much hassle as veg oil and cheaper than dinosaur oil

All Biodiesel Outlets in the UK

Hi all,

I have 'experimented' with using new cooking oil, bought straight from a supermarket and adding it directly to the fuel tank

I roughly worked out the ratio as about 25/75 oil/diesel

It made absolutely no difference to the runnimng of the car, although I was convinced it ran slightly quieter, maybe just my imagination !!

Interested to know anything from other members in here about the same

Steve.

Unfotrunately here cooking oil of the sunflower variety costs more than diesel

I've found this web site on veg oil / diesel use.

Vegetable Oil as Vehicle Fuel

How to use it, how much duty to pay etc.

Hope this helps every one.

JimAttrill said:

Unfotrunately here cooking oil of the sunflower variety costs more than diesel

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well cook yer chips in diesel then

tigapiglet said:

does anyone out there run there cars on vegtable oil, does anyone know if the car runs ok any info would be appreciated tiga.

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Try going to a website dieselveg everything's explained there, only mechanical injection systems run on veg oil not Common rail systems. Veg oil needs to be heated prior to going through the fuel system as it is 4 times thicker than diesel. If you do this you'll notice a slight power increase with better response, engine noise is reduced also from the usual knocking from combustion. As petrol has Octane, Diesel has Cetane. Veg Oil has a higher Cetane rating! the greater the Cetane the better it burns!! Smells better and is Carbon neutral to the enviroment..

I have recently bought a landrover discovery run on veg oil and apart from it smelling like a chip van there appears to be no problem at all.

Interesting reading and obviously a hot topic...

I have been trawling sites reading millions of sentences(thats how it feels) As I understand it

Direct injection can be converted to Oil (tesco) However to do so you must heat the oil to the required temp. Most sites also state that the lucas pump uses the diesel to lubricate it's self but using oil will damage your fuel pump.
However most bio sites seem to concern themselves with just bio diesel rather than our specific question of what percentage of oil to diesel can we safely use..
I myself will play it safe and start a combination of 15% oil 85% diesel Until i can find definitive evidence regarding the fuel pump I shall restrict the oils to that of an additive and use the injector cleaners every now and then.... aswell as replacing fuel filters....

How are the rest of you getting on with the oil running and has anyone else found a cheaper place to obtain th eoil?

I am using a 20% mix on veggie/diesel at the moment and can only say that I am pleased with the performance it is giving (no difference), I have not done a proper fuel consumption test yet but do have some long journeys coming up soon (3 rally cars to deliver on car trailer). I bought my first 3 Ltrs from ASDA at a cost of £1.62, have just bought 100Ltrs from Makro for £9.98 per 20Ltrs, so only saved 4p per litre and have a load of containers to dispose of!

How often is everyone renewing their filters?....Thanks for the info I may well extend the percentages upto 25/75 only niggle i have is with the lubrication factor with the fuel pump... but I am guessing with the ratios it may well be adequate

YouTube - Episode 4: The Engine is the Final Heat Exchanger

Have a check on this folks???? what is every ones opinion???

I'm just about to put a Montego 2L TD into my SWB because it has a known track history for SVO.
I'm running a 2 tank system with a standard tank under the passenger seat, and an extra filler on the outside. This will then go to a heat exchanger from a gas boiler, then to a filter, then a six way motorised valve, from there, through another heated filter to the bosch injector pump.
The heat exchanger I bought from fleabay as the Valliant model (with 4 ports) is a flat plate copper brazed type for £5.00
The valve is a Pollark motorised valve from our US friends also on fleabay.£24.00 +£8p+p
Note if you are bidding on these valves, please don't get in a bidding war, as the guy sells loads of them - just wait a bit till the next one.
I have made a heated flat filter using standard lab filters, that you can see through the top the condition of the oil, and easily change filters without loosing loads.
I have also made a glow plug fuel heater that's tiny.
The kenlowe hotstart in the coolant lines should mean I can go quickly to SVO without too much preheat.

Regarding alternative fuels, I remember the % of Acetone additive is only around 2% or less, so use a inkjet syringe to meter it out - not half a bottle.
I intend to use WATER INJECTION in the monty. - yes running a car on water!.
You may have noticed how your diesel is more responsive in wet weather?
This is because the water vapour improves vapourisation in the combustion chamber. There is also a method of charge cooling - When Air is compressed in the turbo, it heats up. Thus the 'charge' is already warm when burnt. The purpose of an intercooler is to cool the charge, and get more power, as the pressure differential is greater.
By injecting water into the hot air, it cools the charge AND increases vapourisation.
You can also add ethanol (to prevent the water tank freezing) which further increases the fuel mix. I did think that by injecting Hydrogen Peroxide instead of water, would be like adding liquid oxygen to the charge, but this stuff is unstable and tends to loose it's potency - not to mention corroding everything it touches!
Well that's why I've got the £80 peugeot

Yes it is really easy to turn used cooking oil into a suitible fuel for desiel vehicles, there are problems with solidification in lower temperatures and a system of regular desiel gas will be needed to both start the vehicle and fill the lines before the vehicle is shut off, but only in cold weather. It is also illegal in the US at least to convert a vehicle to run on bio-desiel, but the EPA will not fine people for doing so. There are many good resources on the web for support, suplies, and how to's. In the US desiel vehicles only acount for 4% of total autos, it's sad. But Thank You to the people who want to make our world greener and last a little bit longer! Also it is easy in the US to get the oil for conversion, it costs resturants $15 a barrel to dispose, they set it out by the dumpster and if you take it before the waste company you save them money. The cost for you to build your own station is not that much around $700 or less, you don't need any kits, there are very good instructions online and many places will "sponsor" your efforts. Oh, yeah also if the oil is treated correctly with heating, filtering, removing the glycerides by methanol and lye, and washing the solution, a 100% used cooking oil fuel can be used in warm weather.

If only 4% of US vehicles are Diesel, Are you guys thinking about Bio-Butanol? or Combined Hydrogen ?

( Bio-Butanol
Butanol made from organic sources very much like Ethanol from sugars but fermented differently and separated using a permeable membrane. Is a direct substitute for standard gas (petroleum) )

(Combined Hydrogen -
A means of injecting Hydrogen gas into the air intake, which reduces petroleum consumption as the EMU reduces injector time to compensate.
This can simply be done in a homebrew fermentation tank (the round ones) using caustic soda and water, and adding BEER CANS to produce Hydrogen (and aluminium oxide) The catylist is unxchanged. (*** Please read more - Hydrogen requires acidic balancing and understanding or you'll eat your pistons***)

Any interest to you folks?

Rowan Clearwater said:

I intend to use WATER INJECTION in the monty. - yes running a car on water!.
You may have noticed how your diesel is more responsive in wet weather?
This is because the water vapour improves vapourisation in the combustion chamber. There is also a method of charge cooling - When Air is compressed in the turbo, it heats up. Thus the 'charge' is already warm when burnt. The purpose of an intercooler is to cool the charge, and get more power, as the pressure differential is greater.
By injecting water into the hot air, it cools the charge AND increases vapourisation.
You can also add ethanol (to prevent the water tank freezing) which further increases the fuel mix.

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Not a new idea for supercharged aircraft engines and jet engines, the methanol mainly added as an anti-freeze although it does add a bit of power. You will need some sort of interlock so that injection only occurs when the engine is at full throttle and above a certain boost and rpm. You don't want to hydraulic your engine by injecting at low rpm. I installed it once on a 2-stroke motor bike using a model aircraft engine spray bar in the venturi and a windscreen washer pump. I just made sure I was going flat out before pushing the button!

In the aircraft applications, the fuelling is normally increased as the water is pumped in to take advantage of the cooler charge. But it does put a strain on the motor, eg the Harrier has a 50gal tank behind the engine which would last as many seconds. But the engine life decreased dramatically and so we stopped using it. Some other engines eg RR Darts always used w/m injection for take-off with no bad effects at all.

Thanks for that advice - may have prevented serious hydraulic damage.
I wasn't thinking of using that much - more of a fine mist in the air intake.
I had heard that the US military had done trials on their powerplant, which reduced fuel use by over 50% . The downside was water in the sump and bore wear problems (as you may expect).
- maybe fitting a sedimenter to the oil cooler would help here ?
Regarding wear, I could posibly use an aditional lubricant in the water or oil mix, or even an emulsion of the two - kind of a permanent damp-start.
Sounds like there is a lot of experimenting to be done - but think of the benefits. - The bloke who invented the Hiclone has made a fortune from an impeller and anything which saves on fuel must be worth it............ Nuclear TD5 anyone?.......or the "Wastelander"... Kinda got a ring to it

Either use a spray bar as I did or maybe you could have a thing like a big oil-bath air filter full of water and bubble the intake air through it, rather like a hubble-bubble . There was a firm in the UK that used to market a device like that a few years ago, I think they had a water spray into a container and passed the intake air through it so it would pick up some water. That would solve the possible hydraulicking. They sold it as 'water injection', but it wasn't really that.

can anyone tell me weather you can only use veggie oil or if you can use rapeseed oil or corn oil

one fur yu here, Yella