I had a word with a mechanic at work about this cooking oil fiasco. He runs a 300tdi Disco.
He showed me his mixing bucket. Said he does a 40% diesel to 60% oil mix - but the other way round in winter.
His advice? "just get it poured in and save some cash!"
Wasn't overly convinced so phoned my mate Brian at
Land Rover 4x4 Motor Engineering, Servicing Alloy Wheels MOT - Leeds Yorkshire and asked his advice. He said he'd heard good and bad reports about running on oil. He said I should be ok on the 300 engine though, said it's a military based engine and that it'll pretty much run on anything that's thrown at it! Someone once told me old engine oil (well filtered) would run it!
Two of my mates have run their 4x4's on oil.....one has a Shogun, the other had a disco and now a Toyota.
I looked on youtube and saw the Top Gear article regarding used oil.
YouTube - Top Gear: Vegetable Oil for Diesel
I thought bugger it....in for a penny save quite a few pounds!
One of my mate's works for a recycling company, he delivered 120 litres of used cooking oil to my door a few weeks ago.
Filled my tank......this is what (and ALL) I did:
1) Bought a bucket, metal flour seive, Jay-cloths, 1 litre measuring jug, watering can with detachable sprinkler head, 2 litre bottle of white spirit.
2) placed jay cloth into seive, placed seive over bucket.
3) used measuring jug to haul approx 1 litre of oil from 60 litre drum.
4) poured used cooking oil into jay cloth.
5) after every 3 litres of oil filtered, we added 100ml of white spirit
6) just over half bucket of filtered oil, poured this mix into watering can
7) took watering can out to the disco, open fuel cap and pour merrily!
(The fuel tank already had 1/4 tank of diesel onboard)
Kept doing this for ages.
Put ignition key in, turn key, read fuel guage, just over 3/4 mark.
Started disco, took it for a run to pull mix through filter and fuel line. Clocked up about 1.5 miles and found myself sat at red traffic lights. Disco started to run like a sack of crap (tick-over revs up and down, nearly stalling). Lights turned to green, foot down (sticking to speed limit 30mph), car ran like a dream.
Got back home, parked up outside house, tickover crap!
Neighbour came out (ex diesel fitter), told him what I'd done, he laughed, stood at back of car looking at output from exhaust. He told me to give it some gas....pushed the pedal and blew out a massive cloud of white smoke which took it's time drifting down the street! Smelled good though!
He laughed and told me to get some more diesel on top of my mix.
Went to garage and filled the old gal right up to the neck, managed to squeeze in £32.50 straight.
Disco has run fine since. It sometimes seems to get a bit of phantom power when running at around 20mph in slow traffic, it seems to just pick up and go.
Anyway, that was 4 weeks ago, fuel gauge needle is now just below the 1/4 mark......so looks like I'm gonna have to get back into the garden and filter some more oil.......innit!
Ba ba ba ba baaaaaa......I'm lovin' it!