Running a 4x4 on Biodiesel - Veg Oil
 

Hi All

Has anyone had any experience of using veg oil in their 4x4s as opposed to Diesel?

Cheers

Julio

Hi Julio
What engine?
Pure Veg oil is OK if your vehicle has two things.
1 an in-line type injector pump. (Bosh)
2 pre combustion chambers (swell Chambers) in the head.

if it doesn't have either of theses then you will have to pre heat the veg oil to about 70Deg C to let it go through a rotary pump and also to stop cold spotting on the pistons which will cause them to crack.
you can achieve this with a small heat exchanger from the cooling system.
also you will have to run twin tanks as a lot of diesel's don't like starting on veg oil, and you have to switch back to diesel before switching the motor off.
lastly you can run veg oil 50-50 or 70% veg 30% petrol on most diesel's if you like with out any mods, but even this makes you smell like a mobile chip shop :-) and pure veg oil only has about 75% Calorific value of Dino Diesel so if your motors slow now it will be slower with veg.
If you what any further tech mail me and i will try and help, have done a bit of testing with veg oil, biofuel and 10% LPG so have some results to shear


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Rob
Bedford MJ Old, Slow & Orange

Not strictly true: the lump in my Toyota 4Runner is a Direct Injection, 4 Cylinder, 3 litre Turbo Diesel.

Now I've mixed pure veg oil (straight off the supermarket shelf) at a ratio of 1:2 in my engine with no pre-heating or apparent problems.

There's lot's my guys out there trying the veg oil thing (and ultimately bio-diesel) at this forum:

http://www.hiluxsurf.co.uk/forums/sh...ad.php?t=15893

A freind of mine makes Bio-diesel in his back yard from waste Fish and chip shop oil he gets free. Its a 3.0 diesel Hilux and he keeps trying to give me soap every time I visit!

Hi Rob

The vehicle is a Nissan Safari 4.2 Turbo diesel 1994 Jap Import, Looks like a Patrol with a high roof.

Any additional tanks would be a problem as I have a 147 ltr tank fitted already.

Not too bothered about the smell as will be in Turkey for a while and the Diesel is expensive down there whereas Veg oil would cost hardly anything.

Cheers

Julio

Hi Jeremy
all the Toyota hilux & 4runners run inline pumps and the pistons are a controlled expansion alloy, so they will run bio or veg +% Dino OK, plus Toyota designed their diesel engines very well and can cope with pretty horrible fuel, but even these will have shorter life on veg oil, and we know from painful experience that Common rail injection systems hate the stuff.
the main prob with veg oil is that the Hydrocarbon chains are a lot longer and in some engines this will polymerise under high presures and temps = turn to a sort of burnt plastic :-( blocking the injectors and will cause a symptom called trumpeting, a small cone of polymer forms on the tip of the injector ask any iveco dealer.

Julio
if its a TD42T its non direct injection but if I'm right you have a rotary pump? so if you intend to use Veg allot then the two tank and pre warm will be the best bet, you only need a small tank for diesel, a small 30-40 ltr one should be fine as even the king of veg oil engines = Mercedes likes the occasional bit of Diesel as if you run them too long on Veg they are a bugger to start after 5-600 ltr's of veg otherwise 50/50 or 30/70 Veg/Dino wil be the way to go.
Another couple of web sites
http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/forum/index.php
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html
Hope this helps.

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Rob
Bedford MJ Old, Slow & Orange
Your Best travelling companions are
an open mind and a smile :-)

[This message has been edited by Bert (edited 23 February 2006).]