So I've been reading the threads about WVO. I could not find a definite answer. It seems like some people have good experiences with it and other people don't. My car currently has about 260,000 miles on it. I want the thing to run forever. I believe that the consensus is that the car will eventually fail because of WVO no matter what kit you use and how careful you are with filtering and switching over to diesel when the car is hot and shutting down. Is this true?

I want this car to last a long time. So scrap any idea of running WVO and run biodiesel when it's hot out and move on... Get a rabbit if I want to run WVO.

If you're going to reply with "WVO is as good as diesel" please have at least 100,000 miles under your belt.

digi

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1984 300td euro turbo

i was running wvo in my 83 300TD for a month to c how it works, it actually worked fine but it seems like it damaged the IP, now everytime i cold start it, it just wanna cut off so i have rev it few like 10 sec and then it will perfect.

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1999 W210 E300 Turbodiesel

Yes, it is true. Cars run on WVO will eventually fail. Sad, but very very true. It is not a miracle elixir. That same car will also eventually fail if run on diesel all its life.

So what are you really asking?

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Cheers!
Scott McPhee

1987 300D

What fuel was your ACTUAL engine and IP designed to work on.

That is your answer.

Sorry thought it was obvious... I guess the plain and simple question is...

Will running WVO kill the car prematurely compared to diesel?

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1984 300td euro turbo

Seriously?

Tastes great less filling. Which is it?
Chicken or the Egg?

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85 300D 3 pedal. Current project.
83 300TD (need rear wiper assembly dead or alive)
84 300SD Daily driver
85 300TD almost 400k miles and driven daily.
98 E300D *sold
86 300SDL *sold and made flawless 10 hour journey to new home.

120K miles on WVO no engine related problems.

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85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

Maybe it has something to do with how slime free the tank is; I just saw that tank algae thread that whunter bumped today and thought that that might be why some cars do fine with wvo and some die shortly after... Just a thought.

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[/SIGPIC]~cirrusman

1983 Mercedes Benz 300SD - Wife calls him "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"
[SIGPIC]




1983 Toyota Tercel (Tommy, The little Toyota that could)
1965 Ford F100 (Grandma Ford)
2005 Toyota Sienna (Elsa, Wife's ride)


Gone:
1988 Toyota Pickup
2004 Subaru Outback

1987 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham
1986 Volvo 740 GL Station Wagon - Piece of junk.
1981 Volvo 242 DL 2 Door - Hated to see it go. R.I.P.
1987 Pontiac Fiero GT

I don't think Algae grows in VO, only diesel. VO has other problems like polymerization.

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85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

Conceptionaly if you can do everything well enough that the flame front is enabled to consume all the vegatable oil injected into the engine. It technicaly should be okay.

Remember I am not a big fan of the stuff. If any does not get burnt is where the more serious internal engine troubles start over time.. Plus of course the more seriously contamination of the base oil.

Fuel quality requires reasonable vigilance as well. A user should establish a good system and religiously stick to it. The injection pump and injectors are not a garbage proccessing unit.

I suspect it costs a certain amount of money to build up a system that meets these requirements. I also suspect the higher the temperature of the vegatable oil at the point of injection the more likelyhood for more complete combustion.

I am starting to suspect that the more complete burn may also be enabled by higher base fuel pressure in the injection pump. The viscosity will always be thicker or higher remember. Semi logically this makes some sense to me. One poster on this particular thread made me consider it from his fairly recent experiences.

His power did not signifigantly increase but his milage really appeared to.. One way or another he was probably extracting more btu's out of his fuel than he did before.

This indicated to me a better more complete burn was occuring. There are some other possible considerations from the effect. Yet an improvement of the burn cannot be ruled out.

The last thought I have is a general one. It is best to be a fairly competent hobby mechanic at least before doing vegatable oil. Otherwise some problems that arise if they do could be more difficult to manage. Even if I am not crazy about the ideal of burning the stuff myself as I previusly mentioned.

It still would be wrong not to post what I think. It can become particularily hard to advise an owner burning vegatable oil that has no previous knowledge doing mechanics over the years.

We fortunatly do have some members that are quite conversant with working on cars burning it as well. I think they obtain better lifespans on the fuel. We went through a period of basically some people just dumping the stuff in the tank in almost any condition and driving. This was a bad thing in my opinion.It may still be going on to some extent.

If you plan on just filtering the stuff & dumping it in your tank, it will fail soon.

If you are lucky & get the right variety of oil, dewater it, preheat it properly, only use it on long runs with the engine warm, and keep your fingers crossed, there is a small chance that your motor may last maybe 1/2 as long as running diesel.

Eventually many of the hippies on the WVO forums tune in here once their motors are in trouble. Search on stuck rings for some more info on the damage.

If I could get onto a good reliable supply of clean waste atf, I may run that having trialed it successfully.

I use WVO in the wood heaters at home. You need to run straight wood & hot now and again to clean the chimney out.

You could make it into Bio diesel first & then use it.

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Grumpy Old Diesel Owners Club group

I no longer question authority, I annoy authority. More effect, less effort....

1967 230-6 auto parts car. rust bucket.
1980 300D now parts car 800k miles
1984 300D 500k miles
1987 250td 160k miles English import
2001 jeep turbo diesel 130k miles
1998 jeep tdi ~ followed me home. Needs a turbo.
1968 Ford F750 truck. 6-354 diesel conversion.
Other toys ~J.D.,Cat & GM ~ mainly earth moving

What you did was cold start on VO. That's not good for the rings.

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85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

Digi,

Definitive answer: "It Depends."

How well you manage your fuel supply, for example knowing when and why to reject WVO/SVO oil, the quality of the parts are and how well integrated the conversion is and how well you keep up with maintenance such as filter and engine oil changes all play a major role.

A well managed fuel supply, a competently converted fuel system with sufficient heat (160-180 is where my current system operates) and you'd be challenged after tearing down the motors to inspect the motors after a few tens of thousands of miles just which engine ran WVO and which ran #2. At 100K miles or more, the well managed system running mostly on WVO will actually tend to have less wear, no additional carbon deposits and less din from the injectors and injection pump (WVO's thickness is a good cushion).

A badly managed fuel system with a poorly converted engine and the results are the exact opposite. More than about 500 PPM of water in the oil, large suspended particles that aren't properly filtered out, oil that is never heated above 120 degrees F before reaching the Injection Pump, these things will result in eroded injector nozzles, coke deposits on piston rings, valves, in the pre-chambers and nozzle tips, poor compression (rings stuck in lands due to carbon buildup)/high blowby, scored piston bores and clogged particulate trap/catalysts, among others.

Add more heat, improve the filtering and maintain high standards for the oil you are willing to use in your system and things tend to work out.

Good luck,

-BH

One of the posts I read in an other thread said that since the WVO Fuel was free the money saved on Fuel costs offset the damage to the Car by several thousand Dollars. He would just get another Car if the repair cost was too high.

Part of the issue not spoken of is that all WVO is not equal. Each time you get some from a place it is going to have different things in it. This means that the Person processing it has to do so in a manner that would eliminate or change to good the bad things in it. Not everyone seems up to that.
One batch of WVO is going to be more viscous than another batch but the heat is not altered to compensate for that.


Next all of the Fuel Handling systems (on) are not equal either. From the little bit of reading I have done on some of the threads it seems that many of the systems do not really get Fuel hot enough.
Then there is the part of the Country you live in; the Weather.

And, there is also the Engine. If more care is needed to insure that the WVO Fuel burns well than Injectors, Compression, and timing all need to be in top shape. But, one of the motivations for WVO is economy. And, an some economy minded persons often do not fix things until there is a problem.

So the WVO user has a lot of variables to deal with.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Can't get that fuel in the US.
Tom