I am an Elsbett Dealer and owner of a VW TDI Elsbett conversion.
To the OP:
Here is a link to the BERU glow plugs that Elsbett uses ( I believe )
http://www.beru.com/products/diesel-cold-start-technology/glow-plugs/high-tech-glow-plugs-ge-gn
The Elsbett requires the ones with post-glow the -GN suffix
They recently began selling the injector nozzles for older IDI M-B injectors only in their online store . Unf. the store is down today.
What would make the
I read the ncat report. It's too bad they didn't have better mechanical help.
The problems they had were due to not installing the Elsbett supplied glow plugs.
They are designed to stay on after start up for a couple minutes.
Doing this with std glow plugs will cause them to burn out, just as they experienced.
This lead to hard starts and engine damage.
I also was surprised not to read mention of rebuilding the injectors during conversion.
Did they skip that too?
I see they used safflower. Both safflower and high oleic safflower have slightly high viscosity and iodine relative to canola.
But I don't see that the oil was processed in any way. Processing or cold filtering is required to remove phosphorous ( gums ) from the virgin oil. If you don't, the excess phosphorous doesn't burn and forms deposits in the engine.
This has happened with many types of oils.
Elsbett recommends canola/rapeseed only. However I have also used soy and peanut oil successfully. In any case, the v.o. must meet the Weihenstephan standard.
http://vegburner.co.uk/oils.htm
The variable properties are the ones to be concerned with.
For those w/o a laboratory, that means food-grade virgin or waste oil filtered to 1 micron absolute. < 1000 ppm water too.
If using oil from a farm, the oil must be cold pressed and this is an art , not a science.
Never heard of any other VO'ers using safflower oil, so they were in uncharted territory.
Should have been more cautious. Monitored the crankcase oil, pulled injectors every 50 hours to check for deposits.
I have run 140K( 220K total ) miles on WVO+SVO in my Elsbett TDI. No problems with the engine , inj pump or kit ( other than my own wiring goofs ).
Single tank works well if you install it right and follow all the recommendations.
http://ctbiodzl.freeshell.org/votdi.html