I agree that these engines were designed for diesel. As someone said earlier, its a calculated risk. I've never seen my cars pre chambers or cylinders but I have seen the carbon that comes out of the glow plug holes after years of veggie oil! My gut feeling is my 616 just shouldn't see veggie oil until it is at full op temp in order to burn as cleanly as possible.

The thing that makes WVO worth it to me is saving money on fuel. I pick up vegetarian frying oil from two restaurants for free and filter that oil to 5 microns in my shed. I use this to get to work which is 20 miles each way. I also go on tons of regional and long distance trips on veggie oil. My guess is I've had about 60,000 miles worth of wvo run through my car.

In terms of investment and cost, this all came from a 8th grade research project I did and I said the first car I get will run on grease! I was naive but got into it and into filtering oil pretty well by the time I got the car at 16. I'm almost 28 now so I can't go back and say "was it worth it?" But I have the simple chores it takes to keep it going as part of my life. For better or worse lol.

My 83 240d auto is my first car and just keeps going. I treat it like a farm truck and in my teenage years, I was bad about maintenance. It's had some accidents and and the paint is kind of patchwork. It's also arguably the least desirable model being pretty slow (its fine for me except in the rocky mountains). Everything that has gone wrong I've learned lessons on how to prevent wvo related problems in the future (Injector clogging, glow plug failure, leaks etc..).

In the process of owning this car for so long, I've gotten good at wrenching and do 90% of work myself. Next week however (because i'm lazy and don't have a compressor) i'm going to pay a garage install some brand new heavier 300d turbo rear springs so I can hall more veggie oil and my canoe for a planned trip to the everglades!

This picture is from a sea kayaking/wvo trip to maine a 3 years ago. I've done a lot of welding since then! P.S. This should be obvious but don't ever tie a boat on your car like I did here. I ruined part of my door seals from this!

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