I am trying to calculate the cost difference of a kit vs. parts. Is there any advantage to an aluminum tank instead of a plastic tanks? The marine fuel tanks seem to be much less $$ than auto fuel cells/ tanks.
Any other advice for a Denver, co climate?

Sorry ... what's WVO?

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Kent Christensen
Albuquerque
'07 GL320CDI, '10 CL550. '01 Porsche Boxster
Two BMW motorcycles

Aluminum tanks will last forever, but the most important difference, especially in a climate like Denver's, is that you're going to want to heat your WVO in the tank because it'll get really sluggish and your fuel pump will likely suffer if you don't. And putting a heating element in a plastic fuel tank is dicey at best. If you can figure out a way to heat the oil with hot engine coolant in your plastic tank, then maybe it's not such a big deal, but I haven't seena a convincing way of doing that yet.

Waste Vegetable Oil ?????????
Either that or some kind of secret code/new language.
I'm just guessing.

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2007 C 230 Sport.

well, the 124s have a thingamajig that circulates hot water through the windshield washer bottle. couldn't that be modified to heat up the oil?

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'O=00=O'
bmw 2002.
long live the legend

this forum is loaded with people that will tell you that
circulating coolant through the tank is the way to go...
but the truth is that it takes forever for a diesel to warm up and
especially on a cold day... i have started my diesel, and driven completely
home and not felt one bit of warm air through the heater..

So if it was fueled with svo then i would have never gotten it started...

So you tank must be metal...
1. place a 12v bartery warmer under the tank...
or even a block warmer... install a plug in coolant warmer..
install an electric dipstick... and keep your car in a heated garage..
you may even be able to rig some type of aquiram warmer in the
tank..
2. Also circulate coolant from the engine through the tank and back to the
radiator....
3. change your thermostate.

4. you may want to buy an electric water pipe warmer and wrap it around your svo tank and plug it in at night.....

Metal is better but greasel sells polypxxx (plastic) tanks as part of their kit.
My setup is heated plastic.
The T off the cooling system doesn't affect my interior heating much as one pass of the vo tank doesn't make the coolant lose all the heat.

If metal, you need to think about the reactions of different metals w/ each other and the coolant...I would weld metal tubing to zig zag on the bottom of the tank and make the coolant connection outside the tank, eliminating any chance of a leak unless the tubing itself were to rumpture.

There are electric heaters for VO tanks but I have no experience w/ them.

If you are real inventive...I always wondered about an exhaust heat exchanger ala aircooled VWs.

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82 300D....went to MB heaven
90 350 SDL....excercising con rods

Since no one else is answering the question: SVO stands for straight vegetable oil that has never been used. WVO stands for vegetable oil that has been reclaimed from a dumpster from behind a restaurant. It gets settled, dewatered, filtered ,and dumped in the tank of a diesel. Mr diesel originally intended for his engines to run on peanut oil.

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Auto Zentral Ltd.

Sorry for confusing those who aren't familiar with Waste Vegetable oil.
For those who are thanks for the reply. I was wondereing if I went with a plastic tank how it would be to run the coolant line a few times around the tank and then wrap the sides with insulation of some type. I have also been looking at the "lava line" type of hose set up that has 2 of the 1/2" heater hoses and the fule line bundled together inside of hosehold pipe insulation. Any one have experience or words of advice?

I used a plastic tank from an early 90s Dakota pickup installed an old oil cooler from a minivan (as the heat exchanger) through the top of the tank and plumbed the engine coolant to it from a heater hose in the the engine bay via 3/8" copper tubing, it fits perfectly in the front of my 84 300SD trunk, has a large enough access opening on the top (6") which easilly unscrews to work in easily with no cutting or modifying, other than taking the guts out and drilling holes in the cap for the copper tubing and was really cheap, then I sandwiched and zip tied the WVO send & return lines from the tank between the copper tubing and covered them with 1.5" plastic loom, this keeps the fuel warm all the way to the motor bay where I heated the aux filter by coiling the same copper tubing around it thus completing the heating circuit.
My warmup in the morning takes about 3-4 miles then I flip the switch and it runs fine on the WVO.
My 6 port fuel selector valve is out of an early 90s Ford diesel full size pickup with dual tanks and works great! Complete with the dash switch that almost perfectly matches the mercedes type rocker switch.
My entire system costs approximately $50
This is my second conversion, my first was a 1975 240D and is still running good.
I hope this helps.

Do you have any pictures of the tank in the trunk? I am running 2 12 gallon tanks and it takes up too much space and covers the spare tire opening.

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82 300D....went to MB heaven
90 350 SDL....excercising con rods

I havent taken any pix yet but I plan on taking some soon to put together a complete explanation along with photos to illustrate the process, Email me at markrebeaud@aol.com and remind me in a few days and I should have something for u.

The best enginered system out there is FryBrid (www.frybrid.com) (IMHO) they have Hose in Hose heated lines, aluminum heated tank, heated filter, final heat exchanger and to top it off a computer to control everything.

If you are not generating enough heat for your heater, (even if you are running Diesel) then you may need to run a hotter thermostat (the temp setting of the thermostat is the temp that it is fully open, not the temp that it starts to open) if it is opening too soon it will take forever to heat up. You can also block off part of your radiator in the winter. Some people take off the engine driven fan and install an electric thermostatically controlled one. If your engine and cooling system are not fighting each on a cold day you should be able to get up to temp within a few minutes. Remember, your cooling system is there to take away excessive heat not all heat.

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Don Martin
Bakersfield, CA
87 300SDL

Very creative setup utilizing used parts. I purchased a 76 240d 2 months and 1500 miles ago that I on the process of converting. The car is in great shape and was well maintained. The car had been running 99% biodiesel when I got it. The gas tank has been cleaned and the fuel hoses have been replaced.

Is there any advice you could give based on your experience with your 75? Mistakes originally made? Things you would have done differently?Tank used for 240d?

My 240D WVO setup, short & sweet

After I researched WVO systems I wanted to see if I could build one from used parts and it worked out pretty well, this could work for anyone with a little imagination.
You’ve got to remember 2 things, filtering, filtering, filtering and heat, heat, heat.
Mercedes & VW’s are be perfect for this type of project, as well as the Dodge pickups and a few others including a few big rigs I‘ve hears about.
There are kits available for from about $400-700 from online companies like greasecar.com, greasel.com or u can build your own like I did for really cheap and very effective.

Short & sweet, here’s how mine works;
I started with a used 15 gallon rectangular steel boat fuel tank, cut a 10"x10" hole in the top and plumbed a used trans cooler inside through the freshly drilled 4 holes in my new 11"x11"x3/32" top for the tank which I sealed and replaced on the tank with self tapping screws and RTV this trans cooler acts as a heat exchanger as the engine coolant flows through it. I ran (4) 3/8" copper tubing lines to the engine bay from the tank 2 of these are send & return coolant lines which connect to the trans cooler in the tank and the other 2 are WVO send & return lines.
I sandwiched the WVO lines between the coolant lines, this keeps everything warm to the motor, once in the motor bay connect one of your coolant lines to one end of the heater hose going to your firewall via a reducer, the other one goes straight to your after market "canister filter" and coils around your filter canister keeping your WVO hot inside the filter then back to the other side of the heater hose, also using a reducer, thus completing the heating circuit, a great and cheap canister filter can be found at TSC (tractor supply co) in the hydraulics dept for about $20 and it comes with a 10 micron replaceable filter.
Your send & return lines to the WVO tank should now also be in the motor bay, right with the heater lines right up to the filter, a 6 port fuel solenoid will be located on the input side of your newly acquired filter, this 6 port solenoid will have 2 inputs and 1 exit for fuel as well as a single input and 2 exits for the return lines to your respective fuel tanks, it sounds complicated but once you dive in it becomes clear.
Now disconnect the diesel line from the injector pump input on the motor and connect it to one of your solenoid (fuel) inputs and your WVO to the other, the output from the solenoid goes to the input of the new fuel filter and the output from the filter to the input of the injector pump.
Your diesel return line is located on the top of your original engine fuel filter, disconnect it an reconnect to the smaller port on the diesel side of the solenoid, make a return line from the top of the original filter back to the small port where the solenoid hooks into the new filter, this is the return line input previously mentioned, there should only be one (small) port left on the solenoid and that’s where the return line to the WVO tank connects.
Hook up the electric switch for your solenoid, put some good pre-filtered WVO in the tank, purge all the lines and your on your way.
I drive about 5 mi to get my engine and thusly the WVO good and warm then flip the switch to WVO, when I get within about 5 mi of work I flip the switch back, this purges the system by the time I pull into the lot.
I used a fuel solenoid from a mid 90s ford diesel pickup with dual tanks and the switch from the dashboard, it works great and only cost $15.

Now for the filtering system.

First I acquired an old 10 gallon 110v water heater, cut a 12"x12" hole in the top, placed a screen in the bottom for quick (lift out) cleaning, plugged the top feed line, hooked a valve and a 2 canister whole house water filter to the bottom line.
In the first canister, a 30 micron filter and a 10 micron filter in the second, after I pour the WVO in the top of the water heater, I turn it on, let it settle for an hour or two then open the valve and let it gravity feed to my "clean" container or if I get impatient I've got a drill operated pump I use and that only takes about 1 or 2 minutes per gallon to pump.
When I'm all done I remove both filters and let them drain until the next time otherwise they tend to gel up.

How’s that for information overload?

As for regrets BE SURE YOUR SYSTEM IS FULLY PURGED AT THE END OF THE DAY BEFORE SUTDOWN OR YOU'LL HAVE TO GET OUT THE HEAT LAMPS TO HEAT UP YOUR INJECTORS AND PUMP TO GET IT STARTED THE NEXT TIME!!
What a pain that was.