WVO? inevitable damage to engine? - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Renntag · #1 11-04-2010, 10:48 PM

Seriously?

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

funola · #2 11-04-2010, 10:59 PM

120K miles on WVO no engine related problems.

barry123400 · #3 11-04-2010, 11:29 PM

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.

cirrusman · #4 11-04-2010, 11:01 PM

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.

funola · #5 11-04-2010, 11:06 PM

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

layback40 · #6 11-04-2010, 11:36 PM

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.

benzhacker · #7 11-05-2010, 01:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by digieditny

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

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

Diesel911 · #8 11-05-2010, 02:25 AM

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.

layback40 · #9 11-05-2010, 07:53 AM

75S,
There is too much made of this change to fuel. The difference between the old diesel & now is nothing compared with the difference between the old diesel & WVO. it is not a justification for running WVO.

75Sv1 · #10 11-05-2010, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by layback40

75S,
There is too much made of this change to fuel. The difference between the old diesel & now is nothing compared with the difference between the old diesel & WVO. it is not a justification for running WVO.

I didn't say the new fuel ULSD doesn't work. I will say our engines were not designed for them. Nor did I say, that nor imply that WVO was better, or without problems. Some studies show that a 2-5% biodiesel added to the ULSD helps our engines. There are some who would find descrepencies with those studies. I think if you search the net for Shur deisel, you might find a study on a mixture of WVO and gasoline. Supposivly the guy ran 100,000 on it and did a teardown of the engine.
Tom

Olivier · #11 11-05-2010, 08:43 AM

W124, that was a good explanation. Its true that it cost to do WVO, not only time spend, but you buy the filters to filter it and the filters in the car do not last too long, then do the blending, adding costly RUG,Dino or acetone. All this add up at the end.
20 pence is about right I reckon with a mix with Dino. WVO is also 10% less effecient, then you loose there too. But, there is always a but, it suit me fine as I did save a lot of money doing it and I like to tinker around, like you I do fix as much as I can, this is why I was able to keep on going with the WVO.
Apart from the fuel starvation I have now, all is OK ish, I had a lot of maintenance done on the car but this is due to rust and age and the previous owner who was a moron and run it until it died without ant care... Not many of the maintenance was WVO related at all.
Olivier

layback40 · #12 11-05-2010, 08:56 AM

Tom,
You know there is always a success story about WVO being touted about. Trouble is that no one can actually find the details. Its always a case of some one said some thing in a forum on the internet.
On the other hand you may like to read the following, these guys are in the biz of promoting its use.

http://www.ncat.org/special/oilseeds_innovations4.php

There are not too many properly conducted tests out there.

Nothing on google for "Shur deisel" or even "Shur diesel" all you get is sour diesel; hippie stuff about dope, kind of relates back to my original post.

rs899 · #13 11-05-2010, 09:13 AM

I thought about this, but the cost of rebuilding a Mercedes engine is too high relative to the benefits.

If one were to do this, a VW 1.6 IDI would make more sense. They are cheap to rebuild ( when your rings eventually stick) and IPs can be rebuilt by the DIYer. Still a very messy and miserable way to save a buck, IMO. But who knows, it may be in the cards when oil goes sky-high again.

spark3542 · #14 11-05-2010, 09:50 AM

Firsthand knowledge only:

I make biodiesel...50 gal each week religiously. Power my home furnace and 3 Mercedes with it. Building up for winter. My furnace alone will take 12gal per day on cold days.

83 MB purchased 2006. I put 40k miles on it, 10k on homemade BD, 30k on WVO/RUG blend...yes, that's 30k miles of COLD VO hitting the injectors, even on 5-degree-F Massachusetts winter days. Still have it, still runs great. No fuel-related issues.

97 Black E300. Purchased 2007. Put 72k miles on it. About 60k were WVO/RUG blend, the other 12k homemade BD. It never got pump diesel while I owned it. Yes, that 60k miles of COLD VO hitting the injectors, even on 5-degree-F days. Running great when I sold it in 2010 due to excessive rust.

97 Gold E300. Purchased 2008. Put 9k miles on it, all homemade BD. Wife's car. Straight BD gelled on cold winter mornings last year. Still have it. Runs great.

2005 E320CDI. Purchased 7/2010. 11k miles on homemade BD. I'm apprehensive about putting creative blends in the common rail system, so I won't. I will say, however, that my experience is that WVO/RUG stays liquid at much lower temps than BD, so I'll have to introduce additives this winter to keep the BD from gelling. 200hp. Awesome.

My real costs to make BD are about $0.80 per finished gallon for raw materials, and about 1.5 hours of my time each week, spread over 24 hours. My processor takes up about 50 sq ft total, in my 3 car garage that has 3 cars parked in it.

WVO/RUG costs are about $0.30 per finished gallon, mostly in RUG and filter costs.

funola · #15 11-05-2010, 10:58 AM

I actually agree with most points of the naysayers. I do not go around promoting the use of wvo, there's lot's that can go wrong and I do not want to be responsible. It is not for everyone. For me it started as an experiment 6 - 7 years ago and I have been very successful at it. I drive 20-25K a year and it does save me quite a bit. A much bigger savings is home heating 100% wvo. I have not bought any home heating oil for 4 years now. The first year was tough, many cold nights but I didn't give up and continued to refine my design and it is very easy now. The only maintenance is clean the nozzle every 100 to 150 hours which takes about 15 minutes. The prime oil on top of the cubies gets filtered and go in the car, the rest gets coarsely filtered and heats the house.