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WVO? inevitable damage to engine?
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 |
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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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? |
What fuel was your ACTUAL engine and IP designed to work on.
That is your answer. |
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Will running WVO kill the car prematurely compared to diesel? |
Seriously?
Tastes great less filling. Which is it? Chicken or the Egg? |
120K miles on WVO no engine related problems.
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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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I don't think Algae grows in VO, only diesel. VO has other problems like polymerization.
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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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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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Tom |
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Bull****. to anyone considering WVO, three points. 1/ The Bosch in-line injection pump used in the merc is one of the highest quality, most over engineered diesel injection pumps available in a motor car. There are better pumps out there, but not in motor cars. Here in Europe we have diesel cars coming out of our ass, literally everyone makes them, if WVO was so good, all of these old diesels would be running it, but no, every WVO'er in Europe wants to get their hands on a merc diesel, because the IP is so good... compared to all other cars, in which the IPs die a quick death. That fact alone tells you WVO is crap and in fact you are trading on the remaining life in an over engineered IP. 2/ Run the numbers and do the math. Trying to do a WVO conversion PROPERLY costs from £1,000 UK Pounds on up. Trying to make WVO also costs money, I know people living on state benefits who claim their time as being free, and it still costs them about 15 pence per litre to make the WVO suitable for the engine. Frankly I think this is unrealistically low and fantasy land stuff, I figure it is nearer 50 pence per litre even just counting my time at minimum wage, street sweeper stuff. But what the hell, we'll go with the fantasy 15p/litre. Here in the UK pump diesel is UK£ 1.15 a litre. If you're in the states and your fuel is FAR cheaper, the numbers come out FAR worse. I get about 7.5 to 8.5 miles per litre, depending on the type of driving I do. Call it 8. The UK£1,000 conversion is a capital cost, 1000 / 1.15 = 870 litres of pump diesel, which = 6,960 miles of driving. But WVO ain't free, those 870 litres @ 15 p litre WVO costs another £130, in fact as mpg on WVO is lower, it costs nearer £150. So basically, you have to do 10,000 miles, 100% trouble free, to break even. Then you get into the maintenance issues associated costs, you start getting through glowplugs, you get IP issues, you eat filters for a passtime, you have to up your regimen of lube oil and filter changes, and sooner or later even on the bulletproof mercedes heads start being removed, and of course all this costs money too (quite apart from the simple loss of having a 100% reliable, turn the key and go anywhere diesel car) and even at insane UK fuel prices, all these extra repairs and maintenance start to add up, and they all buy a LOT of pump diesel. It isn't hard to spend £1,000 under the bonnet of a merc diesel, just a top end gasket set and some minor shop remedial work, even if you do your own spannering. But that's another 870 litres of insanely expensive UK pump diesel you could have bought, and another 10,000 miles of trouble free motoring you could have had with it, and your car is off the road again. And we aren't even starting to look at the capital cost of the car, which you just destroyed the instant you put WVO in it (nobody else will touch the car afterwards) and of course the ongoing depreciation of the once massively over engineered IP equipment. Basically you have to do 30,000 miles to break even, and that's at UK pump prices, and that's assuming you don't mind eating the cost of the car and killing it, which you should be taken out and shot for IMHO. This is before you factor in your own time work, this all assumed you work for 0 cents an hour..... I know one guy who uses 15% of his product to drive around getting more WVO, and another 10% of his product in an old stationary engine to run a genny to power his WVO setup, so in fact that is 25% of his product gone before any goes in the tank, which makes the sums even worse. 3/ The very people who consider WVO are in fact the least competent to do it successfully, they are skimpers, corner cutters, people who will work 6 hours to save 5 bucks... someone else made a comment that you have to be a half decent mechanic to make WVO work properly, I'll turn that on it's head, yeah, you have to be half decent, because if you were a damn good mechanic you wouldn't go near the stuff. And please, spare me the crap about otto diesel and peanut oil, these engines were specified to run on #2 diesel, if you want to see an engine specified to run on bunker oil, which is in fact the dino-hydrocarbon closest to WVO/VO/SVO, then go to a ship bowels, or go to an old stationary engine place. I am a time served engineer, I could design and build my own WVO kit, I live in a country where diesel is JUST SHY OF US$2.00 per litre, I have an old W124 that I paid about a thousand bucks for, I am not rich (just going through the divorce / child courts) and I am ****ing mean, I fix everything instead of throwing it away, I make stuff rather than buy it, but even I will not even dream of running WVO in a vehicle. If I had the capital to make a biodiesel plant, I'd never get my money back, I'd have to run a fleet of diesel vehicles to even get close. IF I ran a light truck, which a direct injection 7 or 8 litre straight six, something like an old MAN or Petter etc, yes, then I would consider WVO, because; a/ the engine never exceeds 2,500 RPM which is within WVO flame front speeds b/ the engine is direct injection. c/ the engine is minimum 1 lire per cylinder d/ the engine drinks enough juice anyway that it is worth it. The MB diesel FAILS on every single aspect of a WVO/VO/WVO conversion except for one very small item, the Injection Pump is extremely high quality. The rest of the engine is TOTALLY UNSUITABLE. |
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. |
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Tom |
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I don't run WVO myself. I was looking at it when diesel was over $4/gal. I also though about making biodiesel. Something scared me about the chemicals used. I also looked in the CNG conversion for another vehicle. Ran the math and decided it wasn't worth it. I did buy this car to convert to WVO. Gas was $4/gal or such. Height of the Iraqi war. I was getting about 21-25 mpg out of my gas car. I am getting 28 mpg with the 240D. I drive about 15 miles one way to work. That really isn't far enough to go the WVO route. Yes, you also have to figure out what your time is worth. I do mow my own lawn. Would it be worth paying someone else to do that? I haven't done the math, really. Tom |
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 |
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. |
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. |
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I agree on most points. I believe that a WVO conversion can be done well, and that many WVO conversions are not. Example being poster Oliver above, who is currently having un-resolved problems with his ( http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/diesel-discussion/287679-run-some-atf-clean-ip-car-sluggish-then-not-reving-under-load-long-story.html ), yet to find out what the problem is or how it occurred. His conversion is a fairly simple one, not to say that is wrong, but that it cuts initial costs and the complexity of making fuel at a likely down the road penalty, and initially he was basically pouring the stuff into a car without any "conversion" on the car. Either, both, or neither could have led to his current symptoms on another thread. I have a couple of neighbors "successfully" running WVO converted 617/603/606 cars and one Tdi. Smell cool, get the stickers for the back windows, a great hobby. However, it is a hobby, the time and money spent collecting and distilling the fuels as well as the mess and hazardous chemicals, space in the garage, extra tank in the vehicle (on some conversions), I'm not sure that you could ever justify it from a $$ standpoint even with $3/gallon diesel. I don't run WVO for this reason, plus the un-known eventual maintenance (search stuck rings etc.), and the last point being I won't touch a WVO burning car unless it is so underpriced that I can't go wrong. There are several every month on CL and ebay, mostly don't sell for much and often have problems as the reason for the sale. I have nothing against running it, if you can I'm happy for you as you're doing the world a favor, albeit a small one, for not buying "blood oil". I'm just not that motivated, have enough things in my life costing time and money. If you want to run it and know the time/money involved, do lots of research to be sure you're doing the best conversion and fuel-production possible. |
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. |
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.
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Its not for everyone, it takes a specific type of person to do it successfully, well, and save money. You CAN save a lot of money depending on your driving requirements, choice of vehicle platform, and how you take care of your car. Lots of people are unsuited to even change a tire by themselves, this is not the type of person who should be running VO, but what was said earlier is correct, there are lot of short sighted cheap minded people who skimp on maintenance and also try to run VO for the same reasons, resulting in catastrophic problems that ultimately get posted on forums like this. There is a LOT of truth to the the bad things that can happen. I have said this many times, but I will repeat it here again, the running of VO is too easy. No matter the car, most decently designed engines will actually burn VO with no modification for a while. That means that everyone who can get their hands on a cheap old diesel not in decent condition mechanically, 'proves' to themselves that its possible since it actually works initially. For me, the question was, how do I make it work permanently and well with no long lasting issues, so yes, its a very interesting hobby for me, and I see no reason why I should not experiment with alternative fuels. On my previously owned 83 300D with a triple tank on board filtering system I put in, I was constantly pulling injectors, doing compression tests, pulling glow plugs and examining for carbon deposits. I even stuck one of those little cameras down in the injector seat near the heat shield to peek in the prechamber from real close. After 40,000 miles of VO, all those components and tests were no different than any other diesel only vehicles of similar mileage. I filter my oil well, NEVER cold start, or even warm start, and use the VO mainly for the highway and distance driving. One thing that its important to remember is that there are really not that many cold hard facts with VO. Reading the above posts, its important to remember that some types of plant oil are less powerful than diesel, some the same, and some more. Oil choice, local quality, and filtration are all huge factors on what you will see for power, filter life, ect. You can't say a filter lasts such and such miles. With VO, a filter lasts until its clogged, there is no mileage. Thats why well conceived systems have provisions for direct feedback to fuel line restriciton, and temp information, ect. I have seen filters go for 500 miles, and over 20,000 miles based on oil quality. My car was rusting out, and I sold it to a guy who double prefilters his oil. I was seeing an average of 5 thousand miles per filter, HE has not changed the filter since I sold the car to him 1.5 years ago. He has put more than 25,000 miles on one VO filter so far, and his restriction gauge has not moved yet. You have tons of factors to consider with VO, "facts" are few and far between, as there is no fuel standardization, and no system standardization, at least in the US. You should decide whether you consider yourself the type of person who can make it work well, then look further into what people have done, and whats commercially available. Above all, keep your own coucil and keep an open mind. For me, im not going to see my car actually run off a bottle of canola oil and NOT look further into it. It proved to me that the concept is at least almost completely possible on a stock engine. I was absolutely obsessed with eliminating the almost from that sentence. Specific car forums like this have a lot of skewed data looking at total VO posts simply because they are primarily a information and repair network, most VO posts are people having problems, which is why they posted in the first place. People NOT having problems running VO don't really use their time talking about it on a forum, especially when there is a lot of outrage and anger by enthusiast of the car's themselves from the history of other posts. Think about it this way, In a tire shop, every car that comes in has a tire problem or tire related maintenance. This does not mean that ALL cars are running around with tire problems, it means that the problem is the reason the car is there. People have an issue, they go to where a congregation of experts exists and try to find answers. I haven't converted any of my current cars yet, because right now, they are not running completely tip top. I have several thousand to spend in maintenance and repair until the car is in good enough shape to be converted to an alternative fuel. Lots of people buy a car, slam a system on it or just dump oil in the tank, and drive. I don't like that any more than the naysayers, but its a fact of use for this technology. |
The more reading I do, the more I come to a couple conclusions.
1 You should be fairly tech savvy to even attempt to use waste oil as fuel 2 If you are savvy enough to build a good WVO conversion, you're savvy enough to build and operate a small biodiesel converter. I feel like the filtering, settling effort necessary to ensure the safety of WVO negates any convenience advantage. You still have to "process" it, its just a simpler process. OTOH biodiesel, if properly manufactured and tested should work as well as dino diesel. For the record, this is based only on what I've read. I've got no personal experience either way, but I've been doing a lot of reading because I have WVO readily available to me. I wouldn't mind putting it to use - but not to the detriment of a car that I really like. |
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For example, in the final version of a system on my 83, I had two VO fuel tanks, a 20 gallon and a 10 gallon, with a timed filtration pump between them. I would just pump oil directly out of a bin into the dirty tank, let it heat up in the dirty tank, hit the filter button, pre filter it down to 10 micron while driving into the 10 gallon tank, then the 10 gallon tank had a 2 micron filter between it and the engine. I also had a 'washing' capability of the fuel. Since the dirty tank was so much larger than the running tank, it had a overflow system where fuel would dump back into the dirty tank. that way If I had especially dirty source oil, I could run it through the 10 micron filter multiple times through the overflow. Either way, the VO was filtered at least twice before even getting up to the engine compartment, and it was all controlled by switches and timers on the dash. It was a very convenient setup, which allowed me to completely ignore out of the vehicle pre-filtration. |
I read a study where they evaluated using SVO in tractors. If I recall, they tore down the engines and evaluated them after the tests. They found that for short periods of time (a few tank fulls, IIRC), no permanent damage was done by burning SVO, but that if run for longer it tended to foul up the engine and cause performance decline.
Lots of caveats to the comparison between what they did and running WVO in a 20 year old diesel mercedes, but, since WVO isn't better for the engine, you shouldn't expect even similar results. If I recall, they found that deposits accumulated until performance declined. They didn't check to see if running normal diesel for a while cleaned out the accumulation. They were trying to determine if farmers could safely run SVO, and for how long, before it started to cost them in extra maintence and they got their answer -- briefly = no problem, long term = problem. |
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Either way, I don't have a consistent long commute, so anything involving heat exchangers is really not a winner for me. I suppose that is the core of it - different things work for different people. I'm not nuts about using the toxic chemicals myself, but I feel like its the best way to minimize risk to the engine. One thing I'm sure of - If you're the type of person who can't change their own oil, you should probably stay clear. |
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http://poelwiki.de/index.php?title=Schur-Mischung I've also read that some types of injectors, help with the atomization of WVO. I think Monark might make that claim on their nozzles. Tom |
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I read those too. Heat is the key, these were 'dump VO in the fuel tank and see what happens" studies. The huge factor is that they completely demonstrated that you could not run cold VO in a diesel engine long term without modification. The studies did not utilize or address the concept of heated aux VO dedicated fuel systems after the engine was up to temp. Of course, like everything with VO, the merits of single tank vs double tank are a continued source of debate. :D I personally believe a single tank conversion to be wholly less capable and more problematic. |
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yup. Ideally you want an engine that runs at less than 2,500 RPM, because you start running up against the physical limit of the flame front speed in the combustion chamber with WVO/VO/SVO, this is like det cord, the speed the flame front burns at has little to do with other properties it has, and nothing to do with the ignition method, #2 diesel burns faster so will tolerate higher RPM, you want to go higher than that you work your way up to gasoline, etc etc. Ideally you want a minimum cylinder volume of 1 litre, the average saloon car, or MB, 500cc is just too small, plot a graph of square (bore = stroke) engines of different cylinder capacity, it is not linear, a 2 x 2 x 2 box has a volume of 8, and an area of 24, so area / volume = 3 a 4 x 4 x 4 box has a volume of 64, and an area of 96, area / volume = 1.5 With the bigger cylinder more of your fuel air mixture is in contact with more F/A mixture, and less cylinder wall, which absorbs free electrons and slows down the flame front and causes incomplete combustion in the eddy layers there. Ideally you want a direct injection, ideally centre of the bore right down onto the piston crown, ideally you want a flat top piston too, not a swirl chamber one, too prone to producing chips of carbon. Ideally you want a decent in-line pump, THE ONE THING THE MB HAS, but most 70's and 80's light trucks and buses had in-line pumps too. ======================= Even so, WVO still kills Bosch pumps, I've seen many, many, many Bosch pumps taken of mercs that had over 500k miles, and the pumps were all basically as good as new, these pumps, when fed with clean lube oil and clean filtered #2 diesel, will go a million miles no problem. ===================== As others have said, burning WVO in a home heating furnace is win-win-win, there is no downside, it is all profit. You can also burn WVO in an old stationary engine powering a gen head to give yourself almost free electric, something like the Lister CS series with separate Bryce injection pump, it is indirect injection (and variable compression) but at a single 1,400 cc cylinder and 650 or 800 rpm max, they will burn anything, so again, it is win-win-win. I know of people burning WVO very well and very successfully in boats, (essentially stationary engines) because they get tax breaks and "green" subsidies that make it worthwhile. I know one guy who went the whole hog and built a pukka WVO > Bio-diesel plant, small commercial scale, that produced fuel good enough for vehicles and the makers and the state, he gave it up because it was costing so much per litre of product that he couldn't compete, given the public view of B100 as some sort of inferior product that should be 50% of dino diesel prices tops. There are so many good things to do with WVO/VO/SVO, but unfortunately running it in relatively small, relatively light weight, relatively high revving automobile engines just ain't one of em. That's physics, not big oil, not the state, not anything else... just physics. |
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Some company called Elsbert or Elsbit sells Nozzles they caim to work better woth SVO, WVO but I have never even see a pic of them let alone read any sort of test of them. The Monarks have a cut called a Facet on the end of the Nozzle Pintel. The same is used on the later Bosch Nozzles for Mercedes. This is what makes me doubt that the Mercedes Source claim that the were designed for WVO use is bogus. |
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This post is the first ive heard anywhere about a 2500 rpm limit by anyone, despite my own personal experience of years of running VO at a higher rpm than that. |
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When I say 2500 RPM limit, it isn't a hard limit, and there are a lot of variables, with a little trig you can work out max piston speeds at a given rpm for various strokes, but the variation isn't as big as many people think, and the reason is piston speed is related to flame path speed. When you exceed the "limit" all that happens is you start entering the realm of diminishing returns, and increasing levels of undesireables. Undesireables are what kills an engine, they are what cause carbon loading in the lube oil, microdieseling (cavitation in microscopic bubbles) and spark erosion (again, a micro scale phenomenon) all of which cause major chemical changes in the engine fluids and there fore their properties. Back in the day, a diesel engine that did 2,500 RPM was called a high speed diesel, 1000/1200 RPM medium speed, and 500 RPM low speed, again, it always comes back to maximum flame front speed. The faster you rev, the more issues you create at the boundary layers between the metal engine components and the gases in the combustion chamber, just like a river, measured flow speed depends on depth and distance from the bank... What it boils down to is the VO, and it's closest dino relative #4 or #5 oil, works best in a bigger, heavier, slower revving diesel, like a truck diesel. This is also why it is almost impossible to make an efficient (#2 diesel) diesel engine with a cylinder smaller than 350/400 cc. Think about it, why doesn't anyone make small (chainsaw sized) diesel engines? The injection and atomisation all scales down extremely well, modern materials can handle the stresses easily enough, and the diesel torque would be ideal, there isn't anything else except the facts that area/volume sucks, and useful power rpm is way above flame speed. It's like saying that BHP is just a way of measuring the engine's maximum fuel consumption rate, it sounds wrong and counter intuitive (as does you buy the horsepower, you drive the torque) but if you actually sit down and do the math... suddenly it all works. Why can't a 600cc 100 BHP jap motorcycle engine pull a wagon the same as a 5 litre displacement 100 BHP diesel? Flame speed is the most significant property of a fuel in an internal combustion engine. All you "hand loader" americans should "get" this intuitively. |
I would love to have my car RUN FOREVER, but I understand it has mechanical parts that are designed to wear out. It doesn’t matter what fuel you put in it, it’s just a matter of time. I personally run biodiesel and WVO with a grease car kit, and I know even if I ran nothing but diesel, it would still need a new IP. And these cars are great to convert over to wvo. But a lot of people are going to have problems if they don’t follow the rules. You’re going to need to run wvo with a kit that allows the wvo to get to 160-180 degrees and purges back the unburnt fuel back to the wvo tank when you turn off the car/truck. Your also going to need to keep the wvo and biodiesel/ diesel in two different tanks. You don’t want to blend. It’s okay to burn a little diesel in the wvo tank. But you don’t want to blend both fuels in the diesel tank. Running cold grease isn’t ever a good idea.
Secondly it’s import to understand that you are in charge of the quality control when it comes to WVO fuel. You have to make sure that your wvo is at least filtered to 5 micro and ALL of the water has been removed. These are where people get into a lot of problems. You have to dewater all wvo before it goes into your car’s wvo tank. And the wvo has to be tested with a fry pan test or other water test to make sure it’s water free. Water will destroy any IP. It’s also a good idea to change out your motor oil more often and do an oil analyses on the motor oil and wvo you are running. I’ve seen a lot of people try to go by looking at it, or smelling it, or using a magic whatever. But unless you have some solid data to go after it’s not good to guess. I’ve been burning wvo for 5 years now, and the largest problems I come across is owning a wvo powered car is working on older cars with 20 year old suspension, trannies, and electrical wiring. I really haven’t had any problems with wvo. If you would like to find out more about running your car or truck of wvo visit a site like www.greasecar.com. Good luck and be safe. |
My $0.02
First and foremost, this is the wrong forum to ask questions on WVO. There are a lot of nay-say-er around here. There are a lot of long posts for and against WVO but I will try to tell my own experience.
1) People get jealous when I tell them I use WVO and drive for free plus my sweat labor. I then ask them if they change their oil or brake pads themselves. When they say no then I tell them to stick to gas or diesel. If they do not heed your warnings then they are the half-a** mechanics who stand a high risk to ruin their car. But it is their cars and money after all. 2) Most people try to convert old MBZ diesel, at least 15+ year old. So any problems they encounter may be inherent to the car already, that is, pre-existing conditions. Not many people in their right mind would try WVO on a new $50K CDI. 3) People complains that WVO will shorten your engine life. I have yet to be convinced that cars running on diesel will last a long life or forever. 4) There are a lot of factors that determine engine/IP life. Fuel used is one of the factors but not all. I have used WVO successfully and have over 45K on a 300SDL, 30K on a 300D and 10K on a 190D. I have had everything, anything thrown at them, including atf, WMO, brake fluid and PS fuild and they are still running strong. 5) I have installed water diesel separator and after-glow circuit in the cars. I believe there is no ill-effect on the engine if the conversion is done right. 6) I met fellow forum members in SoCal that use WVO/RUG mix successfully without ANY modification to the cars. 7) Now get back to the OP questions. The short answer is possible. The long answer is it depends on a lot of factors. This forum is skewed because most of the posts are problems related so any statistic gleaned from the posts on WVO is unreliable and meaningless. |
I'de save it for home heating -and get an old rabbit or isuzu pickup to run the crap thru--with 2 tanks and 50/50, switch on after 15mins.
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...and just for W124, I give you: The Diesel Chainsaw :D |
engineering is great :)
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So what type of VO are you basing you initial numbers off of? Since it seems you love the off topic nationalistic jabs :rolleyes:, to that point, we can discuss what kind of oils are available in what countries, which may have some bearing on your equation. I have been told that pure Rapeseed oil is the VO of choice in Germany, how about in the UK? In the US, the most common source of oil is waste oil bins and for free or extremely cheap, using an enormous variety of oil stock, all with different specifications. With that issue, it is very difficult to create hard data in the way you have done in an earlier post. Like I said earlier, here its a non regulated fuel meaning that there are huge differences in one sample from another. To address another one of your comments- "So basically, you have to do 10,000 miles, 100% trouble free, to break even." You say this like its an argument against putting in a system because it will take a while to pay off. You also come up with that number based on the fact that you are paying for VO in your part of the world, an additional cost and more time. Most people drive 10-20 thousand miles in a year, others more. I personally drive off 10,000 miles in 4 months usually. A third of a year to a half a year to reach the 0 mark on money invested is a pretty good return on investment. After that, assuming no problems, the rest is money in your pocket. Most things in life don't pay off that fast. Its extremely cost effective for the most part. |
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I actually know someone with a comet chainsaw, it's akshully TVO (tractor vapourising oil) not #2 diesel. I was actually waiting for someone to point out that RC engines are often "diesel", but they don't run on diesel per se. For those interested in flame front speeds... http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA433310 and a short video of injected fuel combusting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IFCubco95w |
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Efficiency though? I don't think so. Ran on a methanol blend. |
Tom,
your Schur stuff is for DI motors, not IDI. Found this there some place in your link. Hey Julei - hey people. I think it is all right if one thinks of a mixture, if a man DI "torture". I ride with my Polo Ale engine, a mixture. However, I have my own "concoctions" developed. Thought I got me the deal for the following reason, that man should first have a good combustion to avoid piston seizure (fouling) and more. Here is my mix, which is valid for the summer and not yet applied for a patent: Ca 90% Approximately 90% stale potato soup 10% diesel in winter a little more, , a cup of E 85 on a tank 20 liters per 100 cc explosives replacement! (Vertrieb: Firma RUnkel). (Distribution: Runkel). Not in the tank! Then the potato soup enter into the mixing tank (20-40 liter barrels) can. All problems. Then, purely in the main tank. This should, however, by a "professional of the rapeseed oil industry," the VP37 can be adjusted electronically to early! This man needs a PC and a program - and who can deal with things. . People can certainly antrefen again on the next "rapeseed oil fair in the Lower Rhine. In my "running" this Must not be for everyone. MfG. Best regards. KBD KBD The most necessary would be done. Further refinements to be retrofitted We have all heard of peanut shells & coal dust, but used potato soup is a new one!! Maybe they mean oil that has been used for cooking potato chips. I like the potato soup line better !!! Again this stuff is no more than internet talk. No proper tests. Talk is cheap, motor rebuilds are not, there is also suggestion of "stuck rings" in the chat. That appears to be a taboo topic with the WVO hippies. Its a bit like the lump that you choose to ignore until the secondary tumors appear. When you see something like this in a signature, best take what is said with a grain (or better a bucket) of salt. Professional greasecar installer Austin TX Their opinion is far from independent. They make a living from promoting these systems. When there is a failure of a system, its always the operator that has done something wrong. Its interesting that they also provide a link to a company that collects WVO for processing into bio diesel, not for direct use in motors as WVO. This further highlights how commercial interests skews what they may say is "technical advice". It has little to do with proper engineering principles. So far there are only 2 proper reports sited on this thread, all the remainder is nothing but internet noise !! |
Jeff,
The cox was a glow plug engine, ran 75% methanol : 25% light oil for lube. There were small diesels, they ran on 33% ether :33% kerosene : 33% light oil (lube). Some tried to use Castor oil but it used to gum everything up. Just like WVO. W124. That is a good report!! Problem is that 99% of the members hear will not be able to follow the maths. Probably 100% of those on the WVO forums would not be able to follow it either. To any one with appropriate education in combustion/reaction kinetics it is relatively simple. |
:eek: OOOH Snap!
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Those little Cox engines were fun, 2-stroke diesels all fuel lubricated, all of their power came from RPM, little pistons with no rings and a ball-socket joint instead of a "proper" wrist pin. Do they still make them? Before battery technology became what it is today I guess it made sense for RC stuff. It was years later when I found out that there were "real" 2-stroke diesels out there; the 71-series DD engines, made me start to think about how much I liked the compression-ignition concept, almost as much as turbines (but haven't successfully installed a turbine in a car yet) http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/ |
On the other hand... my cars both continue to start and run and drive just fine - really well actually. This particular engine and none of the others I've converted - does seem prone to ring sticking but adding a water injection kit that mists water into the intake at 12psi boost and above solved that problem. Both cars are sitting right outside ready to go. I converted them, I fuel them, and I drive them. Internet noise, indeed... To each his own!
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these guys can measure tiny but intense shockwaves travelling through the combustion chamber (the speed of sound is much much faster at 500 psi...) and thanks to the lasers can do live spectrophotometry on the chemical compounds being created and destroyed, things that don't exist long enough to make it out the exhaust ports. They also do full monitoring in the fuel injection systems themselves, eg inside the delivery pump and injectors. Both traditional and common rail high pressure with piezo injectors. they have run all the veg oils (soy / rape / corn / coconut / etc) at one time or another and always come up with the same results, the extra double bonds in the veg oil totally alter the way it behaves as a fuel, and of course the veg oils are NOT hydrocarbons, because they contain oxygen bonded molecularly, which again screws up the chemical reactions. they found the veg oils (unlike hydrocarbon dino diesel, which contains no oxygen, and is therefore sealed off from oxygen by the physical material of the injection system) were even reacting under the different conditions of high pressure inside the injection system, with microdiesling, carbon dumping and even (micro) spark erosion of the fuel itself. The test runs on sardine oil produced so much "extraneous" crap that it actually damaged the test equipment in the injection equipment, not just the injection equipment, but the test equipment. |
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