hey guys,

just popping in to say hello. with any luck my 85 300D will cross 200k on my ride home from work tomorrow, with the last 50k on a 2 tank WVO system. it runs exactly as it did 50k ago, and no special maintenance on the engine has been needed.

during this time I have gotten about 175 miles to every gallon of petro-diesel.

for those doing WVO my experience has been (as has been said often here and elsewhere):

1. filter and dewater your oil throughly. i do mine to 2 microns and no water present on a hot pan test. this is the most important thing. bad fuel = damage. i have used heated upflow filtering and now get oil from someone who centrifuges.
2. run the oil HOT in a well designed 2 tank system at above 160F. I target to keep my WVO temp at 175-185F.
3. do not let the fact that your car runs WVO distract you from keeping up on maintenance on the rest of the vehicle :-)


sincerely,
dd

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'85 300D, 'Lance',250k, ... winter beater (100k on franken-Frybrid 3 Valve Kit)
'82 300D, 'Tex', 228k body / 170k engine ... summer car
'83 300TD Cali Wagon 210k, wife's car

Congrats. My 240 turned over 300k on about 50k on veggie.

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Congratulations! I ran my 1983 from 150k to 250k on veggie, getting about 300 miles per paid gallon (I did long highway commutes). I sold the car only because I came across another lower mileage cleaner body at a price I could not refuse. I disagree on one thing-- the heat required. Heat is only necessary to pump fuel to injection, including of course through the filters. Once the oil hits a hot injection pump it is INSTANTLY heated, like cooking oil in a very hot pan as every chef will know. It is the beauty of an IDI engine. 120 degrees is plenty warm. It is my working experience and against almost everything you will read on the internet. I run an IDI F250 (two factory tanks) with just a big FPHE and it runs mint. I also run an old Cummins in my boat the same way, 2 tanks and another big FPHE. My latest Mercedes IDI is doing fine with one tank blending of 10-25% jet A, depending on the New England temperatures. This gets me about 100 miles per paid gallon.

PS I should add I run only high quality canola from a known source, settled many weeks before filtration, cold filtered to 1 micron, and again settled in barrels before pumping it into the car.

jim_22, that's a valuable data point on the need for FPHE before the IP. What climate were you running in?

I'll stick with my FPHE, because it's so cheap and easy (and most importantly, already installed). And, if I ever do another trip in subzero (F) temps, I'll loop the return and I imagine the extra heat will help get the oil through the filter easily.

What is your cold filtering setup like, exactly? I want to upgrade my preprocessing and I'm looking for ideas. Have you ever found any gunk or water in the bottom of your second settling stage, or is it clean all the way down? I like the idea of the second settling stage, always pulling oil off the top. How often did you have to change the filter under your hood?

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1984 300D Turbo 350K 50K WVO (two tank) "Maeby"