What are the chances a Veggie conversion might damage my engine? There aren't many of these scrap engines lying around anymore and I venture to say thats the next major population reducer of the W123 300D class---because if you mess up your engine, chances are u will spend the whole 9 yards (1500 bucks) for resleeving your engine and redoing the head

coking your injectors is most ive heard.. im with the biodiesel crowd.. that way i dont have to retro fit stuff into my car.. and i get to keep my trunk space and spare.

if you go the SVO you have to filter the WVO down to like .5 microns even before using it to be safe and test for water and tallows gel point the whole 10 yards. to me .. biodiesel is better because direct replacemnt no retrofiting and.. it doesnt smell like fries. it smells. different. ( if your bio smells like fries you must of screwed up)

I just converted my 1995 E300D. its been running good but I replaced all the rubber o rings on the fuel lines. veggie oil is a great solvent and eats older rubber.

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Trying to keep Jersey Fresh

1995 E300D 384,000,(Betty White) part time greaser, lots of new parts
2004 Ranger XLT
2000 Chocolate Lab-Bad Quarter Panel, lots of miles

If you do everything correctly and are meticulous about it your chances are pretty low of doing any harm. It's when you get sloppy or take shortcuts that you get problems. I think the biggest problems with WVO is not getting hot enough before it goes into the chamber, and using low quality non-filtered or dewatered oil.

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I think about the worst that could happened is your injection pump being damaged by water in the oil. They cost around $700-$800. You should be fine if you de-water your oil and make sure your coolant heating doesn't get mixed in with your oil. I am planning to use a racor water separator filter with a water sensing probe to tell me if I have sprung a leak.

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1979 240D- 316K miles - VGT Turbo, Intercooler, Stick Shift, Many Other Mods - Daily Driver

1982 300SD - 232K miles - Wife's Daily Driver

1986 560SL - Wife's red speed machine

I will have to agree with you on this!

I have been searching the local market for 2 more older MB's. One more for me and one for a friend. I am looking for a mirror image of my 79 240D and my buddy is very flexable but wants a 300D turbo.

I have looked at dozens of vehicles in the area and a few of those had the vegie-oil conversions done on them. Every one of the vegie-oil conversion cars were total hack jobs, poor piping, stupid wiring. One had so many extra holes cut in the trunk I doubt you could ever keep the water out. Two out of the three did not run any more and the other one ran so bad on straight diesel I refused to test drive it and yelled at him to shut the darn thing off!

Of the others that had no conversions the Biodiesel mindset seems to add 2-3k to the price. When I went to look at several, the first thing out of the owners mouth is "You can run this on Biodiesel" or "It's Biodiesel ready". Usually when questioned further they do not run it on Biodiesel, do not know where to buy Biodiesel, and have not changed the necessary fuel components to safely run Biodiesel.

I found a 79 240D manual, with unknown mileage, totally trashed interior but with a sweet manual sunroof, non-running and had not run for 2 years, bald tires, no title, and no battery. $3,500! Ya, but it will run on Biodiesel! Give me a break!

In my opinion a full-on vegie oil conversion, done correctly or not, is not a positive thing when it comes to resale value.

Oh well, the search goes on!

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79 240D (no name yet) 203K Miles Maple Yellow
98 2500 4x4 HD Dodge 24 Valve Cummins TD
83 Chevy Van (Dead-Trans. shot)

Add it up if you have a source of vegoil and the time to collect it and dewater it, and you drive a lot, an SVO conversion is definitely worth any risk. It really does not take that much time if the restaurants poor the oil in containers for you and you dont have to suck it out of the big storage tank out back.

Say you drive 12,000 miles a year.
Say 10,000 is on free WVO and 2,000 on 2.50/gal diesel or biodiesel.
Say you get 25 mpg all year. Then

10,000 miles / 25 mpg = 400 gallons.
400 gallons * $2.50/gallon = $1,000.00

So you save $1,000 a year (plus are burning environmental friendly fuel).
The more you drive the more you save and the higher pump prices are the more you save. People go 50,000 and 100,000 miles and more on WVO without problems.

I think if done right, in 5 years, you will save enough to replace your car from your WVO kit if that is possible. And since SVO is more lubricating that petrol , it may actually be better for your car.

cheers,

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What Would Rudolph Do?
1975 300D, 1975 240D, 1985 300SD, 1997 300D, 2005 E320 , 2006 Toyota Prius

I haven’t seen any rubber eating results from my year plus of WVO usage at all. And, I’m still running the same fuel lines under the car that it came with new. I was under the impression that it was the BioDiesel, with its lye and ethanol additives that make for the solvent issues. Every site I’ve been to regarding BioDiesel use states something about changing all the filters after the first few tanks or so. Havent seen that with the WVO. Am I wrong and just been lucky so far? Please correct/teach me if I’m wrong here.

biodiesel degrades the rubber.. not veggie (thats what ive read)

Another reason a lot of the veggie cars are junk is because people start and experiment w/ junk. My first veggie car was the cheapest running diesel I could find w/ a/c. Now that I am a believer, I bought a prestine 350 sdl and have 10K veggie miles on it.

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

I don't know/care much about WVO conversions and how much engine damage they do, but I think you are correct regarding the future availability of W123 diesel engines. These cars are now all over 20 years old, and at that age the beaters will tend to weed themselves out. It will not be too long before the only W123s around will be well maintained examples, and the supply of used engines/parts will dwindle. At that point they should become less attractive to the WVO crowd anyway. Unfortunately, there will probably be a population of hacked up WVO conversions left over by the time this little fad runs it's course. BTW, I think $1500 to rebuild the head and the sleeves is pretty optimistic.

I totally agree with your thinking here. I was not trying to offend the Biodiesel or the Veggie oil camps and for some people both of these options are a great way to go.

I think a lot of the sellers I have encountered here in the Pacific Northwest have heard about the ability of these vehicles to burn alternative fuels and that has pushed the selling price to an absurd premium. I guess the prices seem very high for those vehicles whose owners tout this ability. I have seen 78-82 240D/300D's pushing 5-7K and those would have needed 1-2K of investment to fix the very common problems that age of vehicle needs and that is doing the work yourself. Could you imagine the addtional cost if you took it to a dealer, even an indy, for clock, vacuum issues, odometer and all the other little issues.

I know a lot of people try out Veggie oil conversions on beaters, but the three that I have seen would have been very nice cars had they not been messed with. All admitted the cars ran very well prior to conversion. It is a shame these people did not invest the time and money to do it correctly. Yet they still wanted top dollar for the vehicle.

From all the information I have read you want to upgrade the rubber hoses in your fuel system prior to running Biodiesel. The older hoses will not hold up.

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79 240D (no name yet) 203K Miles Maple Yellow
98 2500 4x4 HD Dodge 24 Valve Cummins TD
83 Chevy Van (Dead-Trans. shot)

Good point if I were in the market again I would not pay a premium for a WVO car. In fact I would deduct for it.

So from a resale perspective leave it alone and run it on pump diesel. But if you are going to run it on WVO at least build a high quality well engineered system to run it. I have only seen a few WVO cars but all the systems have been pretty much hack jobs. I am sure their are quality systems out their that don't require constant babysitting, I'd build or buy one of those.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

That would be the way to go if you really want to get into WVO for the long term. Unfortunately, there seem to be lots of folks who are looking for the cheapest possible way to run "free fuel." These are the same people who are likely to mess up a car by doing a half ass conversion, then give up when they find up how much effort is required. I suspect that in a few years there will only be a very small group of hard core folks still running WVO. Most people are simply not that interested in the effort required to save $1000 per year (you can save more by skipping your Starbucks coffee every morning).

I hate to refer to him but Kent Bergsma at mercedes source .com is a talented MB mechanic and put together what looks like a high quality conversion system on his 200D. It's written about on his website.

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'87 924S
'81 280SEL

Sold ->

81 300SD -
93 300E w/ 3.2
85 300D-
79 300SD
82 300CD
83 300CD - CA
87 190E 5 spd
87 Porsche 924S

"..I'll take a simple "C" to "G" and feel brand new about it..."