OM603 wvo in Estonia

[KarlGustav9]

Hi,

I own a S124 OM603 and drive it on wvo here in Estonia. I've been driving it on wvo for 2 years now, i've done about 50 000km, the first year i had no heaters for the fuel, i had a hard time starting the car and the filter would get clogged up often, this year i added a extra filter in the engine bay and wrapped a copper tube around it which is heated by coolant, also got a keenovo heating pad and belt for the original filter and for the high pressure fuel lines, also bought a new starter and a battery. The car starts fast like it's on pure diesel and drives well. Yesterday i sat in my car and it wouldn't start. i found out that one of my fuel lines is clogged, probably some water got in and froze over night when i got it unclogged i also noticed that my fuel system was full of air, i bled all the ait out with a hand pump and the car still wouldn't start, i checked my glow plugs and noticed that one of the plugs was not working, could this be enough for the car not to start, i didn't have time to change the plug yesterday, i will try and do it today, another thing that i was wondering, is there any way to bleed the fuelpump with the handpump or can i bleed it just by cranking the engine ? I add about a quarter tank of diesel to my wvo in the winter and also mix the wvo with about 10% petrol.

[jake12tech]

One glow plug won’t cause it to not start. The fuel is likely gelled. Also mixing gasoline in a Diesel engine is terrible. You should stop doing that. With the WVO you’re supposed to run a two tank system and completely filter the vegetable oil. Start it on diesel and shut it down diesel. It probably still gelled because the winter diesel (I’m not sure in Estonia) but should have anti gel in it.

You should fix the air leak first. If it’s getting air in somewhere it’s going to continue to get back in and not start.

[barry12345]

If you even suspect water in the fuel may be frozen. You are probably not dewatering the WVO. This can destroy the injection pump over time.

I do not like paying more than required for fuel. Yet in most cases over time burning diesel will prove to have been cheaper. WVO has proven over time with some exceptions. Save now but pay a lot one way or another later. It was a real craze in north America for some time. As far as I am aware it pretty much has died out now.

A thanks for mentioning that you are using WVO. At one time people would describe their issues. Yet never mention the fact they were using it. For what it is worth. I have had diesels that just refused to start with just one glow plug out. Not perhaps totally logical but it was what it was. They did not have the series glow plugs either.

[Murkybenz]

I have run a w124 e300d on fuel mix same as yours with ten percent petrol added for over four years and then progressed to a w210 turbo diesel starting on biodiesel and eventually going to veg .
I had similar trouble with my w124 , filters plugging up etc after about a year and a half on wvo mixes.
What happens is the fuel tank gets a lining of grease /a sort of semi solid grease build up in it , take fuel cap off and scrape a finger around inside the tank neck ... the junk that you scrape off will melt if heat is applied to it .
Now what happens is once this build up gets bad then adding a heater in the fuel system melts it and it flows around the system with the fuel and eventually builds up in filters and blocks them.
So you need to remove the fuel tank and clean it out , I did mine with hot water /caustic soda mix and when refitting I did away with the mesh on the in tank filter .
Its possible just removing in tank filter mesh and cleaning or cutting it off its base will sort the problem out.
Reversing fuel lines over, swap inlet and return over on the under bonnet / hood connetions ie where rubber hoses join under car steel lines, The return line feeds back on the saloon anyway to a plastic bell shaped device that covers the in tank filter , so if the in tank mesh is plugged and cannot have fuel sucked through the reversing lines lets fuel blow through the gunk to return .
But I am confident the tank just needs a good clean out , or fit another tank or can somewhere and run it from that.

[barry12345]

Fuel in general is far more expensive in Europe. On that basis I can see at least more justification on that basis in using alternative fuels. To me the downside is that there are just so many possibilities when you have trouble as a direct result of using it.

I suspect the largest issue when it was the craze in north America. People that were using it in far too many cases. Just did not have the mechanical skill level to deal with even the common issues of a diesel engine. Compounding that with issues from alternative fuels just became a little too much for many of them. Certainly there would have been very few garages that would have wanted to deal with the problems.

So this left them between a rock and a hard place. Really thinning the population of these cars on the road down.