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Engine Specific Info and Questions => IDI Engine => Topic started by: rwdriver on January 18, 2008, 09:55:36 am
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what about putting an electric heating element on the injector lines. before you start the car, you would preheat the lines, then you could start it on straight wvo. this would make it so you could allways run straight wvo. any thoughts?
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what about putting an electric heating element on the injector lines. before you start the car, you would preheat the lines, then you could start it on straight wvo. this would make it so you could allways run straight wvo. any thoughts?
As it happens my bro came up with this exact question over the weekend since he doesn't have room for dual fuel tanks in his T4. Then we asked ourselves: what about the IP thats full of gelled WVO, and the hardlines between the IP and injectors that are full of gelled WVO, and the injectors themselves that are full of gelled WVO.
Hmmmm... we decided it was back to a dual fuel system... but perhaps someone has come up with a way around heating the fuel in those areas as well ??
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Keep it in a heated garage :)
Make a dual tank but make the OG tank WVO and then like a 1 gallon tank somewhere else in the car for diesel for starts/stops. Nice and small, could put it pretty much anywhere
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So if your main tank jells, how do you get the fuel out of it?
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circulating engine coolant lines around the tank or coiled up against it, 1 gallon should get you about 30 miles which should have the engine nice and warm and the fuel warmed.
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hmmm... you would need way too much energy to heat the WVO at the injector lines I believe. you need to penetrate the the steel injector line.
why not make a thermos to hold your WVO? heat it up and it'll stay hot for a few hours or more. the initial start in the morning would be on diesel, and for the rest of the day it could probably just keep up with WVO. maybe insulate the pump too? the pump will cool down considerably from the cold air rushing through the grill.
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http://www.dieselveg.com/
half way down the page,heating for hard lines :wink:
Bert
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damn so much work to to convert to veg... makes me want to run an old merc 8) straight veg!
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I have rad about just cutting the WVO with 50% diesel in the cold seasons and running a one tank system. I thought about experimenting with it.
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why not just keep a small container of diesel under the hood??? @ 5L/100km and 3-4km to heat the engine that is about 0.2L per warmup?
another idea would be to install a lift pump & heater, and have the lift pump circulate the 'hot' veg through the pump for a minute or so to help un-gel it.
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Don't be lazy. Do it right and go two-tank.
damn so much work to to convert to veg... makes me want to run an old merc Cool straight veg!
NO diesel engine should EVER be run on straight vegetable oil. They were not made to do so, it will harm the engine and injection system.
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just heating the lines is not enough unless it's real warm out. the motor will start on the warm svo that's in the lines but then the pump will be forcing to pull that cold oil through the filter and lines. the diesel veg heaters are okay but do take some current and are really meant to be on while the motor is running.
OM617 any diesel can run on straight svo or wvo. heating the oil to the right temp and proper filtration are the key. the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil.
the person who got me interested in this has been running his rabbit and then golf for 15 years on mostly wvo and a combo of diesel, wvo and biodiesel .
http://www.ecoauto.ca/
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OM617 any diesel can run on straight svo or wvo. heating the oil to the right temp and proper filtration are the key.
Right, which is why two tank is the only correct way to do it.
the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil.
Completely incorrect. Mercedes' and VW's engines were NOT designed, built, tuned or even imagined by Rudolph Diesel. They were the designed some 70years after the first practical Diesel engine was made and some 60 years after Dr. Diesels death. Technology made HUGE strides in that time and Diesels have next to nothing in common with the first engine and were NOT "designed" to run veggie oil/peanut oil/waste oil, to state otherwise is a fallacy.
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so the gasoline engine design from 110 years ago is obsolete also? i,m not talking about differences in pump or injectors or whatever. we are still trying to figure how to make a pumpe duse work properly. the principle of how the diesel motor works is the same as when it was designed, even 2 stroke diesels. if these modern diesels can't run on svo then how do you explain the thousands of vw's and merc's out there that are? the only vehicles i've had problems with are pre 95 GM ' s, which are garbage at best anyways.
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and that's why i've never even seen a v10 toureg. manufacturers are only interested in the bottom line. because of the poor quality of fuel here in canada and particularly quebec we will be the last to see what probably was and is North america's largest diesel market. older vw's [pre tdi] and merc's can run on almost anything. as emission controls and fuel management develop some engines probably won't be able to run on anything but high grade diesel fuel; but as far as the motor itself, if it has more than 19/1 compression it'll fire up.
i have heard that the largest diesel "motor" in the world will soon run on svo. it's a giant piledriver, at least 10 ft in diameter. it's basically a 2 stroke. they pull the piston up by crane, drop it while shooting some fuel at the bottom and BOOM there it goes up and down till they stop shooting fuel into the cylinder. it's crazy ass big.and cool
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Just because you can does not mean you should. People have jumped off buildings and survived, it doesn't mean you will too.
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WTF???
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I think there is room for a difference of opinion here. It may offend someone's sensibilities to put plant oil in their car, and offend another's to put petroleum fuel in their car. The majority of us are happy to just have something to drive.
the lawyers who protect the automotive manufacturer's behinds require the most conservative specifications from the engineers. that is fine. some people feel wise to follow that conservatism. that is fine too.
Rudolph Diesel tried a lot of things in his engine including either (not a good idea) and coal dust (which worked). So he was adventurous out of necessity. And maybe some of us are, too- and that is fine.
I'm not running it yet, but every good bit of science I've seen on VO shows that it needs to be very hot when it goes in, first to be a better viscosity match and second to keep it from carbonizing on the engine parts.
I like the fact that my engine can run on anything from bunker fuel to methane. I'm just going to be a careful student when I play with it. I'm glad we can talk about it here (we can, right) :)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmb97ZgUSTU
need I say more?
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OM617 any diesel can run on straight svo or wvo. heating the oil to the right temp and proper filtration are the key.
Right, which is why two tank is the only correct way to do it.
the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil.
Completely incorrect. Mercedes' and VW's engines were NOT designed, built, tuned or even imagined by Rudolph Diesel. They were the designed some 70years after the first practical Diesel engine was made and some 60 years after Dr. Diesels death. Technology made HUGE strides in that time and Diesels have next to nothing in common with the first engine and were NOT "designed" to run veggie oil/peanut oil/waste oil, to state otherwise is a fallacy.
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Did VW design their engines to run on the crap fuel that you guys in the Americas call diesel?
We never get any water to drain out of our fuel filters and don't have a water separator.
Here is a list of people who ARE running their engines on veg. whether it defies any laws of intent or gravity or tax they ARE doing it and their engines are NOT dieing.
http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/fuelsdatabase/database/az_index.php
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thanks miser
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:lol: :lol:
Man! The sarcasm is so thick you could cut it with a knife!!
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Should I fuel the fire even more by saying I heard on the radio yesterday that biofuels cause global warming because the land that is destroyed for corn or other crops removes more CO2 than the crops do.
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bio diesel that is up to ASTM standards is very hard to produce with waste vegetable oil. What this means is that if you buy biodiesel from a fuel station that has a brand name it is probably made from crops which are grown specifically for that purpose. Somebody who makes it at home can make it from whatever they have but if you are going to sell it it must be up to a certain standard. Here near Montreal as of this writing there has been one company producing biodiesel. They are a company under Maple Leaf foods so they make it from animal waste fats etc. Their biodiesel is of a poor quality and they are having problems because their raw stock is from waste. Part of what i do at my shop is convert diesels to run on vegetable oil. But i insist that my customers use waste oil from resturants. At least then you are using a waste material and other than pre-filtering cost little or nothing. Alot of people who convert are concerned about the higher price of diesel [mostly the V8 people] but the idea here is to recycle while lowering your tailpipe emissions. Some tests have shown that biodiesel produces more NOx then diesel where as running on WVO lowers all the offending exhausts.
Unless you make your own biodiesel from waste or run on WVO then yes the contribution is not as great as you would think. Especially if the raw materials are imported, are grown instead of food crops [as much as a car person as i am, given a choice i'd rather eat than drive], etc. etc.
Believe me that i really do think we're already ***ed and it's too late but it can't hurt to try to produce less poisons then we do. Unfortuately there isn't enough vegetable matter to run all the diesels in the world but running on WVO is better than nothing. The clincher for me was when i had my 98 TDI chipped and with fat nozzles producing so much power running on WVO. All that but with way less guilt.
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True Jim- slaying dense virgin forests to install fuel crops is not the way to do it. There is no easy solution (except maybe efficiency).
And Andrew, if god wanted man to fly, he would have given him wings.
...I gotta go scrounge some tubing for that WVO heater...
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the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil.
Total bunk. The first diesel-cycle engine ran on air-injected gasoline. Then kerosene. Peanut oil didn't come about until it was time to show off and "sell" the idea to people at an exhibition... where it should be noted that none of the engines ran for very long.
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so the gasoline engine design from 110 years ago is obsolete also? i,m not talking about differences in pump or injectors or whatever. we are still trying to figure how to make a pumpe duse work properly. the principle of how the diesel motor works is the same as when it was designed, even 2 stroke diesels. if these modern diesels can't run on svo then how do you explain the thousands of vw's and merc's out there that are? the only vehicles i've had problems with are pre 95 GM ' s, which are garbage at best anyways.
Also bunk. The original diesel engines bear resemblance to modern diesels only in the aspect that they utilize compression to ignite the fuel. The mechanics of injection, fuel used, and even initial ignition methods were all drastically different from modern diesels.
Trying to say that the principle of how modern diesels work is the same as the principle of how the original Diesel engine worked is like saying the principles of gasoline and diesel engine function are the same: Mix fuel and air, burn it in a cylinder with a mobile piston. Push out the waste crap at the end.
Air injection is rather a different beast from solid injection, and glow-plugs are technologically different from hot-bulbs and fuel/chamber preheaters. The wonderful technological innovations and fuel-delivery principles of solid injection, unitized solid injection and common-rail solid injection were at best just concepts when the first Diesel ran.
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To get back to the original idea of this thread...
Plenty of people have been using electrically heated injection lines for SVO use, including myself. I got mine here, this is the same guy who sold them on ebay for awhile and might still be doing so:
http://fattywagons.com/fwproducts.htm
It's a great way to get oil temps up right before injection. using something like an electric in-line heater (e.g. vegtherm, etc) to boost temps gets the oil really hot before it goes into the injection pump, but then it must flow slowly, slowly, slowly through the hard metal lines from the pump to the injector, where it cools off a lot again, esp if you're on the highway on a cold day so that cold air is flowing over the front of the engine all the time and cooling the lines off. better to heat it there and let it be just warm enough before the pump so that it flows easy.
100-120F is more than hot enough for the oil to flow easily through lines, filter, and pump, but is not hot enough to get good atomization and combustion in the cylinder. you need at least 170-180 for that, and preferably over 200. however, I don't like the idea of cooking my fuel pump with 200 degree fuel. I have a heated second tank, heated HIH fuel line, and heated filter, getting the oil up to good flowing temp, and then the line heaters give it the final shot to get it really hot before it enters the injectors. Of course, the injectors themselves are very hot, being mounted in the head millimeters from the combustion chamber, so you don't lose any temp there.
the only potential problem with this system is that it is possible, under certain circumstances, for the oil sitting in those hard lines to actually get TOO hot, at which point it starts to burn and create little carbon particles in the fuel that do not do anything good for your injectors. one situation where this might happen include sitting in traffic on a hot day, where the engine burns fuel very slowly so that fuel sits and just creeps through the hard lines, which are baking (people have seen temps of over 350F with electric heaters in those kinds of idling conditions, and that's BEFORE the fuel enters the injector which could be even hotter).
right now I have the heaters hooked to a switch on the dash, which I just cycle judiciously in that kind of situation to avoid overheating. my long-term plan is to get some kind of fuel temp readout on the lines right before the injectors (apparently BBQ and infrared thermometers work well), have that read out on the dash, and then wire the line heater circuit with a variable-resistance switch. the heaters draw only about 8 amps, less than the blower fan does, and I have a spare Rabbit blower switch which should therefore be well able to handle regulating this circuit. I was going to use that to give me three different current settings so I can be pretty precise about how much electric heat I lay onto those hard lines.
anyway, the kit is cheap ($40 when I bought it), well-made, and in my opinion a great addition to a veg system. I would not use it as the only element for running SVO unless I was driving a 617-powered Benz in the middle of summer in Texas without some other kind of heat elsewhere in the fuel system. however, as a way to improve atomization without jacking up fuel temps sky high way before the fuel is injected, putting the fuel pump under a lot of heat stress and drawing a lot of current (vegtherms take a lot more than 8 amps), I think it's a pretty good setup.
hope this helps...
George
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I make biodiesel in my garage this way I don't need to worry about running two tanks. My system takes about 3' X 5' in the corner of my garage and I have had no issues with the quality of my biodiesel. My VW the mileage went up and on my Datsun truck I noticed that my idle went up but I don't monitor the mileage as well as the VW. In both vehicles I felt that I had a little more power as well. In the winter you can cut it with fuel conditioner or regular diesel, apparently AMSOIL makes a biodiesel compatable fuel conditioner as well. I have had no problems short of fuel filters on the initial switch over I now run B100. That' my 2 cents worth.
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another 2 cents of mine is: last year i was pushing more for biodiesel because a small amount goes a long way to clean emissions -except for NOx- but i've realized a couple of things since-that for everyone with a diesel on the road to get the benefits of biodiesel, crops will have to be grown for it and -it takes energy to make biodiesel, but if you let WVO settle sometimes that is enough to use in a vehicle, but then you'll use more fuel filters which take energy to make ,but then..............
i read somewhere the joke about how making a cup of tea is helping to destroy the universe by speeding up entropy, so sometimes there really is only so much you can do.
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I started this post about a month ago, and completely forgot about it, then today I was cruisin the forums and I see 'cool idea', hmm, that looks interseting, so i click on it and see that I created it. for about 4 seconds I was completely confused, then i remembered. senior moments I tell ya :wink:
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Ru Paul is in politics now. cool!
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I make biodiesel in my garage this way I don't need to worry about running two tanks. My system takes about 3' X 5' in the corner of my garage and I have had no issues with the quality of my biodiesel.
Any pics or could you give a rundown of what your system is set up like? I'm very close to building my own small-scale system and always like to see what others are doing. Are you using waste oil or pure?
Thanks!
Brendan