Whats this all about, I’ve got an old transit 230TD and some joker told me that I could run it on Veg oil, is he barking?

“Biodiesel.”

No, I used to mix it in my old Renault diesel. From memory it had to be sunflower oil for some reason.

Not great in cold weather if you use high levels of veg oil. I ran 50/50 and never had a problem.

You would be surprised what a diesel engine will run on.

Was he a swede?

more of a fruit

Yes, a small conversion with the tank and you have to promise to pay the tax! (And be able to get your hands on 80 odd litres of vegetable oil at a time!!)

Old diesels with a Bosch Fuel pump… Often works reasonably well, up to say a 50/50 mix in the middle of summer. Wouldn’t go more than 80/20 Diesel/Veg even with a little petrol or white spirit added to the mix in winter though.

New diesels… Forget it! And by new I mean anything with a high pressure system or a common rail.

Used to be worth the saving though. 3 Years ago I was running an old Mk3 Golf TDi, diesel was already over £1 per litre but veg oil was about 60p per litre if you bought 1 gallon of it at a time from Aldi/Lidl etc. These days, Veg oil is more expensive than diesel so it’s pointless!

20lts for £20.00 – thats cheaper than diesel

Interesting reading

and you have to promise to pay the tax!

Not if you use less than 2500 litres / year of vegetable oil.

No tax due in that case.

notice that no ones talked about an intresting side effect of using veg oil and that is that your car will smell a bit like a chip shop whilst running can always yell if a car that passed me is running on veg oil you get a faint wiff of chippy smell not bad but deffo there 🙂

So my mark 3 non turbo Golf will run on neat veg oil?What will it do to the gallon though?

Aparently used is better than new, and if running on oil only or more than 50%, you have to add a bit of White spirit to the mix
And as above it kills high pressure/common rail engines

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000205&propertyType=document#P150_15716

The transit engine you have has a modern high pressure fuel system, use veggie oil in it and you’llbe finding very very big bills pretty quickly!

Do not do it!

The older 2.5 smiley face transits with the old Bosch pumps will run on it no problem at all though.

I ran my old Citroen ZX on Veg oil ( clean new bottled ) for 20,000 miles.
The old XUD engines love running on veg.
I fitted a changeover valve , a combi boiler plate heat exchanger , and a secondary fuel tank under the bonnet ( 1 gal ).
Fill tank with veg oil from 3 ltr botts bought on ebay for 60p a ltr ( was 3 years ago, some warehouse shelving had collapsed and some botts had split and the labels/ boxs had oil on them ).
Start up on front tank on 100% deisel, drive 4 miles then switch to main tank. drive 25 miles to nearly work ,then switch back to front tank for last mile to flush the veg oil out the pump.

Saved hundreds of pounds and sold the converted car for a profit.

So my mark 3 non turbo Golf will run on neat veg oil?What will it do to the gallon though?

I wouldn’t run it neat, unless you live somewhere where the temperature never falls below about 25 degrees or so!

Try a 50/50 mix in the middle of summer, with a 1% petrol/white spirit thrown into the mix and you’ll probably be ok…

Though you’ll need to replace your fuel filters after a few hundred miles, and again after another few hundred, whilst the veg oil cleans all the crap out of your fuel system!

Economy shouldn’t be any different, calorific value of veg oil is pretty much the same as diesel when burnt.

pre 97 vag td and n.a diesels run perfectly well on any thing from 50% to 100%(mechanical inj.) depending on temp.
no duty on 2500L per yer or less.
similar mpg.
good idea to run every 4th or 5th tank full neat Diesel,for the cleaning lubricating properties .And the first time you do it,change your fuel filter after the first tank,it loosens all the rust and gunk up !

I’ve run at least 6 or 7 of these engines this way.been doing it over 15yrs.

£18. for 20L.

try it at your own risk. 😉

mboy,beat me to it,but I’ve found even a little bit of petrol or white spirit smokes….

The thing to do seems to be to find other people who’ve done it with your exact model. Not always easy but even from model to model, fuel pumps vary. I tried it in my crappy Focus (nothing to lose) and it seemed fine, the verdict is if I try it in the Mondeo I will regret it.

Used to run my mk2 renault espace on veg oil before they caught on and put the price up. sunflower oil raipseed oil any light oil seems to do the trick and actually made the engine run quiter. Only other noticable diff was the slight smell of doughnuts as you drove along!

I did it for 3 or 4 years with an old Landrover Defender 300TDi (Mechanical injection)
I used to run it 50/50 in the summer but drop back to almost 100% diesel in the winter.
I did get upto almost 80% veggie oil at one point but didn’t want to try it any stronger.

My fuel lift pump died – but it had done over 100k anyway.
The rubber fuel return hoses that link the injectors together rotted through and started to leak, but this was replaced with new heavy duty hose bought from the motor factors for £2.
The car is still going strong (I sold it 6 years ago!) as it is owned by a friend of my Dads now.
I did the same with the 300TDi discovery that replaced it with no ill effects.

I had a mate who installed a twin-tank system with changerover valves in a similar aged Landrover and he ran 1000’s of miles on 100% veggie oil, with just a smal lomount of Diesel used on start up/ warm down.

There is some good advice above – basically the older the engine, the more likely you’ll be able to do it.
It kills modern common rail diesel engines pretty quickly though!

We used to make our own biodiesel for the works vans, was great until the mice started chewing the fuel lines

It kills modern common rail diesel engines pretty quickly though!

Not advised for my 51 Octavia, then? 😉

Its a 1996 N reg 230TD (Smiley face) LWB transit, sounds like it could be a go-er then!

As ever its never that simple. Depends on the fuel injection system, injector manufactorer, source of oil e.t.c. I did loads of reasearch on this a few years ago and straight mixing is never considered good.

The options are biodeiseland staight vergtible oil (SVO).

Both can come from waste vegatble oil (WVO). SVO requires some form of modification. Any use of WVO requires some form of processing.

Stright mixing desiel with oil is not a good idea and will soon or later result in gumming up of the injectors espicially if the oil is WVO, also water in the oil is common when used and can casue damage if not dried properaly. Journey fovever a place to start. Load of other info out there.

With my Bosch pumped diesel it doesn’t matter if it’s sunflower oil, vegetable oil … or diesel! It’s only had a few fuel filters and gallons of veg/sunflower.. not a problem in over 110k since I first tried ‘oils’ out in it. Now 237k.

A heap of that is Internet myth. My injectors and glow plugs have been in there since new and the car pulls as good, if not better now than when I first picked it up. (12 years and 215,000 miles ago)

Which bit that it depends o nthe injection system and pump manufaure?
That SVO requires modification?
That excessive fatty acids can cause injector gumming?
That WVO requires processing of some form?

People often use the term “Biodiesel” when talking about Vegetable oil.
And they are not the same thing at all.

Biodiesel (B100) is basically diesel that’s been made from vegetable or animal fats. Can be used alone in any Diesel engine without any modifications.

Vegetable oil, unused or used (SVO or WVO) is different altogether.

As you can buy proper B100 Biodiesel for £1.04/litre, and the price of SVO isn’t much lower, it seems like a lot of hassle to use SVO to me.

If you can get WVO for free, it will need filtering and de watering before it can be used. Which is fairly messy, but worth it as if you can do it right, it’s essentially free fuel (other than your time and a few materials and a bit of electricity.) other than your set up costs obviously.