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Old 09-14-2004, 09:27 PM
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Teedo47
Teedo47 is offline
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: San Diego/Santa Cruz
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After researching conversions for a very long time, i finally decided that i'd just do it myself, and not buy a kit. I bought a racor filter with a water separator bowl and an electric heating element. I twisted up some 1/2"OD copper tubing and put it in the forward tank around the fuel pickup, and I'll be connecting it up series with my heater core once I find a store that sells heater hose that isn't pre-cut. I cut a hole in a flat part on top of the tank, and slid the copper pipe in. I bent the pipe so that there would be no fittings inside the tank(no leaking). Now I just need to put a plate over the top with two holes in it and some grommets. I'll use the stock water separator and fuel filter, but they will only be used for diesel/biodiesel, so those will be attached to the frame rail closer to the rear tank (avoids using tons of fuel line, and i like making it clean). The solenoid will be moved up the frame rail, near the metal line that comes from the fuel pump. I'm also going to set the stock fuel heater up to a switch instead of a thermostat so it can give the fuel a final heating.

The truck has less than 40K on it, so I hope the stock lift pump will last a while, but if it doesn't, what brand of electric fuel pump do you all recommend?

Also, watch out for a few things on the kit you buy (if you buy one). Make sure there is a water separator, and that the vegetable oil filter is rated at 10 microns or less. Also, you can't necessarily just loop all the retun lines to make sure that vegetable oil stays out of the startup tank, that can lead to air getting trapped in the fuels lines and eventually stalling the engine. The greasel kit doesn't have a water separator, filters to only 28 microns (with the cleanable filter), and the fuel lines are looped (although there is a manual valve for purging air). With looped lines, the fuel gets and stays hot, which is good for vegetable oil, but hot diesel is a poor lubricant (using a biodiesel blend should negate this, though).

I plan on installing a three port solenoid that will either loop the return line or return it to the tank, along with a pre-injector fuel temp guage. If the oil is too cool, i'll loop it, but when running diesel or if i think there is air in the lines, I'll send it back to the tank.