I live in canada, and I think it would make more sense to have a 2-tank system for WVO, than to burn biodiesel purely because it gets so #$&^ cold here that the biodiesel would have to be heated anyway,... get my point?

Anyway, anyone have any bad (or good) experiences burning WVO?

Just got a 2002 psd, anxious to burn wvo......

used to have an IDI 7.3 burning WVO, but thats a different ball game...

 

Go for it! Running a two tank system is great in the summer and takes a bit of attention in the winter. I live in Louisiana but have taken my system up to northern Maine in the early spring when temps were still well below freezing.

A lot of new heating methods have been developed in the past couple of years so you're coming in to the hobby at a good time. My idea is to heat the oil sufficiently in the tank and then do whatever it takes to keep it warm on its way to the engine.

For that, we have HIH (hose in hose), HOH (hose on hose), glow plug heaters, nichrome wire heaters, round heat exchangers, flat plate heat exchangers, inline electric heaters and even exhaust heat.

I've been doing WVO for well over a year in my 2002. Get ready to learn about filtration both before it goes into the tank and after. Go ahead and get a spare fuel pump. Mine died at 95,000 miles... WVO related failure? Don't know for sure. But, its cheap insurance to carry one in your truck. Not all parts stores have them in stock.

I'm using a low pressure boost pump to help 'push' the heated WVO toward the stock pump. With that, I also have three filters: pre-screen to protect the boost pump, 10 micron water coalescing and 2 micron polish filter.

I pre-filter to 5 micron but still clog filters on a pretty regular basis.

Speaking of filters, buy your stock fuel filters in bulk. Folks have them on eBay for under $10. Trust me, you won't still get 15,000 miles on the stock filter after you go to veggie.

I'm gearing up to start/stop on biodiesel and switch over to WVO after everything warms up. That will drop my fuel cost from $.16/mile to under a penny a mile. Sweeeeeet...

Todd T

 

Parkland,

Like ToddT said go for it. Do lots of research and then plan your attack. Find an oil source and your set. Do you have a heated space to store your oil. In the winter if you don't things get tougher to deal with. If you don't have a heated place try to stock up.

I have 14,000 WVO miles on my 05 PSD now. My last tank of diesel lasted me 1507 miles .

consider electric heat for your colder climate so you can switch over sooner. No real need to heat the tank to 150 F you just need enough heat so the oil will flow. Same with the filter you will need a heated filter. Then nice thing about the PSD is the fuel travels in the nice hot heads on it's way to the injectors. I think they built this engine for WVO

 

What type of electric heaters are you talking about and where would you locate them in tank, on filter, fuel lines? I live in Michigan, so I'm pretty much in the same boat. I would be converting a somewhat more forgiving IDI engine, though. I figure even if there's no available supply of WVO I can purchase SVO at any supply warehouse and still be ahead of the game.

 

Our Vegtherm is an inline fuel heater. It splices into a supply fuel line.

All other heat is provided by engine coolant via Vormax filter heads and fuel pickups via the Hotfox fuel pickup

 

ToddT, you might try two 5 micron filters inline. The first will clog often but the second won't, and the oil is apparently much better filtered. Some guys on the Greasecar forum report over 10k miles on their WVO fuel filter when they do this. I figure it couldn't hurt. One guy says don't even bother with 5 micron/1 micron, just use two 5 microns. Might be worth a try.

 

Do you have a suggestion for a 5 micron spin on filter? I pre-filter to 5 micron through both bag filter (warm) and under sink type (cold). On the truck I filter to about 10 on a Luberfiner/Wix/Donaldson 1" 14 thread spin on filter. I have two filter heads and was going to do a final polish at 2 micron but I'm having trouble pre-filtering down that low.

I tried a 1 micron bag filter and it was painfully slow in a gravity flow.

Todd

 

I think the guy uses two whole house filters (5 micron) that he gets at Menards for around a buck each. He got his filter housings at Home Depot.