Well it all started out as a dream I had. I have allwas wanted to go to Alaska but fuel costs are so high it would take most of the money to just get there and back around $8000.00 just for fuel. I had heard about diesels running on veggie oil and started researching it. What I found out was that back in 1909 Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel to run on veggie oil. How ever veggie oil was not as abundant as diesel. So Rudolph changed the motor to run on diesel. (took the veggie heater off) today's diesel can run on veggie oil if you heat the oil to 170 or above. That's it! So if you start your diesel on diesel and get it warmed up to running temp about 195 degrees you can heat your oil this way. What I did was take the line that runs the hot water from the motor to the cab heater and cut into it. I then made a tank that has a bunch of pipes going back and forth through the tank. I hooked the tank in line with the hot water line. I fill the tank with old nasty veggie oil I get from restaurants and any one who will let me have it. When I get it I run it though a 40micron filter into that tank.Then I start the diesel and bring the motor up to temp and check the wvo tank to see if its over 170 degrees. When I know its above that I shutoff the diesel from the diesel tank and open the vales to the wvo tank. Now I'm running on wvo. When I get where I'm going before I turn off the motor I have to switch it back to diesel and run the lines clean so when I start back up it starts on diesel. It would start on wvo but the oil is so cold that it will make carbon in the cylinder walls because the wvo is to thick. when it is injected it comes out like rain drops that burn and become Carbon. If the oil is heated it is much thinner and runs like water so the injector now sprays a mist or fog so to say. When it burns it doesn't make the heavy corbin and plows it out the exhaust! No build up in the cylinders.This is what scares most people away from running wvo. They don't want to hurt there motor. How ever if you understand how wvo works and what has to happen for it to run right and for a long time. I have put 18000 miles on this diesel and had to change the fuel pump once. Then I put a booster pump from the wvo tank and it has been just fine. I needed to help push the wvo though the fillers and the diesel pump would not have to work so hard. I use 2 fillers before the wvo gets to the motor. One is 10 micron and the last one is 5 micron. I spend about $0.15 a gal to filter the oil.I'm sure theres better ways but this works for me. All I wanted to get was a trip to Alaska out of the motor and now it's still running and we use it for camping. I plan on going back to Alaska with it someday.. I'll tell you how the trip went if you like? How we went to find gold and what gold we got. We spent Jun and July up there in 2011!
Day 1
Ok so we left Murrayville GA on June first 2011 for Alaska loaded we everything I thought I would need to get us there and back.We had 600gal of waste veggie oil filtered down to 10 micron. That's 5000lbs of just wvo.Then we had a trailer with a trommel a Jeep Sahara 4 door that was full to the roof.It was like 8000lbs of jeep and stuff in the jeep!We had a 60gal water tank in the front and a 6800watt gennie next to it. There were two 4" dredges on the roof 2 metal detectors,20 cases of MRE's, 20 cases of water for drinking, spares tires for the trailer and bus, wet suites, and dive gear. We were around 39,000lbs when we left. It took everthing this 444 International (7.3) pusher could do to get going.We didn't even get to Dawsonville before it started to run hot 225 230. So we stopped at Autozone and got some Wet Water great stuff got the temp down to 205 210.So we stopped at Walmart and said our goodbys and got the last couple things we thought we needed and off we went down 53west. 65feet long and almost 40,000lbs. It was very slow going at first we could not get it over 25mph.I just kept telling myself it was going to get lighter as we go.We had started running on Wvo when we stopped at Autozone.I was so nervous but I didn't want my boys to be discouraged. The bus was going so slow and when we would hit a hill we would slow all the way down to first gear and only be able to go 15mph till we got to the top.I pulled over a couple times to let the train of cars go by and then start a gain.Cheryl didn't go with us but she followed us almost to Jasper.Now after about 3 or 4 hr of driving we started to settle in. we made it to 75 north and was moving right along at 55 60.Yes I had my foot on the floor all the time I was running on waste veggie oil and wanted to get lighter. Well there's this mountain on 75 that we hit at night.we went up in the truck lane with the trucks and they passed us going up. as we where coming down the other side, I saw smoke coming out the back when a car's lights would shine back there. i tried to get off the road but guess what, there's a guard rail all the way down to the bottom. There was no where i could stop till I got to the end of the guard rail. I stopped and went back to see what was smoking. If it was the motor or what! well it was a tire on the trailer! the keeper for the left spring was gone and the main spring turned and cut the side wall of one of the new tires. No big deal. My son Matt and I worked on it for a couples hours. All the keepers were gone on the spring so I took bailing wire and wrapped them to keep them in place. It worked great and didn't have a prob after that with them. John and Jerry, a friend that came with us, were sound asleep in thier bunks and never knew we had stopped to fix it. I drove on for the night. I planned on letting the boys do some driving while I got some sleep, but I was to excited and nervous to stop driving and sleep so I drove for the first 12hr. John was the first to take over driving around 10:00am Jun 2.
Day 2
He was 18 at that time and had never drove the bus or anything this big.I could tell he was nervous but I sat with him and talked to him, how he was doing a good job and it wasn't as hard as he thought it was going to be. After about 2hrs of him behind the wheel, I felt he had it under control so I went and laid down. I think i sleep for 4hrs and it felt like 5 minutes. I took back over driving and drove on for another 13hrs. By this time I had to sleep so we found a truck stop and pulled in so I could get some rest. Jerry said he was going to check the trailer lights and the boys were helping him so I slept.I got up about 6hr later to find that Jerry had been working on the trailer lights all this time with Matt and John. The wire had got pinched where the trailer hooks to the bus.Ok just so you under stand a school bus is not set up to tow anything so the lighting doesn't wire up right without a diode. I could not get Jerry to understand this. He had run another set of lights and wired them for stop lights so I had 4 sets of lights on the trailer. Don't ask me where I was at this time, I couldn't tell you.
Day 3
We started up the road and everything was running good. By this time, we were going through Illinois. Long rolling hills and flats. We were running out at top speed of 66mph. That's as fast as the governor on the motor will run 2500 to 2600RPM's. Everything was going good for about 350 miles when we needed to stop and just work some. Well every time we stopped the Wvo tank would get cool.So we would have to start on diesel. (Remember I wanted to have as much WVO with me as to not need to use my diesel. In Ga you are allowed to have up to 600gal of fuel on any truck. I was a little over but not for long) I would have to go about 100 miles to get it hot again. My mistake was making the heater tank so big. (100gal) A diesel dosn't make a lot of heat when its 45 degrees out and your going 66mph.I didn't put any insulation around it so it was just bare steel with the wind it could only get to 155 or 165 degrees.So when it got hot enough I didn't want to stop any more till i just had to.I know I had along way to go yet. Well wouldn't you know it about 300miles down the road and the wvo filter is plugged up and I have to stop to change it.That meant shutting down the Wvo to the motor and running the diesel to help keep the wvo tank hot. It had been running a good 180 190 degrees most of the time I was running 66mph. It just cooled off so fast when I would stop. John helped get the filter changed and we were on the road in 10 minutes.We ran about 30 miles and stop to switch it over to wvo. Well it was still a little cold and it didn't want to get over 50mhp. After about 20 more miles it started get hot and run back up to 66. So this time we drove for 19hr straight! We found a truck stop in South Dakota and pulled in for a rest.
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Topic: Running a Diesel on WVO wast veggie oil (Read 5986 times)
