WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

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fcp
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Picked up my new 300TD yesterday - runs brilliantly on regular diesel (vehicle is generally in great mechanical/ structural shape too - another post though).. It did 450Ks without trouble until the tank ran dry this PM, then switched to the WVO tank...

What a piece of junk... really why would anyone do such a terrible thing to it?

Its not that it wouldn't run on it.. but it lost all of the refinement and quite a bit of power for about 100 miles.. then spluttered and died. Started again after a few minutes.. no idea what was wrong, but I don't care it's being ripped out tomorrow.

Like 'eco' and 'fairtrade' everything there's no substitute for the real thing.

axel
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

ben ,i had a g wagen with a tank full of 'bio diesel' here that was rotted (fubar) i decided (bad idea) that i would use all the fuel in the farm tractors and my excavator -big mistake i had big time fuel problems for quite some time afterwards ,they pulled all the dirt through the lines from the prefilters ?? poor starting and smoking at tickover . i used the whole lot up during the haymaking season and have sworn to never let any of this near another diesel engine again ,all the engines are now fine running back on proper diesel .

fcp
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

Yup Mike.. The way I figure.. Rudolf Diesel might have designed his engine to run on Penut oil, but Mercedes Benz didn't. 

I can't for the life of me think why anyone would think it was a reasonable thing to do having experienced it myself.

At the end of the day, if you can't afford to put the right fuel in, buy something cheaper to run!

 

 

SierraTango
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

Did you actually do any research beforehand? I run svo on a vw and have no problems but it does require forethought and knowhow. 

fcp
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

No - I didn't buy it for the WVO system, the vehicle just happened to have it fitted and I had always thought it would get pulled.

As I say, I can't imagine why anyone would put up with it. 

AFAICS, wven when properly adjusted, it's messy, lowers performance and is a total hassle to actually use (switching between diesel and VO, what a PITA). The car stinks of diesel too.

Worse still, poorly adjusted, fed on poorly filtered or otherwise poor quality VO,  it has the potential to wreck even the otherwise bulletproof 617. God knows what it must do to lesser engines.

What's not to hate?  

I don't accept the evidence for AGW and so the environmenal argument  is irrelevant and I can afford to run it on the correct fuel - and if I couldn't there would be no shame in that, I'd simply run something else.

Frankly - I''m looking forward to tearing it all out tomorrow and burning it slowly on a bondfire of old tires and engine oil wink

 

LEEU
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

Something must be wrong with the fuel you had in there, because I must have done 200k+ miles on unprocessed used oil without any problems. I just added 10% heating oil, and even in -20’C didn’t have any problems.

 

We’ve got a notorious hill, Rualtt hill around North Wales where my GDS 300 would only do about 60mph at the top, on the veggie stuff it did just over 55, so not much difference in power.

 

I paid 39p/l delivered to a 1000L tank at my house, so I just filled up us normal.

 

Other cars I ran on it were E320, 617 turbo, Corsa 1.7, OM606 – NA and Myna pump, and I never had any problems, apart from having to change the filter after putting it in first time due to it cleaning your system.

 

In fact, when I bought my fist 300D as a donor car for a G, it was sooooo lazy, and everybody said it needed injectors, it was tired, new pump, etc. so I put some veggie through it and within a tank it was sorted and purred like a kitten. 

prwales
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

I happily ran my 617 on a blend of diesel and fresh cooking oil with no problems at all, but vegetable oil will deteriorate over time.

SierraTango
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

I actually find I get a bit more power if anything, the hill to my house requires me to change down to second normally but even with 50% svo I can happily chug my way up in third. I don't have a seperate tank and mix in the normal fuel tank. I'm wondering if your system with a seperate tank has a pre-heater and whether it's working? The viscosity of oil can cause some running problems, thats why most people mix with diesel. On a long run I just whack in svo with no diesel and it'll run all day with no problems whatsoever but I do prefer to have some diesel to begin with. 

 

fcp
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Re: WVO - You gotta be kidding me, people put up with this?

To be honest I don't know whether it was working/ installed or functioning corectly or not.. I just ripped the whole thing out and put it back to factory spec.

 Like all these things, I understand that they *can* work.. I just honestly wonder why people bother with them given the potential for trouble, general mucking around and unreliability.