4,000 Miles on WVO Update
I drove about 4,000 miles on my single-tank PlantDrive system. The system uses a very large Racor filter. It is rated for I believe up too 4000-7,500 miles on very polished oil (read clean!) at a replacement cost of $33 a piece if you buy 3 at a time it is not a bad solution for people who want a simple hands off system and who live in a warm climate. At 7500 miles on a filter that is $0.66 cents for every hundred miles. Understand though that if you are using poorly filtered oil these filters will clog MUCH sooner. Mine became clogged around 2500 miles. Some of this clogging may have been due to the SVO-blend in my tank ‘cleaning’ some of the 24 years of Diesel crud from the tank. The oil I was using was by my standards clean but not as clean as I suspect would be recommended for max filter life. It was heat-settled for a month and filtered to 20 micron.
Unfortunately for me when the filter clogged, it clogged FAST. I was driving between Reno and Elko Nevada in January. Anyone who has made this drive can attest that not much exists here but 80 mile stretches of absolutely nothing littered with fantastic views. I found myself on the side of I80 in a driving wind cutting hoses in an attempt to by-pass to my Racor filter that clogged up with only 15 minutes notice of reduced throttle response.
I made it to Elko where I was able to install the new filter that I pre-filled with straight #2 Diesel and all was good from there. The rest of the driving was uneventful with the system performing amazingly well considering the weather.
Tags: Expenses, Mileage Reports, Travel, Troubleshooting