GreaseDrive

This morning bright and early we began doing a ‘warm weather’ dual tank conversion on my uncles 240D. The car is virtually identical my 240D I am currently selling on ebay here: 240D Ebay Link Wish me luck on this auction! :)

I say its a warm weather conversion because he lives here in the high desert of Nevada. Now it does get cold in winter. He might even get a few days of below freezing temps. But for the most part he does not have to worry about the kind of weather conditions I do in the mid-west and up north. In the southwest single tank conversions are much more common but I am of the belief that vegetable oil should never be used as a cold starting fuel. My first conversion was a single tank, and I could start it up easily on straight veggie oil even in the low-mid 40’s. Now I had to wait several minutes for the system to warm up enough to give me adequate power but it worked.

The only way to really make single tank work when it gets into colder temps (Lets define colder as mid-50’s or below) is to blend the veggie oil with normal Diesel. (Biodiesel can gel/thicken up too!) Granted unless it was ‘REALLY’ cold outside (below 20’s) a 50/50 blend in a single tank would probably suffice. But see what is happening here… Lots of IF’s and Maybes. That is not good enough for me. I want to be running on pure veggie as long as I possibly can as quickly as I possibly can with no blending. I am not trying to knock on single tank conversions. But the more and more research I do the more and more I become convinced that starting and stopping the engine on the fuels it was designed for is the only way to go. It makes the conversion obviously more complicated. But when it is done right it makes your car more reliable, better in adverse weather and could possibly increase your engine life. Don’t forget veggie oil contains all sorts of acids/compounds/fats etc etc. Not found in normal diesel. It is still unknown what kinds of effects letting that veggie oil sit cold in your engine/injection pump for days/years could have on component longevity.

Sorry for the long-winded paragraph but we are just scratching the surface here. I am not a tribologist, nor a professional diesel/injection pump mechanic. I learn new things every day so do your own research and try to draw upon a large pool of good minds.

System Overview:
We are going to use his stock fuel tank as the veggie tank and add a small 8 gallon fuel cell for diesel to start and stop the car. Fuel cell is going to go into the trunk inside a fender well. We are going to reuse the steel fuel lines under the car and extend them into the trunk essentially keeping the stock diesel system the same just moving the tank farther back. We are going to use a wrap of coolant hose around the stock tank to add a small degree of heat (for the coldest days) and use a heavily insulated Hose-on-Hose line to the stock fuel tank from the engine bay. This will serve to add heat to the veggie oil soon as it is pulled from the tank. We are using a PlantDrive Racor filter housing to pre-heat and filter the oil. A standard Ford fuel selector valve for switching between tanks. A 12v Vegtherm in line heater to add more heat to the system and a looped return on the veggie line. A control panel will be installed where the ash-tray used to be. That is basically it.

Here is the engine bay before we touched anything. Gotta love how simple it all looks, To me anyway!

Here is the insulated Hose on Hose connection that will run from the engine bay to the stock fuel tank. It will be nicely tucked away once it is installed into its final location.

Here I am using a small section of 3/8″ fuel line I cut down its length to act as a grommet to keep future fuel lines from rubbing on the bare metal. This hole will be used for the fuel lines that run to the new fuel cell in the trunk.

Many, MANY more pictures and posts to come on this project.

I drove again today,  this time 10 miles across town and after the drive before I switched to diesel my temp was only 139F,  Much too low even with my looped return and 12V heater.   I am going to have to dig into this tomorrow.  I wonder what could make a good insulator for all the hoses.  Normal pipe wrap is much to thick.   Any ideas?

Here is a basic layout of my current WVO system designed for Dumpster Fill. Meaning I needed a system robust enough to handle unprocessed/unfiltered/untreated or un-settled WVO. Literally pump/scoop or pour raw WVO into my grease tank and drive.

The Car: 1984 Mercedes Benz 300DT Turbo Diesel @ 103k miles.

The system is a mix between GoGreenEarly.com and PlantDrive.com components with a few custom twists.

Important System Components:
a) Custom ‘20mm Ammo Can’ 8.5 Gallon Grease Tank of GoGreenEarly design (entire top can be taken off)
b) Hose-In-Hose grease input line
c) GoGreenEarly Heated Dual-Filter Housing
d) Off the shelf ford dual-tank switching valve
e) PlantDrive 3-way Valve for Looped-Return
f) PlantDrive VegTherm 12V 3/8″ hose in-line heater

Numerous other small tweaks and modifications.   The whole point is to get the grease in the tank as hot as possible as soon as possible and keep it hot until it gets into the injection pump just like with most WVO systems.   A in-tank large particle filter catches heavy items such as fries and chunks of food.  The dual filters on the heated housing catch everything else.   Using a Hose-in-Hose fuel line allows you to prevent gelling in the fuel lines under the car.  Effectively allowing me to burn even hydrogenated oil in the dead of winter.

Many concerns exist about dumpster-fill.  Such as suspended water, fats, tannins and possible contamination.  A growing number of people issue concern over something called ‘Cativation’.  In short it is the process of tiny droplets of water suspended in the oil boiling explosively in the chaotic zones of positive and negative pressure inside the Injection Pump.  These micro-explosions may have enough power to pit and scar the metal surfaces inside the IP.  Causing wear that will act like Erosion.   A very large number of people still doubt its over-all risk in WVO systems it is something I am keeping a close eye on.

Considering that when I dumpster-fill I am not doing any pre-tank filtering at all.  I do NOT advocate dumpster-fill as the safest way to protect your engine while running WVO.   Infact I feel is much more risky and should only be done when you accept the risks.   I do believe however that the system I am running will allow me to reduce some of the risks.  The heated tank gets up to 160F causing water to evaporate and steam off or sink to the bottom of the tank to be cleaned out later.

So far this system has proven to be very robust,  I have logged over 20,000 miles almost exclusively on dumpster-fill.   Obviously when I am able to I heat and filter before running I will.  But it is nice to have the freedom to just drive.   It remains to be seen if in another 20k I will have to face a Injection Pump rebuild.

I will go into much more detail soon with numerous pictures of the system and how it works.  But its a beautiful day outside and I hope to go take some pictures!

At 103,000 miles or so shortly after I first purchased this car I purchased a Single Tank kit from PlantDrive.com.   Including the Vormax filter housing and the VegTherm 12v in-line heater.  The kit arrived quickly in the mail and I began the install.

A single tank system typically uses your original/stock fuel tank for the WVO or WVO blend and all additional filtering/heating happens typically under the hood.  The PlantDrive system is in my opinion one of the better kits out there from a single tank perspective.  I have read many good things about Elsbet but at a price of over $2,000 and shipping vital parts of your car overseas put its into a category all to its own.  My experiences and this blog are from a more hands-on,  low-budget but still give a damn perspective.   At the time of my purchase the complete cost of the conversion was around $900.

My uncle and I did the conversion in the late fall in southern Nevada.  The weather was in the 70’s during the day dipping into the low 40’s at night.  The conversion was straight-forward and only had a couple hurdles which we overcame when we read the instruction manuals better.   The single Tank Plant Drive system is basically hands off once it is installed.  No switches or in-cab gauges to watch.   I ran this conversion for approximately 4,000 miles.

Advantages of single-tank:

Low-Cost,  less parts/switches/hoses/wires and only one fuel tank
Ease of use,  in warm climates
Easier/faster Install
Does not clutter your engine-bay as much

I switched to Dual-Tank after driving on the stock single-tank plant-drive system for approximately 4,000 miles in November/December of of 2007.  In a single tank system the colder it gets outside the more normal #2 Diesel you need to blend into your fuel.  Typically if it is getting into the 20’s and 30’s at night it is recommended you blend up to 50% normal diesel into your fuel.  Keeping it blended well is a challenge in itself and I recommend you put a couple gallons of diesel with a couple gallons of veggie into a gas can and shake it vigorously before putting it into your tank.  Yes it will still stratify or seperate out over time it works MUCH better then just adding them to your tank pure.

I drove the single tank kit through northern Nevada, Utah and Wyoming during December.   Using only about a 20% Diesel blend.  To this day most people I talk too think it was crazy I did not get stranded considering how terrible the weather was (blizzard conditions,  below 20 degrees, strong winds)  But I essentially did not shut the car off for 36 hours.  I made it with out any issues and arrived in Denver Late one night.  The next few days I got my education about Single-Tank in cold environments.   The Denver winters are brisk,  below 20F at night and into the high thirties during the day.   Even at a 50/50 blend I was having terrible trouble starting my car.

Most of this is because my car does not have a block heater,  and I am certain the glow plugs are faulty/weak.  The car is from California and a block heater was never installed.  After replacing the Glow Plugs and buying a oil pan heater I was able to start the car but it was still very difficult.  In Denver I met up with Kirby,  Owner of GoGreenEarly.com.   A friend of a friend contacted him when I was having trouble getting my car going.  Shortly after meeting I decided to go check out his shop and his SVO Systems.   We soon worked out a deal in exchange for my web-design services he would help me design a new Dual tank system for my car, effectively allowing me to use almost any kind of grease in almost any climate.

This my hybrid system was born,  I am now running a custom Dual-Tank system designed for Dumpster fill.

Advantages of Dual-Tank

No blending of fuels, using almost 100% WVO even during winter
Works in even sub-zero winters
Allows you to keep your stock Diesel system mostly unmodified
Dirtier Grease can be used if your grease tank has easy access for cleaning

This is only a smart part of the pros of using a Dual Tank system,  suffice to say it allows you to burn much more WVO in much worse conditions.  However Dual Tank is a considerable amount more expense and takes longer to install.   A good system parts and labor can and almost should costs upwards of 2,000.    Granted this is almost as much as the Elsbet single tank system.   But even that system requires you to blend and in fact I am uncertain if that system is even approved for WVO at this time (I think it is designed for Bio Diesel)  Though many people use it for WVO.

Sorry for all this information to be a bit dis-jointed and confusing I am trying to sum up months of information into simple posts I have time to write!  In the follow posts I will go into more detail about my current system and its operation.

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.