I have recently been playing with Vegetable oil as a fuel.
I had some experience with my XJ600 Diesel bike. That was fitted with a Yanmar L100 clone, which is a direct injected 400CC single cylinder diesel. That type of engine is not ideal for running on vegetable oil, as fuel gums up the rings when it hits the cold cylinder walls.
The new diesel bike has a Kubota D850 engine. This is an INdirect injected diesel. As a result, diesel is injected into a prechamber, which is nice and hot, the fuel then vapourises and gets sucked into the combustion chamber. This means that the engine is much more tolerant of fuels of different thickness etc, and also means that ring gumming is not so much of a problem.
I also have a Mercedes E300 Turbodiesel as a runabout. This cost me £280 so is ideal for testing various fuel mixtures on it!
I am currently testing waste vegetable oil (or WVO). I prepare this by pouring it into a 100 liter drum, through a 10 and 5 micron filter sock, 5 liters of petrol is also added per 100L of WVO.
Once its in this barrel, it stays there for a week to settle. A tap is then used to drain the bottom 1L or so of rubbish that settles, and the rest is then ready to use.
My initial experiments with both the vehicles have been good. The E300 TD with the OM606 engine runs really well on this mix. It is imperative to ensure there are no air leaks in the fuel system of this engine, ideally before you start putting WVO into it, as they will only get worse on the thicker fuel. Replace all the O rings (including shut off valve o ring) on all the clear pipes before the pump. Also ensure that your strainer (both tank and prefilter) are clear.
Once all done, you have an engine that sounds like this:
and starts pretty well (with one glow plug dead):
The Kubota D850 is pretty much the same, here is a warm start and cold start:
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Hi GuysI have a 55 plate kia sorrento 2.5 diseel with 24000 miles on clock.The problem i have is that it keeps cutting out,and it is instant just like turning the ign off, but it allways restarts after about 15/20 seconds. There is no pattern to this at all it might do it after 12 miles or 212 miles at any speed or condition the only time it seem to be worse was when i tryed towing my caravan (scary) i had to cancell holliday then it hapend about 5 times in about 30miles.when this problem started about the secound or third time the warning light came on,so i thought the kia main dealer would be able to read the code and sort the problem (wrong) they said it was reading 2 codes p1693 & p1188 they said the fuel pressure was wrong and the first place to look was the fuel filter, whitch they showed me & it was dirty so they replaced it, they allso sugested the fuel pump could be faulty (low pressure in tank pump) since the fuel filter did not cure it i then had the pump replaced still no good, so they had it back in again this time they said a fulty wiring multy plug whitch they repaired still no good. somebody sugested cranshaft sensor so i replaced it and guess what yep sill no good. it has now been sugested it could be fuel rail pressure sensor ??. i have now spent over a3500 and got no results & that is main dealer, i cant afford to take it back and keep trying these things.Because it is not showing any fault codes & you cant get it to stop on camand every body is just guessing ?.Can you please Help as i dont know were to go from here.(ps sorry for going on but i wanted to give you all the info). Thanks Dave
Hi Dave
It sounds as though you have a rail pressure fault. This is not likely to be caused by the Crankshaft position sensor so you can rule that out.
The most common causes are the pressure control valve, or the high pressure pump. If the control valve sticks, the car will cut out when rail pressure is incorrect. If the high pressure pump cannot keep up with demand and rail pressure drops, it will also cut out.
A faulty injector will also caused rail pressure faults if it is leaking off the pressure through the leak off pipes. Get it to a good diesel specialist and out of the main dealer and you will get it sorted!
Alex