I've just aquired a 25 year old Landrover diesel, and after reading a bit in books have experimented with using veg oil-it ran beautifully on a 50:50 mix of rapeseed oil/DERV, but recently expensively broke while running on straight rapeseed oil-I then looked around the web and read of CAV pumps having problems-doh! Could someone run me through where I went wrong-I have read problems come from impurities, but I was using food-grade oil, so I would have though it was very clean. So, if it was due to the higher viscosity, what should I do. I could easily rig a fuel heater, but then the pump seems to hold a lot of fuel inside-this wouldn't be heated on initial startup. So can I inexpensively lower the viscosity-eg add some petrol to thin it out, or would the fuel not lubricate the pump well? I am keen to use SVO because it is cleaner as well as cheaper, but don't want to keep breaking pumps! Any comments would be appreciated-I really know very little of the pitfalls.

What broke on your pump? Was it part of the high pressure injection stuff or the service pump? Did the mechanic or rebuild tech specify? Might it have been coincidental, ie, not SVO related but just an age related failure? I have a 300 Turbo diesel mercedes and am not intimately familiar with your pump.

In order to keep the underhood plumbing simple,I heat everything going into the primary fuel filter (bio, SVO, petro).

In Florida the SVO tends to be fluid enough to start the engine on BUT it is obvious by listening to the engine that all is not normal under the hood...it is WAY TOO QUIET! (My translation: the cold oil sprays incorrectly, poor combustion results, and the engine does not develop the high cylinder pressures that cause the lovely diesel clanking sounds.)

So I start the engine, allow it to idle until warm (dum de dum dum dum!) and then drive off. If I plan to get in a hurry next morning, I switch over to diesel upon shutdown. I will preheat oil electrically on really cold (?)days (two 5000 watt heating elements in tank run at one-fourth power).

For those persons using anything other than the Frankenmonster (Bosch) injection pump, I'd recommend heating the oil up as far as possible before introducing it to the injection pump.

As far as I know, something has seized the high pressure pump-I had a quick peek inside, and saw chips out of the rotor-at the minute I'm looking for a replacement (a genuine landrover one is 715 pounds plus tax!). It might be a coincidence that the pump failed-the engine seemed to run well on SVO before it broke. I think I am going to rig up a heat exchanger and a glowplug heater. I wondered if anyone had tried thinning SVO with something like petrol-I would have thought only a small amount would lower the viscosity quite a bit. I make methyl esters to use as fuel (I used to work in a lab analysing vegetable oils), but would rather not, as the methanol would make the fuel a lot more expensive to produce.

Bushman, go back to the menu page for this forum (SVO) and at the bottom of the page type the word kero in the find box.
There are lots of interesting topics listed and I think Uli's entry about washing may be of interest to you.

Tilly SBC/IBA

Thanks for the info-I think I may try an SVO/paraffin mix, and try a small heat exchanger in addition. I think I will be very careful though-an exchange pump is going to cost 200pounds-no Christmas for me! If it works though, I should recoup the cost fairly quickly-fresh oil from a supermarket is half the price of DERV. Anyone know of a less vunerable type of pump which would fit a Landy?

Look back through the previous posts. There is a discussion covering this exact problem. I know it was my pump that failed.

Cheers

I just looked back and found the page it is on.

The topic is called "CAV Problem" and it is on Page 7

Cheers

Thanks for the pointers. i won't be able to investigate my pump failure very much, as I think I will be getting an exchange unit-so I will need to keep the old unit in one piece. However, the vane pump in the end of the pump seems to function very smoothly. When the unit failed, I had started up about 2mins earlier, and started to drive to work-I was doing 30mph in top gear, and the engine just died, as though I'd pulled the stop knob. When I took the pump off on Monday to take to a specialist, I found that the driveshaft that goes from the camshaft to the pump had snapped-bingo! I thought-the extra viscous cold oil (about 10 deg C) meant the pump had to work harder, and had snapped the shaft. However, the actual pump is seized solid as well, so I suppose the extra back-pressure in the returns line and injector lines was just too much. If I can find a Bosch pump as a direct replacement, I'd rather do that, but I'm not sure where to start.
On a different note, you fellas are very helpful-the tips and pointers are much appreciated.

I have assisted my Dad with using Vegetable oil as a diesel substitute for running his car.

Before the vegetable oil goes into your vehicle, you need to filter the vegetable oil. There should also be a 2nd fuel tank put in the vehicle and a solenoid valve to switch from the diesel tank to the vegetable oil tank. The Vegetable oil has to be heated that will be used as fuel. The heated vegetable oil will pass through the filter much easier and greatly reduce the load on the pump. The oil is heated to about 170 F which is a little above 75 degrees Centigrade. The source for heating the fuel is the engine coolant. My father has his 1985 Volkswagen Golf diesel running on used cooking oil with out any problems. Dad uses a filter that restaurants use to filter his oil for the 1st filtration, before it goes into the fuel tank. He also has 25 micron spin on filter for the 2nd filtration that he put inside his vegetable oil fuel tank.

There is a book that you should order called From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank 3rd Edition by Joshua Tickel.
Especially read very carefully chapter 9. This shows how to do the plumbing in your fuel system to convert to vegetable oil. At the beginning of the chapter there is a graph showing the correlation of temperature and viscosity of vegetable oil compared to diesel fuel. This chapter also shows the Hose with in a hose to heat the oil. I do not reccomend using polyethylene tubing like it shows in the book. Metal tubing transfers the heat much better. Adding gasoline (Petrol) to lower the viscosity is probably not a good idea.

Dad's 1st test for using a vegetable oil fuel tank was made from an old cooler. It only held about 3 gallons. Dad is now working on his 3rd vegetable oil fuel tank that has a capacity of 13 gallons.
I hope that this is of some assistance.

Chris

You can find the book on the internet at www.veggievan.org

hi - how many miles did you do with CAV.

Just an idea - but my CAV pump pushes 5 or 6 times as much fuel as is actually used by the engine - that's a hell of a lot of fuel. If your extra from injector pump and leak-back still goes all the way back to the tank, that's a lot of work pushing and pulling fuel. Such work could be tested by putting in a vucuum/pressure guage although I haven't bothered. On my motor, the 'waste' fuel goes back in a circle direct to the pump intake - so only what is used gets pulled through the filter and lines - and no problem with air bubbles mentioned elsewhere. Don't know if that will actually help with CAV - expect mine will blow up anyway (several K done on 50/50 or 60/40 oil/diesel)

[This message was edited by andy on 10 November 2001 at 06:01 PM.]

Try doing a search on www.beamends.
The chap who runs this site is a Landrover Breaker
specialising in early series Landrovers. I know he has several diesel engines in and he is ok on price.

If you need any more advice on landrovers Post me an 'e' mail address