This will be sort of a record of the results of blending tests that I have done 0ver the last several years along with any future testing.

The truck is a 1992 dodge B350 (2wd) cummins duely, king cab, automatic O.D. trans, non-lockup torque converter. It had 140 thousand miles when I got it, mostly freeway commuting of about 100 miles/day round trip. I am the second owner and the truck now has about 210 thousand miles on it. It was a bit dented up so I got a good deal on the price, there was also something about a divorce.

The truck is totaly stock except that I have added a cheap throw-away fuel filter in the fuel line, I have not made ANY other fuel system modifications yet, I did rewire the overdrive to a switch on the dash because I never could get it adjusted to shift like I wanted. I run a blend in the stock fuel tank whenever the weather temps are above about 50 degrees f.

Mostly I have run a blend of 50% diesel/50% WVO. This has performed just fine over the last 4 summers. The only problems, aggravations realy, has been from plugging filters with mostly tallow. Depending on the temperature of the weather and the temperature at which I filtered the oil I get 200-500 miles before The in-line filter plugs. I get about a miles notice of plugging before the engine will only run just above an idle, Need to find a place to pull off fairly quickly.

The first trip I took from illinois to arizona on oil I did not have the in-line filter installed. I plugged 8 $13-15.00 factory main engine filters in that first 1700 miles, Learned quick that $2.00 throw-away filters are cheaper. Since I installed the in-line filters (lost count of how many of these I have plugged)I have not had to replace the main filter, probably have around 50-55 thousand miles on this same filter.

As the weather cools I reduce the amount of WVO in the blends. I know it is time to blend more diesel when the truck Idles extremely slowly when being started the first time after cooling down all night. When I get the slow idle there will also be a hesitation when you first start to push down on the accelerator, the hesitation is only about a 1/4 second thing, just enough to make your heart jump. After the hesitation the truck accelerates like normal until you take your foot off the accelerator, then the idle drops so low you are afraid it is going to stall, then suddenly it jumps up to normal idle. This condition goes away in a few minutes when the engine warms up. If the truck does not cool down for a long time, several hours, it will start and run normaly all day. I just add a couple gallons of diesel to the tank and drive it at least a few blocks to mix everything up.

I did try running a 25% dsl/75% WVO blend on a arizona trip during a warm october a couple of years ago. I filled a 100 gallon bed tank with thi 25/75 blend but the main tank was still 50/50. It was a nice warm mid 70's temp when I left one morning. Got in to Oklahoma on the main tank of fuel. I did not have any fuel switching set up so I just ran a fuel hose from a 12 volt shurflo pump at the 100 gallon tank over the side of the truck and into the open main tank fuel filler opening, just plugged the pump into the cigarette lighter socket, sorta fun to drive along and watch the fuel guage go UP. The 25/75 blend ran fine while the engine was warm but I pulled over for a few hours nap someplace in west texas. The temp had dropped into the high 30,s, I fired up just after daylight and the best I could get was about 45 miles/hour. I didn't think about the temps so I changed a couple of filters before I realized it was a temp problem. I pumped in 20 gallon of diesel on top of 60-70 gallon of 25/75 blend and was running normally in under 5 miles.

I just today tried a 20% kerosine/80% WVO blend. The temps are in the mid 70's in the daytime but in the low 50's at night. It was 53 degrees when I started up this morning (6-19-05) and got the slow idle/hesitation situation so this is a bit too thick if a blend, I don't like the slow idle/hesitation, affraid it is being a bit hard on the injection pump.
After the engine warmed up the truck started and ran normaly all day. I made several stops of up to an hour with no change. I will add a gallon of kerosine to this blend and see how it reacts.

I am working on an electric fuel heater (12 volt, 4 seperate independantly switched 72 watt heater wires, total = 288 watt. Each heater wire = 6 amps - total = 24 amps, each heater wire will turn on seperatly if the oil is below 105-110-115-120 degrees f). This heater will go just before the in-line filter that is just before the fuel lift pump. It will hold 4 ounces of fuel, the same as the in-line filter. Hopefully this hot oil will warm up the filters and relieve the slow idle situation. If this works I will again try the 20/80 blend. It will be a few weeks before I try this heater.

I added enough kerosine yesterday to bring the blend to about 70% WVO/ 30% kero, Doing a cold start at 54 degrees this morning I still got the low idle and bogging. It was just slightly differant in that when I let off the accelerator the idle dropped for about 1/4 sec then returned to normal for about 1/4 sec then slowed again, did this about 4 times before the idle became normal.

I started out of town and it was acting as though the filter was plugging, could only run about 45 mph. I was only going about 5 miles and decided to try and get there before changing the filter. I slowly gained speed up to about 55 mph when I stopped for about 10 min. I let the truck idle over this time and when I took off again it ran fine.

I intended to add an electric facit pump at the tank anyway so I will also replace the small fuel line with 3/8 I.D. Unfortunatly I will have to drop the tank and replace the stock fuel line push-on snap connection with a larger hose barb style connection to do this. The larger fuel line and a pump pushing fuel rather than trying to pull fuel should help ??

I added more kero to get to about 60% WVO/40% kero, will see how it reacts tomorrow.

I am beginning to suspect that some of this problem is being caused by the stock 1/4 inch I.D. fuel line, just won't let thick fuel flow easily. I had to drop the fuel tank once to clean the internal fuel screen, this allowed me to see that the fuel return drops the warm returning fuel only about 1 inch from the fuel pickup. The return and pickup are both located in a sort of fuel "can" so the returning fuel can easily be picked up again. This can has plastic check valves in the bottom so if the tank is low and you turn a corner the returning fuel gets trapped in the can and you do not pull air into the fuel line. This all means that warm fuel is returning to the tank and warming more fuel at the same time it gets picked up to again to head back to the engine. I think this is part of the reason why the truck runs fine after about 10 min of running.

From prior testing I know that there is a bit more than twice the amount of fuel returned to the tank than the engine uses so quite a bit of heat is being put into this fuel pickup "can".

The temperature is now staying above 70 deg f, even at night. I am now able to succesfully run a blend of 60% WVO/40% kerosine with no problem.

outta curiosity what kind of filter is it that you are using? Brand and micron? I have recently purchased a 2002 Dodge, my intentions are to sell for profit. W/o a lotta mods would like to take advantage of your experience with the blend. Any helpful hints are appreciated.

I am on my first 5 gallon test blend of 85% WVo/15% gasaholl (90%rug/10% ethanol) - sorta. This was added to a couple of gallons of 50/50 dsl/wvo that originaly had a couple ounces of acetone blended into the 10 gallon batch, (no obvious change with the acetone). The only thing I can say about this wierd blend so far is that it is just a bit too thick at ambient temps below 75 degrees f. I get a hesitation just off idle and a very slow idle for about a second when letting off the accelerator. Once the engine is up to temp this situation goes away and all is normal. I have only run this blend down the highway one time but surprisingly it appears that the exhaust gas temp is actualy a few degrees cooler than with my standard 50/50 dsl/wvo blend ? More testing as I need fuel. (never have had a problem with wax from diesel in the 5 years of blending).

It was 54 deg f this morning when I fired up on the above blend -- UGG - a whole lot of shakin goin on,took a good 2 minutes before the fifth cylinder started to fire, another minute before #6 kicked in -- still ran ragid even after that. Just a bit too thick for this cool temp.

I had to hold a bit of accelerator to keep the idle up,good thing it has an automatic transmission,I had to use the other foot and drive with it on the brake to keep it from dying. Later in the day with the temp in the high 60's it still started ragid and had the slow idle and a stuttering hesitation when letting off the accelerator. I added some thinner blend consisting of 65%wvo/20%dsl/15%rug - I will see if this helps, supposed to be in the 50,s again tonight.

ironkitten -- which filter, cheapie is generic autozone in-line, main engine is whatever napa sells for the truck, haven't research the micron rating.

It was 54 deg f again this morning and startup was just as rough as before.

Once the engine came up to temp it ran fine. Even after a couple hours cooldown it still started fine and ran normal.

Got to do a throttle-down test for a few miles on the freeway, exhaust temp got up to 900 degrees f and the boost pressure topped out at it's max of 10 pounds pressure,surprisingly there was NO smoke when first hammering the throttle. When running diesel over the winter there was always a huge cloud of black smoke for about 1/4 mile when first flooring the accelerator ?

I have a 1999 freightliner with a 435 detroit, would I have any problems with the fat in the wvo clogging my injectors if i run a 50/50 blend?

It was around 67 degrees when I cranked it up on the above blend and a cold engine. Started fine and had just a slight 1/4 second hesitation upon acceleration/deceleration for the first couple of blocks driven, then ran normal. I will run this wierd blend down and then again make up a few gallons of the 75%WVO/15&gasaholl/10% diesel and see how it goes.

Had a bit of a plugging problem. Always when you are away from home... After changing out the in-line filter and then still stalling in traffic I changed out the main engine filter and again stalled in traffic, only one place left to plug - The in-tank fuel screen. Took a couple hours to jurry-rig a fuel line from the fuel tank filler spout to the fuel line, Dodge has an anti-roleover float ball valve in the filler spout so I had to pull the interconnect hose off of the filler spout to the tank. Only hose I had was a cheap garden hose so it took a bit of adapting to get it connected to the stock 5/16 o.d. fuel line. Runs great now..

I was going to drop the tank anyway to add 3/8 fuel line and a facet electric pump, unfortunatly The internal fuel pickup pipe is also 5/16 so it also requires reworking the internal fuel pickup. This is the second time this has happened, the internal screen is going by-by this time.

Don't think this had anything to do with the RUG blend as it is thinner than the 50/50 diesel blend ? If it is like last time there will be just a 1/32 inch layer of lard covering the screen.

75% WVO/15% gasahol(90% RUG/10% ethanol)/10%dsl blend is running fine so far, works ok down to 60 deg f, a bit thick at 54 deg f but doable if holding the accelerator just above idle. Runs fine once the engine gets to temp.

Turned out the fuel screen in the tank was not plugged, not sure why I couldn't get fuel through the normal tank fuel pickup ?

I removed the stock tank from the truck so I could run insulated heated fuel lines to a 100 gallon veg tank in the truck bed. While I had the stock diesel tank out I re-did the fuel pickup assembly and internal hose connections such that it now has a 3/8 clear flowpath. The stock in-tank fuel pickup will severly restrict fuel flow if the fuel is thick. On my 92 dodge the fuel line is less than 3/16 I.D. where the internal spiral plastic fuel hose connects to the push-on fittings. I replaced this entire assembly with a custon unit made from PVC water fittings, PVC pipe, and 1/2 inch I.D. fuel hose and fittings, now I have a 3/8 inch I.D. flowpath all the way from the bottom of the tank to the lift pump. This has eliminated the slow idle and bog when accelerating when the engine is cold. I also reworked the screen on the bottom of the pickup assembly, cut away the very tiny mesh screen on the bottom of this snap-on unit, cut a round piece of windowscreen wire that drops into the bottom of the screen unit, it is held in place by the plastic fuel canister. The spaces in the windowscreen are a lot larger (roughly 1/16 inch square) than the stock screen but will stop anything big enough to block the fuel line.

I also removed the extra in-line filter that I had installed as it was not heated and clogged in about 20 seconds on the first cold night, never even got out of the parking space, removed this extra filter and drove away just fine.. The stock fuel heater works ok at the temps I have encountered so far this winter. It was 31 deg f when cranking up this morning, no slow idle, no bogg, ran fine from fourth compression stroke to road speed on a blend of 50% veg/ 35% kerosine/15% gasahol plus 1 ounce each of acetone and true gum turpintine. The ethanol in the gasahol plus the acetone and turpentine seem to be keeping the hydrogenated oil and fats dissolved well enough that the stock electricaly heated (below 40 deg f) engine filter is not clogging with them while cold, once the engine heats up the filter appears to get warm enough to melt any fat it may have collected.

hey tim, i too have have been doing 50/50 (for about 5000 miles) 96 ram. i am in south florida and i think i am going to do 90 wvo/ 10 dino this summer. if i wasn't so lazy i would go 100%wvo with minimal heat maybe just a heated filter. i just wanted to ask you how you filter your oil? i am going down to 1 micro but i think it might be over kill.

Tim I 295000 miles on my cummmins 2000is bio no filter problems. infact I my changed filter today and cut it open that was awaste of money that filter was spot less. Imake my owen bio ifilterit through a 5 micron bag filer before It gets inmy cooker

bobva -- From what I have read, the oil does not have to be filtered nearly as well when making biodiesel as most of the crud falls out with the glycerin. I would expect that the main filter problem you would have would be due to cold temps causing the biodiesel to gell. there are lots of facters that deturmine the gell point, type and quality of oil being the largest contributor. If your source oil is not hydrogenated and is not used to fry meat and your local temps don't fall below freezing you may never have a problem.

cutakenta -- Filtering -- My current method is to do a rough filtering of the collected oil as it is moved from my vacuum collection tank into a wash/settling barrel, I run the oil through a couple layers of window screen to remove the chunks then through a couple of layers of womans stockings to catch the larger bits of breading from the batter used when deepfrying meat. I add 10% clean water to the oil and stir it into a nice peanutbuttered emulsion with a drill powered paint stirrer, this is kept above 70 deg f and allowed to settle for at least 7 days. Water gets absorbed by the food bits, they swell up, stick together, and drop to the bottom of the barrel as what looks exactly like pancake batter, this leaves very clean oil above the batter. Using the frypan bubble test for water I don't see any increase in the water content held in the oil, remove it all later with a flash evaoprator anyway.
From a full 55 gallon barrel I get 40-45 gallon of realy clean oil, 5-7 gallons of pancake batter, and a few gallons of clear water on the very bottom.
The clean oil is pumped from the top of the barrel over into a filtering barrel and is circulated through one 5 micron felt sealed water filter for at least 48 hours at a flowrate of about 1/2 G/M, this insures that all the oil passers through the filter at least 25 times. I filter at least 500 gallons of oil (not counting the circulation) before the filter need to be replaced.
The oil is dewatered through a flash evaporator as it is moved to a 275 gallon storage tank where it is slowly circulated through a 1 micron pollishing filter that runs continuously, takes about a week for the complete tank of oil to pass through this filter.

I have used the oil without any problems with only 5 micron filtering but 1 micron can't hurt. My filter plugging is due to the fat from the meat and cool temps causing it to drop out of solution as lard, the acetone and turpintine help to lower the temp at which this happens.

I am slowly adding a heated second tank system due to this agrivation, not too concerned as to getting the oil realy hot, just hot enough to keep it flowing through the system, will add electric heat to the steel line going into the injection pump and possibly later add electric injector line heaters, seem they help with better fuel ignition/combustion ?

I was moving around some of my blend tests yesterday and found that one of the tests using 5% used engine oil in a dr pepper biodiesel test had actualy dropped all the soot into the bottom of the 2 litr soda bottle, several other similar tests are still coal black ? This must have taken place slowly over the winter. This at least shows that the soot can eventualy fall out of the biodiesel (wish I new what was different with this test ?).
-- AFTERTHOUGHT -- After considering the early results of Methanol/UEO blend (doesn't blend) testing (see below) it may actualy be that ALL the UEO fell out of the biodiesel rather than just the soot, there is a distinct layer of what appearas to be soap/glycerin on the very bottom but there is about a 5/8 inch thick layer of black on top of this, this may be the entire 5% amount of the added UEO-seems too big to just be the soot ??

I have tried using water, soap, water-wetter (calgon dishwasher spot eliminator) in many combinations to help drop the soot, nothing worked at all. After a year there is a slight amount of soot layer on the bottom of a couple containers but the floating oil is still coal black - water does not work to clean UEO..

The biodiesel test got me to wondering if the soot would fall out of the used engine oil if it was thinned with solvent so I made up 3 tests, each one is a 50/50 blend with used engine oil, first with gasahol (gas + 10% ethanol), another using E85 (15%gas,85%ethanol), and another with 100% dry methanol.

Odd thing with the methanol, it DOES NOT blend with the used engine oil and almost immediatly seperates after being shaken in the container, This was meth from a new sealed bottle of yellow Heat. It seems to sort of congiel some of the heavier soot-laden oil. the black soot-oil slowly runs down the inside of the container but the meth does not seem to act as a solvent lowering the viscosity but seems to actualy INCREASE the viscosity of at least some of the UEO ??

the gasahol blend works exactly as you would expect a solvent, everything mixes into a much thinner liquid and turns jet black and stays that way, at least in these first few hours.

The E85 works as a solvent but seems to be clearing slowly from the top down, will take more time to see if everything stays blended as a thin liqued and the soot falls to the bottom or if the 50% UEO simply settles to the bottom half of the container with the E85 floating above it?

If solvent actualy will allow the soot to settle out I can either use the clear blend as vegoil blend material or possibly try to remove and recycle the solvent by distillation and use the clean UEO as feedstock for a veg/ueo plus whatever blend.

I am also considering trying a 2-tank setup on one of my gasoline engined trucks. I have several 1977 dodge ex-military pickups with 318 V8 engines. these have 2 barrel carborators and a fairly low factory compression ratio of about 8-to-1. I have succesfully run a 30% UEO/70% gasoline blend in these directly in the main fuel tank, no pinging problem, no increase in axhaust smoke (no catilitic converters or computers on these trucks). I am considering trying a much higher UEO ratio blended with E85, the octane rating of the low-octane UEO and the much higher octane E89 may balance out to an exceptable number and not cause excesive pinging ? The idea is to start on gas until warmed up, this will allow the intake manifold to become warm enough to vaporize the ueo/e85 blend well enough, I hope. I have an aftermarket Holly 4-barrel Projector throttle-body type fuel injection kit that may also work well with this idea ?

Results -- UEO/alcohol blends --

Methanol -- Sure did strange things, as stated above, it did not blend at all, seperated into a top 50% layer in about a minute and the UEO seemed to thicken considerably, when checking these tests today the Methanol was still on top, only slightly darkened from the black UEO -BUT- the UEO was gelled solid, turning the container on it's side in 80 deg f temps did not cause the UEO to flow at all.

E85 - 85% ethanol/15% gasoline -- This has also seperated into 50% layers with the bottom UEO layer gelled just as solid as with methanol,although the ethanol was very nearly as black as the UEO.

10% ethanol/90% gasoline = gasahol -- This is still blended into one thin black liquid, there is about a 1/4 inch of what seems to be soot on the bottom of the container but the fluid is still coal black so it looks like it will take a very long time before enough soot falls out of suspension for the black color to go away. I will do some lomg term tests on this that will sit undisturbed.

I wonder if the main reason that some of the biodiesel reaction tests done using verious amounts of UEO mixed with vegoil have the soot (probably actualy ALL the added UEO) drop out of solution and some do not has to do with the amount of excess methanol left in the biodiesel after the end of the reaction. This would account for why one of my tests finaly dropped all the UEO (and black color, biodiesel was only slightly darker than without the UEO) on top of the glycerin and others are still black and blended 6 months later. I have been blending multiweight UEO and WVO for years, it does not seperate, at least in tests that have set for over a year, new multiweight engine oil will seperate in a couple of months, the new oil ends up on the bottom.

I finaly have all the pictures of my fuel tank and fuel line mods to increase the fuel flow to 3/8 inch all the way from the bottom of the stock fuel tank to the lift pump, just need to get around to posting all this here in the future.

Tim, any more updates since June ?

Tim, where can I find those posted pictures?

Intersesting blog. Thanks for taking the time to document that. Was your biggest problem the small lines in the tank.

What blend do you now run in the winter?

Crap - I forgot all about adding the fueltank mod pictures, OOPPS.

Last fall I had what I thought was a huge air leak in either the 3/8 inch ID replacement fuel lines or someplace inside the tank, this occured just as it got cold so I ran all winter on a 100 gallon transfer tank in the back of the truck, just got around to dropping the stock tank about a month ago. I suspected that the replacement internal fuel pickup parts that I had made from PVC water pipe had melted due to my acetone additive but luckily this was not the case, the PVC showed no degridation of any kind after being submerged in blends for over a year (CAUTION - no biodiesel used, just veg blends, do extensive tests beforehand if you are going to use biodiesel). The problem turned out to be a clog of grey pasty plumbers-putty type stuff filling the three small openings in the center of the float valve that is inside the red fuel strainer section located at the very bottom of the fuel pickup canister.

This is a picture of the entire modified fuel pickup canister that has been removed from the fuel tank.

Current blends -- Nothing new here, warm-hot weather = 70-80% veg, 10% RUG, reminder diesel, as the weather cools I drop down to 50/50, then maybe 30/70. Still adding the acetone and true spirits of turpentine to all blends. I gave up trying to run cold blends below freezing, got tired of walking because of cold weather fuel plugups, got to finish the 2-tank setup.

1_-_complete_modified_fuel_pickup_unit.JPG (28 KB, 53 downloads)