Anyone had any luck blending SVO and unleaded gasoline for a SVO use that does not require a heater? I live in a warm climate, southern CA, a number of years back i started experimenting with an 80% SVO to 20% unleaded blend right into my fuel tank, no heating. maybe even blend this with a little BioD or Diesel. Anyone else doing this with success? I stopped my experimentation to early to really form an opinion.

I have said this before,about a yr ago, let us make a list of how many engines are destroyed by alternative fuels, like biodiesel,
SVO
used vo
also ATF used crankcase oil,
last but not least, regular ULSD
and any others.
it would be interesting to see the results of such a study.
seems as tho,on this site at least, not many destroyed engines show up!!
Ron

I've read no more than 15% gas is recommended.

quote:

on this site at least, not many destroyed engines show up!!

Nor on any other sites I've seen. Some people have years of running fuel blends and have no engine damage or any problems at all.

Like most other "urban legends" it comes from people with NO personal experience parroting "something" they heard or read "somewhere". Unless real proof is provided I treat it all as fantasy and don't believe anything else they claim to know about.

Works for me. Full vehicle and blending history HERE.

quote:

Originally posted by mattywest2000:
Anyone had any luck blending SVO and unleaded gasoline for a SVO use that does not require a heater? I live in a warm climate, southern CA, a number of years back i started experimenting with an 80% SVO to 20% unleaded blend right into my fuel tank, no heating. maybe even blend this with a little BioD or Diesel. Anyone else doing this with success? I stopped my experimentation to early to really form an opinion.

I find the language in this post and the way it is written more than a little suspect.
If you had taken the briefest moment to read the threads on this section of the forum you would see the answer to your question is plainly obvious.

You are not one of the formerly banned "Blending Phsycos" are you?
Somehow, I smell a Jeffery in the room.

If you are legit, take the time to read the posts on this section of the forum so you can answer your own basic questions.

quote:

Originally posted by ronbros:
I have said this before,about a yr ago, let us make a list of how many engines are destroyed by alternative fuels, like biodiesel,
SVO
used vo
also ATF used crankcase oil,
last but not least, regular ULSD
and any others.
it would be interesting to see the results of such a study.
seems as tho,on this site at least, not many destroyed engines show up!!
Ron

Would it be possible to specifically include engines damaged through Coking?
I have asked repeatedly for evidence of that from those that make out it is such an inevitable end for engines running SVO but so far the only thing that has been shown is a picture of a piston from an unknown source and unverified engine.

If Coking is the terrible and rampant problems some here make it out to be, I'd like to see some evidence that must be out there everywhere from all the vehicles that must be piled high in wrecking yards that have succumbed to the problem.

Tim
thanks for the very incitful information. does the acetone and pure gum spirits help prevent coking? i am running an '84 2.4L toyota diesel. anyone have any thoughts on how these blends might perform in that?

DCS,
I dont know who jeffery is and am not familiar with the "blending pycho"....i have been making my own BioD for some time now but am new to this forum. I havn't really participated in a biodiesel forum since the old veggievan forum of 10 years ago. Back then the whole forum seemed to be filled with "basic questions." I guess everyone's an expert now...

I am still hesitant to start blending in my new (to me) Mercedes G350 but am wondering why Nathan says to "Do it with any engine but a Mercedes" Doesn't it recommend the use of RUG in the manual up to something like 15%? I would look it up in my manual but it is in German! If this is true than why not blend rug with WVO? I just emptied about 20 gallons of old rug (not too stale) out of one of my cars in my shop so I think I am going to try about 5-10% in my blends without any heat. I am thinking about maybe 50% wvo/40% diesel/10% rug for the rest of the winter.When it warms back up again I am going to go with more like 75%wvo/15%diesel/10%rug. I ran similar blends in my old 6.2 diesel but quit using the rug when the weather got warm because it was a heated system so I stuck with wvo/diesel blends only.
Any comments on this?
Rusty

Click on anyone's name to view recent messages they've posted.
By looking at other messages posted by different members it was very easy to see who was providing credible information based on experience and who was simply blowing smoke.

I think the " Do it an any engine except a merc" comment may have been tongue in cheek. Merc engines are universally regarded to be the toughest, most reliable engines around.

The manual for the 123 Mercs SUGGESTS up to 30% RUG in DIESEL in very cold climates (-20o C it think it was). In practice, I have found ratios 20% and over are prone to creating Vapor lock by the RUG boiling out in the fuel lines/ pumps in summer or heated systems. As such I suggest a max of 20% on unheated systems and in winter and 5-15% in warmer climates or with heating. A 10% blend in summer should be workable in most temperate locations.

Depending where you are you may be able to up the RUG somewhat on your suggested blends and cut out the Dino. I have found RUG even in straight Bio in winter helps with starting as well as lowering the gel point a worthwhile amount.

I have started adding 5% rug to the oil in my 2 tank system as I am finding it aids performance and possibly makes for cleaner running as I believe I am noticing slightly less smoking at the lights.

In summer I have been running a straight 10% Rug blend and have had no problems with it but be prepared to tune the blend to the tailoring conditions and pay attention to not only how the vehicle starts from cold but also how it runs when fully up too operating temp as both conditions are significant.

Acetone and Spirits Of Turpentine -- These both reduce the surface tension of the verious components of the blend, they help keep the animal fats and hydrogenated oil that is dessolved in a warm blend from solidifying and falling out of solution to around 15 degrees f cooler temps as the blend cools. They do seem to cause a very sharp cut point in the temp where the oils will solidify out of the liqued blend, My truck started and run fine on a dead cold engine start one night when it was 24 deg f but I didn't even get out of the parking space the next night when the temp was 17 deg f, the fats had solidified and fallen out of the blend and ended up on the bottom of the fuel tank, this almost solid grease got sucked into the fuel filter and clogged it almost instantly.

I have never read anything about these additives reducing coaking, they may help a tiny bit by thinning the fuel a bit so it ignites and burns more completely in the cylinders.

Coaking -- Need to define what you mean by this as there are more than one problem that I have seen referred to as "coaking", are you referring to simple soot in the cylinders or are you referring to "ring coaking", soot is not that big of a problem, high engine loading or an occasional "Italian Tuneup" will burn and blow most of this out of the engine (huge fog of black exhaust smoke for a few seconds followed by clearing), water injection fogged into the air intake has been discussed as being an effective way of keeping the cylinder space clean. Ring coaking is something more serious, this is hard fuel deposits that end up behind the piston rings, it fills the ring movement space so the piston rings don't move normally in there groves, this causes poor cylinder sealing and allows combustion gasses to blow past the rings, this causes lowered compression as well as allowing fuel leakage into the engine lube oil. My understanding of ring coaking is that it is the result of unburnt fuel condensing on the inside of the cylinder wall and then finding its way behind the rings where it bakes into the hard coal deposits. The only positive way that I have read of to reliably remove these solid deposits is to pull the pistons out of the engine and mechanically scrape the deposits out of the ring groves.

I must say, I have never read even one post indicating any vehicle engine actually had a verified "ring coaking" problem, I have read a few posts indicating a lower than spec cylinder compression but they almost always then say the engine has several hundred thousand miles on it, more likely simply warn out than a problem with "coaking".

I have read of ring coaking of stationary "Lister-Listeroid" type stationary electrical generator engines, these engines run at one fixed speed and can be under light load a lot of the time so there cylinder temps can be pretty cool, there are different versions of pistons and fuel injection types on these big low speed engines, the ones indicating likely coaking problems are the ones that directly inject used engine oil or unheated veg oil fuel directly on to the top of flat-topped pistons.

Read through the verious posts on the DIESEL VEHICLES section of this forum for info about your specific engine.

Tim:

I have run down into the 20s with an 80/20 rug blend with PSDK added as per directions, and never had a serious problem other than a rough start.

When your oil solidified and "dropped out the fats", was this still a problem when it warmed up again or did it just become liquid again?

Lars

I am not worried about the fats and hydrogenated oils because I upflow settle and centrifuge my WVO so I have never had any problems with filters in my previous 6,000 miles of blending with my old 6.2. I haven't started blending in my Mercedes yet, mainly because it is a new engine and wanted to put some miles on it before I start blending to get to know the engine. I am considering adding a coolant heated filter to it but have heard the Mercedes IP's have an oil line going through it so heat isn't really needed. I plan to start blending in the next week or two and keep going back and forth on how to do it. I guess I will just try a blend and see how it runs and go from there.
Rusty

lars -- The solidified oil will recombine into the blend once everything is heated up again but the temperature has to get considerably warmer than the temperature that made the fats solidify, something like 20 to 40 deg f warmer depending on just what type of oil/fat the high meltpoint stuff came from. It depends on the quality of oil you begin with and the method you use for cleaning it, I heat all my oil so it is easy to filter but this allows the high melt point grease to melt in with the much lower melt point liquid oils, using cold filtering will eliminate much of the stuff that will solidify easily but requires more cost for replacing plugged filters.

Coaking again - forgot to mention fuel injector nozzle coaking. This is likely to be the one place coaking will occur, especially if cold starting on blends, I sort of expect this and figure the cost of replacing injectors to be a normal maintanance cost of burning cold blends, the fuel savings is many times more than the cost of injector maintanance even with diesel at around $2.00/G. It won't likely happen too quickly but it is likely that the injectors will have a somewhat shorter life than if burning only diesel. I have well over 60,000 miles of cold starts on cold blends through injectors that now have around 160,000 total miles on them, the first 100,000 was all diesel. The engine is a bit harder to start now than before I started burning veg blends, can't say for sure the harder starting has been caused by cold starting on the cold blend but it is likely. A friend here began burning a 50/50 blend of diesel and used engine oil about two years ago in his 93 7.3 L IDI Ford pickup, the truck has two stock fuel tanks so he starts/stops on diesel and switched to the cold blend once everything got up to temp. He has burned the cold blend for over 40,000 miles, new injectors were installed this fall due to hard starting and the starting problem went completely away. He says he is still way ahead on cost as he has saved over $3000.00 on fuel and the 8 new injectors only cost $150.00 total and were easy to change, worth the cost even if he has to put in new injectors every couple years. I picked up a set of low milage used fuel injectors for my 93 Dodge Cummins off Ebay for $30.00, I intend to swap these in once the weather warms up, I suspect it will improve the engine starting.

My brother and I have been running various blends in 3 diesel vehicles (2 being 5 cyl Benz's) successfully for THOUSANDS of miles! All the oil we use starts out as good quality Non-Hydrogenated oil and has been filtered and de-watered using the cold upflow settling process, so NO PHO is present in the oil to begin with.
We've had good success with blends of 20-25% RUG in the winter and 15-20% RUG in the summer. We've also blended used paint thinner in the same ratios with the same results. Although our So Cal winters are not that cold, my brother (ROLLGUY) lives in Hesperia and he experiences many nights with temps below freezing.
Since I started driving the 1983 300d the first week in December , I have been running a blend of 20-25% RUG/75-80% WVO and NEVER did the engine fail to start first time, although on the colder mornings, I did have to let it warm up a few minutes.
The only fuel related problem I've had in 3000+ miles so far is the fuel filter clogged last weekend from many years of running Petro Diesel. I believe running the RUG/WVO blend is cleaning the fuel tank of the Diesel "gook"(sp) in the bottom of the tank. I suspect I will have to change the filters sooner until the tank is completely clean.
As far as "coking" goes, I believe it can happen with cold starts using Petro Diesel as well and don't think the "problem" is any worse using WVO IMHO.......Dennis

The fuel blend I use is recycled canola oil cleaned and dewatered using the cold upflow settling process to remove all the PHO and fats. The cleaned oil is mixed with kerosene and naphtha [similar to RUG] then mixed with pump diesel at different ratios depending on the operating temperature between 80° above and 30° below zero. Winter diesel is basically kerosene with additives, and adding more than 10% naphtha noticeably reduces power and MPG even more. Preheating the engine with electric heaters gives much cleaner starts with no smoke or black deposits on the snow especially at extreme cold temperatures. I originally used cold fuel mix but then added a FPHE which heats the fuel mix before the IP so it's up to 125° to 150°at the injectors. With hot fuel there is much less exhaust smoke on hard acceleration up hills, which I consider cleaner more complete combustion with less pollution.

THIS THREAD IS GOLD

Almost 60,000km and no problems yet...

I have used up to 25% in the winter and 20% in the summer .But this winter I have been buying mostly dino . When I pulled my filter it was amazingly clean & that was at the beginning of the winter. I am in s.w.la our winter is fairly mild . I have not noticed any extreme hard starts on blend that didnt also happen on dino. I drive a 6.5 non turbo gmc & a 92 12v cummins .

I really dont get when people come in an area with only hear say and start bashing a method . where a lot of folks have experience already.
I have found in my experience that if you take even junk oil and cut it with at least 15 % rug & let it settle then pump it thru the prefilter material of your choice . let it settle for at least 3 weeks and then gravity drip it thru a one micron filter which never takes longer than a couple of hours for 30 gallons . The last thing I do is filter again thru a 10 mic on the way to the tank . I know one is smaller than 10 but it makes me feel better since the fuel sits in the last tank filtering never hurts. I have used ace & turp ,also I use diesel additives according to the label to raise cetane. I find that my oil sources change their oil based upon whats cheapest so I blend my blends if you know what I mean . I find it gives me a more consistent mpg . Lets be real even dino is a blend . So if you are considering blending start with a good basic blend for your area and engine/ip type and tweak it slowly to your liking .blending reduces waste products in my case that bio would pile up .

dont risk a engine or ip pump over a few bucks
Oh by the way I never blend in the fuel tank . I always pre blend let settle and then ride.
hope it helps