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My Local Tesco's extra stocks it in their "Ethnic Food" section for £9.15 and it is sunflower oil works fine in a PD enginged car on a 30% mix in favour of diesel
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Is that your own vehicle, Paul I? How many miles on the home-brew?
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Yes, about 1500 miles so far their isn't any difference to note .. it still does about the same mpg, no visible smoke etc.
The thing is I have taken note from the French which have done a lot more with oil than most; firstly I use Sunflower oil which is supposed to be better than veg oil ? don't ask what the difference becase i'm no chef. Secondly they suggest you run at about a 30% maximum when it's spring or auturm and less in winter and a little bit more in summer.
Being British we don't do maths and so we just go 50% of this and 50% of that. They also have lots of CR cars running on it but again I think the ratio is the key.
Paul
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 19/10/2007 at 19:28
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And you are of course paying HMRC for the duty owed on this cheaper fuel ;-)
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And you are of course paying HMRC for the duty owed on this cheaper fuel ;-)
No loner required so long as you dont use more than a certain amount (quite a large quantity) per year and keep your receipts for about 6 years ...cheers...Keo.
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The reason I'm told I can't run my Mondeo on it is that it's too thick when cold. The Lucas pump fitted to my car can't deal with it. Some of these cars had a Bosch setup which apparently works perfectly on veg oil.
If the oil can be heated before it reaches the pump, it's apparently OK, but the solutions I've seen for that are either Heath Robinson, or prohibitively expensive. Some say a very low proportion of veg oil is also okay, but I'm not going to risk my dependable daily commuter finding out.
The only time I'd let veg oil anywhere near a common rail unit is if I had the weekly shop in the boot.
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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I just paid £12.49 for 20 litres. This time last year, it was £8.99!
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Looks like there's more demand for veg-oil if the prices are rising, despite the fact that I've not noticed any new take-aways opening. I wonder where all the extra oil is going ;-) How long before Gordon whacks a 50p/litre tax on veggy oil?!
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It's rapeseed oil you want to be using
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The Lucas pump fitted to my car can't deal with it. Some of these cars had a Bosch setup which apparently works perfectly on veg oil.
That's my understanding too - the Lucas pumps are apparently designed to shear a driveshaft if the diesel is too thick to pump, so are not suitable for the thicker veg oil.
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Re: pump suitability, AFAIK some Bosch pumps run okay on veg but some do not. My car is pre-PD/CR with a Bosch VP44 pump and I have been told not to risk it on veg oil. If anyone has run a VP44 on veg (blend) without a problem I would be most interested?
www.doctordiesel.co.uk/
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which is the best car for running veg oil?
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any that have been chipped...
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any that have been chipped...........and have crisp handling
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any that have been chipped...........and have crisp handling, though you wouldn't want to drive them when the road surface is greasy.
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it's ok when it's been salted
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Until the police ketchup with you.
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I was discussing this with a minicab driver the other day. The drivers club together and buy the oil in bulk. They add approx 10% petrol to 'thin' the (fresh) veg oil to the same consistency as regular diesel. The cars, virtually all Octivias and Mondeos and less the three years old, run on homebrew 24/7.
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>The drivers club together and buy the oil in bulk. They add approx 10% petrol to 'thin' the
>(fresh) veg oil to the same consistency as regular diesel. The cars, virtually all Octivias
>and Mondeos and less the three years old, run on homebrew 24/7.
In which case they should almost certainly be thinking about applying to HMRC in order to pay the duty. TBH they're probably using more than 2,500 litres each per annum if they're running 24/7. And if they're all doing it together then the total process is definitely many times over that limit.
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Hush Mapmaker.
Do you want the authorities to hear?
:o}
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Hush Mapmaker. Do you want the authorities to hear
Yes
I pay my taxes according to what the law says. So should they.
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Seems crazy to thin vegetable oil with petrol, as they have to pay duty on that 10%.
If they thin it with white spirit, then they get the additional kick of running absolutely duty free!
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This morning I saw an advert for a tractor designed to run on bio-fuel(Same) So it looks like it`s going to be" the next big thing."
hurrying on- to a receding future
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Oil seed rape is £252/ tonne for 2008 delivery, nice!
It will only get more expensive too as long as we have to grow fuel. Of cause pouring cooking oil in the car would be less attractive with lower duty on fuel.
For bigger drums of the stuff, ask your local chippy where he gets his from
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Surely for most of us not producing their own bio fuel substitute, duty needs paying. And there is a limit how much does not need duty paying. Like it or not that is the case. Or can we stop paying income tax too?
Surprised we can discuss avoidance of tax on this site... like asking the chippy.
And my Mondeo TDCi manual says do not use biofuel etc. or the warranty would be void. It's elapsed anyway but needed two EGR valves and sprang a fuel injection leak using diesel ;-)
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Give me a couple of mazolas and oil think about it.
Can't say as i'd want to be risking the very expensive fuel system for the sort of savings possible
I can understand somebody maybe using strained used oil in an old car maybe only worth a couple of hundred cos if it all goes pop it was probably a nett saving, mind you nice to beat the system for a while.
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gordonbennet, I'm with you on this. Veg oil is cheaper than diesel but (a) how will the car do without the additives? I know some veg oil burns better and (b) how much do you save after paying the duty?
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rtj70, its more the lubrication properties or lack of it that would concern me, i dare say the veg oil burns ok but i remember the problems encountered some years back when the fuel companies started to reduce the sulphur in derv, diesel mechanics i know noticed a huge increase in the failure of fuel pumps and they unanimously blamed the fuel.
Touching as much wood as poss i've been using millers diesel fuel treatments for years now and (touches more wood) not a single fueling problem. Dont suppose millers will mix with veg oil?
Would like to hear from any long term users of veg oil to learn of any probs.
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I was discussing this with a minicab driver the other day. The drivers club together and buy the oil in bulk....
Silly boys if they're not telling the Revenue. The last people to you want to mess with (or defraud) are HMRC. They're not as nice as the police & much brighter. Just a matter of time for before they're in deep sierra-hotel-india-tango.
Edited by woodbines on 20/10/2007 at 01:50
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I can't help but think that vegetable oil produced under the strict conditions required for foodstuffs should, on moral grounds, be used only as a foodstuff. There are lots of starving people in the world that would benefit greatly if the oil used in motor vehicles was made available to them as a foodstuff.
--
L\'escargot.
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You only have to look at the outside surfaces of a frying pan to see what happens to veg oil: varnish.
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Rapeseed is the one you should use, soya is also OK, but is imported froma far.
Sunflower oil waxes and gums too readily. Ever noticed how if it drips down the outside of the bottle it becomes sticky? or the inside of a fryer get a brown coating with sunflower.
The lubricity of rapeseed oil is much higher that diesel, in fact some tests in USA showed in a wear scar test, it was much better than any of the fuel treatments tested.
Farmers have been giving rape away for 20 years, so they are please it is going for what it's worth.
Poor countries could grow oil crops as cash crops rather than just growing enough yams to feed themselves several times over and having nothing to cook them with.
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American fuel is of lower lubricity than European to EN590, which is why they fiddle about with after market potions that sometimes work. And sometimes make things worse. Re tests on fuel and US//EU differences, see www.licroc.org/Tech%20Articles/diesel%20fuel.pdf
BTW Hamsafar, the tests that I have seen in the US sources use soy - they rarely use rape seed oil over there (called canola in NA) -so I'd be interested in the source.
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You have to pay fuel duty on cooking oil if you use it in your car on the road. If you get caught using untaxed fuel, such as cooking oil, you risk a jail sentence - as happened to a group of people in Wales who put cooking oil in their cars.
Having said that, untreated cooking oil will work in diesel engines but will eventually damage injectors etc. However, if you use properly prepared biodiesel it should do no harm. I have been using 5% blend biodiesel in my Passat for over a year.
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I use KTC veg oil from Tesco (£6.99 / 10 litres) which is soya oil. I have a 1997 Toyota Lucida import, it runs quite happily on 50% oil with no conversion. The only extra work needed is to change the fuel filter every 6 months, and change it after the first couple of tankfuls of veg oil diesel mix.
There is no difference in power and only the slightest hint of smoke on cold start up. If I used more than 50% veg oil then the engine would be lumpy for about 30 seconds when cold. An extra cycle on the heater plugs would cure this. In the summer, I did go up to 75% oil with no problems, just a little smokey. It even smells nice (a bit like a barbecue!). I don't mix it first, I just put £10 diesel in then add 10 litres of veg.
Gordon Brown removed the need to pay duty if you use less than 2,500 litres of home produced fuel per year. You need to keep a record of how much you use. AFAIK, the few honest motorists who registered for duty with HMRC just had to declare how much they used. The need to pay duty was removed on June 30, 2007.
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I am pretty much an ignoramus on car engines, but I do recall reading that modern diesels are less tolerant of changes in fuel quality compared to older ones, presumably because they are heavily optimised to get more performance, and hence have tighter tolerances on the fuel.
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I am pretty much an ignoramus on car engines but I do recall reading that modern diesels are less tolerant of changes in fuel quality compared to older ones presumably because they are heavily optimised to get more performance and hence have tighter tolerances on the fuel.
Leif, you're quite correct that they are less tolerant, but the important thing to remember with a diesel engine is that the pump and injectors rely on the fuel itself to keep them lubricated. Diesel is an excellent lubricant, as anyone who has hit a patch of it on a roundabout when riding a motorcycle will testify.
Modern diesel fuel systems run at a terrific pressure, which is achieved by ultra fine tolerances on pumps, which in turn places greater demands on the lubricating properties of the fuel.
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
Edited by DP on 22/10/2007 at 01:22
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I was discussing this with a minicab driver the other day. The drivers club Silly boys if they're not telling the Revenue. The last people to you want to mess with (or defraud) are HMRC. They're not as nice as the police & much brighter. Just a matter of time for before they're in deep sierra-hotel-india-tango.
Customs and Excise have the right to break down your door in pursuit of unclaimed taxes. That might explain why they are so polite on the phone, whereas the old Inland Revenue were a right pain. (Little dog syndrome I guess.)
PS What a clever way to work round the swear filters ...
Oooh, I've gone all italic. ????? <-----sorted
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 21/10/2007 at 11:43
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>> I was discussing this with a minicab driver the other day. The drivers club >> Silly boys if they're not telling the Revenue. The last people to you want to >> mess with (or defraud) are HMRC. They're not as nice as the police
since when did fuel duty apply to cooking oil? is vat charged on food stuffs?
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HM Revenue & Customs collect all taxes excise duty/VAT/IT etc - excise duty is charged (& collected) on any volume over 2500L p.a. for personal use. The cabbers are forming a business enterprise by pooling & producing their fuel - and almost cetainly using more than 2500L p.a.!
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When used for cooking chips the oil is a food stuff and no VAT
Once it goes into your car it then becomes a fuel and is subject to the relevant fuel taxes.
Well, that's how I understand it anyway....
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i usually fill up on a fryday!!
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Is this what is meant by the 'cooking' version of a car? :-)
BTW, I believe that (what was) Customs and Excise's draconian powers derive from its historic roots as part of the army; whereas the Inland Revenue has Civil (usually!) Service origins.
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And the Inland Revenue (as was) side of HMRC are trying to get the same powers as Customs & Excise.
Google "Dawn Raids".
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The reason I'm told I can't run my Mondeo on it is that it's too thick when cold.
Interesting replies in this thread. I wonder whether I can run a '54(?) Berlingo diesel on it (or a Nissan Cabstar)?
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I think the issue is not so much whether you can run a diesel on vegetable oil, but whether you are sanguine about its likely life. What evidence there is indicates an eventual mishap caused by clogged injectors.
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Well, I don't have a diesel engined car so I've got no real interest in alternative fuels.
I do eat a lot of fried grub though, and it seems to me that a gallon of red diesel would be better value than a gallon of olive oil when it comes to cooking food.
My question is, would the red stuff be ok for frying chips etc. and yet still be suitable for basting ?
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