Thread: Disco running on vegetable oil

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

A friend has a Toyota SWB hardtop with the 4 cyl. diesel engine. He bought it cheaply at auction quite some years ago for use only as a beach fishing car and boat tug. His plan was to use it until it rusted away or died of old age. He does no more than 4000k's a year in it and for the last 6 years has been running it on straight canola and other veg. oils. He has a source for a cheap oil that comes in 44 gallon drums and is marked as not for human consumption, not for use in livestock feeds or in food manufacture. I assume that this is some reject, inferior, or faulty grade of oil and is sold off as sale being cheaper than paying someone to take it away plus noxious waste dump charges. He reports no problems at all. The tojo requires use of the glow plugs at cold start any time. He does put 2 litres of K-mart cheap engine oil in the tank every fill. This is an untidy, badly maintained vehicle that is used for short trips only, mainly to the boat ramp, and Moreton & Straddie, except once a year to Fraser from Brisbane and an occasional trip to Rainbow or Double Island. He would not contemplate taking it on a long outback tour. Basically a throw away fishing car.

Why add the engine oil?

as the TDI is just an evolution of the 2.25 diesel yep it should run fine..

in townsville bug 2.0 (engine now in kermit) ran fine on filtered/dewatered cooking oil from a coupl;e of fast food joints. filtering was through a strainer, into a 44 then pumped though a couple of ryco filters into a 60l drum painted black left in the sun with a small computer fan setup as an air extractor on the top of the drum to evaporate the water off.

Originally Posted by indybike

Why add the engine oil?

Someone told him the veg. oil doesn't have sufficient lubricating qualities and will wear out the injection pump. Don't see the point myself as he is going to throw the car away when it wears out or breaks.

I ran a series 1 disco (200 TDi) back in the u.k on svo for about 2 years without any problems, over winter I mixed it with diesel to stop the waxing at low temperatures. The thing I did was to keep a 1 liter bottle of veg oil in the garage and have a look at it so I could judge its viscocity, if it was looking like it was getting thick I'd add some deisel to the tank, but in summer it was warm enough not to present a problem, and if I was going on a trip where I knew I was going to use a full tank no matter what time of year I ran on svo. There was a lot of concern about svo rotting the seals in your deisel pump, this only happens if you have rubber seals in the pump, most vehicles now have seals made out of viton (usually vehicles made 1990 and onwards) which doesn't rot when in contact with svo. The best source of information about using bio deisel I found was by a guy called Joshua Tickell, just google his name and you should get some pretty interesting sites, he also wrote a book called "from the fryer to the fuel tank" (isbn 0-9707227-0-2) which is an extremely good source of information on using bio deisel and making the various types of bio deisel, plus the history of bio diesel, I'd recomend anyone considering bio diesel as a fuel to read this book, as there's a lot of advice good and bad out there, its hard to know what to trust, at the end of the day its your motor and if you wreck by running svo then its your fault, just be careful and research a lot before commiting to something like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFbs...related&search=


one wonders?.....

The more I look the less I wonder. Don't know why you would bother withe the white spirit though as it doesn't get cold enough in Brisbane. I found a sight where a hilux owner seems to have it all worked out. http://orcboys.homedns.org/general/o.../svo/index.htm
I wonder what he does in his spare time?

With all due respect... you'd be better off going to this site - http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=cfrm=447609751

Or, for an easier site to get started, go to:-

http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/

Just be careful about using 'straight' oil in any LandRover, the fuel injection pump * CAN * be fatally damaged if its not thin enough / warm enough.

Cheers from WA.

- Been making biodiesel for several years.. - Been there/done that/earned the T-shirt !!!

typically thats not a problem in north queensland tho... But bloody ipswich with its -1 temps.......