Alpine diesel What's in it?

[Coastie]

A little off topic for biofuels but I am interested in alpine diesel as we are off to Victoria for the snow in July and I've just bought a new diesel vehicle and was wondering if the alpine diesel would be detrimental to the new motor.

[rangieman]

ok we got some alpine fuel at work last week , i was talking to the tanker driver and he told me he had to mix it up and he told me it was 60/40 mix
60% diesel and 40%heating oil which is kerosene

i cant see this harming a new engine by the time you get to vic you should have some ks on it so it should have freed up a bit

[one_iota]

A little off topic for biofuels but I am interested in alpine diesel as we are off to Victoria for the snow in July and I've just bought a new diesel vehicle and was wondering if the alpine diesel would be detrimental to the new motor.

Oh dear... you have *****ed my conscience...I was to write a short piece for the magazine about this based on the Australian Standard...it has to do with the temperature at which diesel begins to precipitate wax...this is controlled at the refinery and the southern refineries release a different distilate based on the likely probability of low temperature in the supply areas..should I go on?

[Omaroo]

It might be detrimental NOT to use it.

Driving down to Cooma and forgetting to fill up when we hit town and then stopping for the night at our place, I've had both my Grand Cherokee (Mercedes CRD common-rail) and our Defender Td5 unable to start for a couple of hours the next morning. When they finally did they smoked and chugged and carried on like pork chops for another hour. The diesel waxed up in the fuel lines and tank and obviously the injectors were having a hard time controlling reliable fuel delivery. This was in temperatures that weren't even cold - minus one centigrade!

Use the alpine mix if you are in the snow - it works well, and doesn't coagulate into a waxy mess until it gets down to some pretty lean temperatures....

[SneakyPete]

Yeah, its a bastard having your diesel freeze up. We had a couple of minus 10's in Braidwood about 12 years ago and you couldn't even get diesel out of the bowser at the servo till about 10am. For some reason Hilux's seemed particularly prone to failing to proceed in such conditions.

SneakyPete

[Tusker]

From memory all diesel supplied in winter south of Canberra has a small amount of anti-waxing in it.

Regards
Max P

[Omaroo]

From memory all diesel supplied in winter south of Canberra has a small amount of anti-waxing in it.

Regards
Max P

Not any more Max. Apparently some servos don't offer it any more (even one in Cooma) - but say so on the pump. I don't know why.

[Skills]

ok we got some alpine fuel at work last week , i was talking to the tanker driver and he told me he had to mix it up and he told me it was 60/40 mix
60% diesel and 40%heating oil which is kerosene

The BP website had a file called Winter Diesel Problems:
<snip>

BLENDING DIESEL

If you are not in an alpine area but have abnormally cold weather, a diesel blend may provide some relief to lower the cloud point. Heating oil (duty paid at diesel rate) is an effective blending agent and your BP supplier can provide information on how to perform this safely, but typically would involve the following:

-

Heating Oil at 25 litres for each 100 Litres of diesel, or

-

kerosine at 5 litres for each 100 litres of Diesel.

<snip>

Alpine diesel only works with a concentrayion of 75% alpine in the tank to normal diesel. When we travel to alpine areas we take a 5Litre can of kerosene. If we have half a tank by the time we reach the hills we top up with kerosene to 5% of current tank and fill the rest of the tank with alpine diesel. That way we are always covered. We also mix our own if Easter is cold, because Alpine diesel is not always availble until June.
Works with Tdi and TD5.

[kando]

G'day mates,

When I was driving trucks in the USA we never shut the engines down once the cold weather set in, we kept the engines running 24/7 for the whole winter season.
In the North of England, West Yorkshire, where I drove coaches and the snow only got to about four foot deep, we would use a cut down oil can, about 6" deep, fill it with a few rags, soak the rags in metho or diesel from another can, place it under the coachs diesel tank and set fire to it. When the diesel warmed-up and degelled enough for us to start the coaches the diesel in the fuel return line was warm enough to help degell the remaining diesel in the tank, it normally took about 30 minutes to warm the oil in the tank enough to degell the first lot of cold oil and start the coaches and we never left the fires unatended for obvious reasons

Bill from Corio

[B92 8NW]

I've used Alpine Diesel once, I presume it had a lot of Kerosene in it because it smelled like a 747 taking off... Would it not be best to contact the manufacturer of your car?