WMO fueled truck

[rbodell]

It has been 6 or 7 years now since I started on my WMO as fuel experiment. Other than dying before my roid does, I think I have gone as far as I can go on this project. For the last couple of years I have been toying with a WMO fueled vehicle. The other day a fellow I met wanted to see my setup. As soon as he saw it, he wanted it. I told him I was more interested in at least a partial trade than outright sale. Well, it just so happens he has a VW diesel pickup truck. It needs a head which he has and he is going to get it all back together to work out some kind of a deal.

The thing I really liked about this vehicle is that in the original paperwork he has with it, VW recommends mixing WMO with diesel fuel to improve the fuel mileage which is already 50 to 60 MPG on diesel. It is just a matter of how much I can mix with it, I am hoping to get as close to 100% as I can. Even if 100% does decrease the mileage, if the fuel is free, who cares what kind of mileage I get as long as the engine runs good. I don't really know what my 6/1 listeroid runs on diesel since it never had any in it other than a few cups full for initial startup, but it ran about 6 hours on a gallon of WMO. It really didn't make much difference whether it was running at 300 or 650 RPM. If anybody out there ever keeps track of fuel consumption on diesel in a 6/1, I would like to hear what it was.

At the moment we are still negotiating, but I don't see why we can't work out something that works for both of us. he has lots of nice toys like a 300 gallon stainless steel fuel tank and he can work with anything from cash to total trade. I consider it having paid for itself by showing me that WMO as fuel is totally workable.

Just like with the Listeroid, I am sure there will be plenty of people who will come up with no end to negativity as to why this won't work and just like the Listeroid, I won't pay much attention to it. I spent almost $4,000 on a new engine just to see if all the nay-sayers were right or wrong. In the end though I will be able to say it works and here is the vehicle or it doesn't work and here are the broken parts. I do expect some problems when it comes to a later model vehicle with a computer running everything, but them again, if it does happen I will have all the data to show it. I don't quote other people because I don't really know where they got their information like the guy who said he ruined his engine running WMO. It turned out he was not processing it properly. I just show MY results and people can take them for what they are worth.

As time goes on, I will update this thread.
Bob

[glort]

Geez Bob, I can certainly relate to what you are saying about Naysayers.

I have been into Veg oil 9 years this year and have done a LOT of experimenting and trying things that the veg fraternity say wil break your engine or you have to do and proved nearly all of them wrong.

Like you I bought my first vehicle as a proof of concept. I wasn't scared of breaking it, in fact I didn't initially like it nor have any faith in the thing so I was pretty much trying to see what would break it not fretting the thing would die.  Most people repeat what they read that was repeated by the person before them and the person they read it from etc.  Very FEW people ever really take a risk and actually try something after thinking it through first.

I did so many things everyone told me wouldn't work or couldn't be done or would kill my engine and it is no exaggeration to say when I finished with it the thing ran better than when I got it only having ever been run on Diesel.  The car became unviable through structural rust but the engine was running like a top so I pulled it before I got rid of the car and have it waiting to do a Co-gen set up. 

My listeroid hasn't tasted Diesel yet. Initial run up was on Biodiesel and since it's had a blend of Bio and WVO or straight WVO.

One of my pet discoveries and Beliefs is in water injection. I put the fact that my experimental engine ran so well after all I did to it to the cleaning properties of the WI.
My system was dead simple, a Windscreen washer bottle form another car squirting through a plastic garden Misting nozzle straight down the inlet manifold throat.
I have had it on all my diesels and never had any problems with gumming or coking as is the great far of the WVO fraternity and naysayers.
When I get the lister and my other engine properly set up I'll just have some sort of solenoid activated drip feed into the inlet to keep them clean and deposit free.
This may be worth you looking at with your WMO.

Speaking of parroting information without having actually tried it, I have read a lot about VW engines having problems with the EGR coking things up on those engines even when they are run on diesel. There are mods I believe you can do to them in blocking the EGR which the people in the know in the veg fraternity do so it may be worth you looking into this to see which engines are susceptible to problems with this and how it's done. I have read of a lot of Failures when Running Veg that were put down to the fuel when the same problem is well known with vehicles only ever run on Diesel.

I find that a lot of the parroted problems the naysayers preach and tunnel visioned  people don't look outside their interest as to how other things work and what people do.  I'm sure that you will look at the big picture and think about the problems people preach and think of the physics behind them.  When you do that I found that a lot of the time the fear mongering doesn't stand up to logic, principals or physics and in the end, Practical application.

Good luck with your trials, I'm sure you will get a lot of reward out of making something work and going against the grain in doing so.

[millman56]

One thing that  may have some relevance with US generated WMO is that gas powered cars are in the majority there, over here diesels are probably in the majority.
WMO from gas powered cars is very clean when compared to WMO from diesel powered ones, this may lead to some variance in running problems  here compared to there.

Has anyone out there tried running an air cooled engine on oil ?  My experience with 5 different engines, viz,  Petter AC1, Ruston 2YWA, Lister SR1, Armstrong Siddeley AS1 and Lister VA    was less than ideal,  all the engines ran perfectly initially then performance dropped off accompanied by white smoking and overheating,  the exhaust valves stuck  in their guides, possibly due to high exhaust temps  drying them out and coking the lube oil.           Tried water misting down the inlets of both the SR1 and 2YWA with no noticeable effect.     When refuelled with diesel  the engines ran fine. 

For every parrot or naysayer there are many individuals out there who actually do something about putting  their ideas into action,   its been a pleasure to have met and be inspired by many of them.

It doesn`t matter if you go against all advice and create a square wheel so long as you enjoy doing it and learn a bit about spokes and axles along the way.


Mark.

[Dualfuel]

OH! I like this thread! Go Bob, go!
In the winter, I run a 25% to 33% mix of WMO along with biodiesel (methyl esters), through a stanadyne DB2 mechanical injection pump.
I have run straight filtered WMO in a IH 6.9 idi engine, with a Stanadyne DB2. No harmful detractors....other then you have to have your filtration DONE before the oil goes in the tank.

Bob, anymore I don't even pretend to be nice when I sense naysaying caused by fear... Like with biodiesel, I have been running a 6.2 engine to destruction on B100. Well its been ten years, and I am still busily driving it to destruction every day....the body will fall off before the engine quits. So now I pounce on naysaying...I have done too many start ups to be disuaded by that coffee shop good 'ol boy mentality. I started with BD 10 years ago. Did battery desulfation, before you could buy them on battery chargers. I got several induction motor generators going, from scratch. I did alcohol distillation. I am on my sixth working wood fueled gas producer. I did wood gas storage. Now I am in the process of bringing a plastics to gasoline reactor on line...
I can say this...its a process. You start with the idea, do the research, start building, struggle with design changes or budget problems...have a bit of sucess, then failure. Its both euphoria, and dismal depression. Then one day after you have struggled long enough, it seems like the stars line up and everything works as it should. Then its all worth it. Then begins the long haul of daily life with the "new" process. Weird problems pop up...ex. one reason I am interested in making gasoline from plastics is because after making thousands of gallons of BD, I must have 10000 of those plastic cubies, the oil comes in...they are everywhere, in every vehicle.

[glort]

Bob, anymore I don't even pretend to be nice when I sense naysaying caused by fear... Like with biodiesel, I have been running a 6.2 engine to destruction on B100. Well its been ten years, and I am still busily driving it to destruction every day....the body will fall off before the engine quits. So now I pounce on naysaying...I have done too many start ups to be disuaded by that coffee shop good 'ol boy mentality.

  If I had a buck for every time I have been told that Veg wrecks your engine or similar gloom and doom from people that can't tell you the most basics of what you are doing, I'd be rich. Someone always knows someone that had a friend that knew a bloke that tried it and it didn't work.

With old mechanical injected Diesels, I believe any type of oil will work as long as it is cleaned and dried ( if need be) properly.
I have tried WMO, trans fluid, Gearbox, Diff and other oils and they all worked with no noticeable difference. I will admit I didn't run High mileage on any of these " Fuels" because Veg oil is easiest for me to get and having done my learning curve with it, I was happy to stick to what I knew and enjoy that rather than  trying to learn another new science.   
The ONLY thing I have against WMO is it's messy $hit to work with.  Veg oil is soooo much easier to clean up and stinks a lot less than WMO but for someone with better working practices than I, that may not be a problem at all.
I cannot see why any of these alternative oils would not work long term however and I also don't see why something that works in a lister wouldn't work in a vehicle, engine peculiarities aside. 

What a lot of naysayers seem to miss is that those of us that do tend to experiment don't do it with things that our lives depend on. If they fail, well we move on having learnt something. It's not like we have $100K riding on the outcome of the exercise.  Some people are so full of " I wouldn't do it with my XXX" they forget it's not their XXX that the experimenters want to try it with.  They also seem to think that anyone that tries something different is as clueless about it as they are and haven't read up on all they can find out about it before they try anything practical.


I have played around with the Oil to plastic thing a bit and have got useable product but I would be very interested in your experience with it Dualfuel to see how you go about it and what your findings are. I hope you start a thread on that we can follow your progress on.

[millman56]

Some folk are  born to do nothing, go nowhere and know everything, the finest of them stand on a soap box and morph into  politicians.                                                                                                                                                                                            Triers and experimenters seem to be a stubborn breed who pursue their individual ideas regardless of and in spite of detractors and in my case common sense.
                                                                                                                                                                                                           Ill informed criticism from people percieved to be clean hands, hindsighted keyboard jockeys certainly sticks in the craw of many but forums are public places and folk are entitled to opinions.

Did you find that the gearbox and diff oil required some thinning/heating in order to flow through the fuel  filter  at a sufficient rate?

Wmo messy?  Well its not gloopy or  sticky nor does it attract vermin and has only 50 or so carcinogens present

The trans,hyd and lube oils for whatever reason tend to raise the exhaust temperature in large multi cylinder engines and small singles alike when compared to diesel fuel ,   advancing the injection timing helps but leads to hard starting I find.

Mark.

[rbodell]

Has anyone out there tried running an air cooled engine on oil ?  My experience with 5 different engines, viz,  Petter AC1, Ruston 2YWA, Lister SR1, Armstrong Siddeley AS1 and Lister VA    was less than ideal,  all the engines ran perfectly initially then performance dropped off accompanied by white smoking and overheating,  the exhaust valves stuck  in their guides, possibly due to high exhaust temps  drying them out and coking the lube oil.           Tried water misting down the inlets of both the SR1 and 2YWA with no noticeable effect.     When refuelled with diesel  the engines ran fine. 
Mark.

That is interesting that all those engines should have the same symptoms. Can I assume they are all air cooled? Maybe Air cooling is not as efficient as water cooling. I can see where higher temperatures might happen since WMO burns better than diesel and that water cooling could have the capacity to take away more excess heat although it just doesn't seem that the small difference in flame speed of diesel would be enough to make that much difference in heat buildup. Mine actually had less smoke and more power.

I am told that the older VW diesels recommend a mixture of wmo and diesel to improve mileage. I don't think they are air cooled though. maybe if you experimented with different mixtures of wmo and diesel to see just how much oil it takes for these symptoms to take place. You still might be able to use 50% or more WMO. I would be interested in the results.

[millman56]

Yes all those are air cooled,    the conclusion I have drawn is the same as yours, ie that water cooled engines don`t suffer from localised overheating to the same degree as air cooled.    There is some reason for the overheating of the combustion chamber and exhaust tract, whether its the nature of the fuel or the less than optimal  atomisation of the fuel, I don`t know.     

The water cooled engines that I currently  run  successfully,  in order of size,  are, Kubota D950 in a 330 Amp welder, no problems.      Lister CD on a 4 Kw gen, rad cooled on thermosyphon with an electric fan controlled by a thermostatic switch, this engine sometimes boils, I assume around the ex port, before the fan kicks in at 80c water outlet temp.      Perkins AD3-152 direct injection in an Int tractair, runs great but smokes at low speed and load.   Perkins 4-270 direct injection on what is now a 50 Kva generator, this is the second one I`ve used and they have no issues at all.  In the past I have run a Perkins 6-354 direct injection on a 60 Kva generator, this was a great engine.
All suffer from poor starting in cold weather.

The none too succesfull  water cooled ones  in addition to the smaller air cooled ones listed  previously include, Paxman Ricardo 6 RW. Paxman Ricardo 4 RQ.  Lister FR 6. and a Foden FD 6 two stroke.   The Paxmans (Paxmen) suffered from carbon build up in the injector recess leading to poor starting, smoke and in the case of the 4 RQ, overheating.    The Foden smoked badly, possibly due to being  underloaded.  The FR6 was difficult to start and eventually destroyed a piston due to overloading.   

As found by others on this and other forums it seems that a high engine  loading is required for best results.
My experiences point me toward direct injection, at least for the larger engines although an indirect when running correctly certainly has the cleaner exhaust.
There is no real definitive stuff here as the various engines were and are  at differing states of wear, which I am sure will affect the outcomes.
Mark.