Vegetable oil
 

With the price of Diesel now hiting £1 a litre in many places, I am thinking that I may add some vegetable oil in to save some cash on my journey to work each day.
If I use half diesel and half oil I could fill my car up for £28 and get easily 500 miles.
I know that there will be little if any effect on performance.
What would happen if I got stoped in my car and the law found out I was using it in this way.

Your car would be confiscated just as if you were using rebated (red) diesel; its return is discretionary on the payment of a fine (if its your fisrt offence). Bear in mind also, that only Bosch pump-equipped cars can run vegetable oil; itll destroy a plastic impeller Lucas-type pump in no time at all. Do you realise that your car will smell like the back of a chip shop too?

Simon

An old mate of mine made a mint delivering lost luggage for the airport..he got paid by the mile. Ran his crappy old astra van on pink, never got caught. Even if they did, so what? £800 van versus 25% of the fuel cost.....no brainer :D

Red diesel is a lot harder to get hold of now than it used to be; you could even buy it from a Morrisons petrol station until a year or two ago.....

Hmmm interesting....

Just seen on sky news about alternative fuels including "used chip fat" looks like it would be ok to use but a fuel duty would have to be paid.
About the diesel pump, a mate of mine told me that vegy oil would be better as it would lubricate it more.

also this www page is educational
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/biodiesel.html

Anyway just went out and got £10 of diesel and put 9 litres of vegy oil in total cost £13.96 and have got over half a tank will let you know how it goes tomorrow :D

when was the last time you saw someone pulled over and having their fuel checked? in fact how many people do you know that have been pulled for it? none I would guess. If I had a diesel I wouldnt think twice about filling it up with red (living where I do its very easy to get hold of)

just my 2p

jamo :)

Plenty of people plenty of times James; coming from where we do its common to see the Customs men..... My father got his tank dipped every Thursday at Mansfield horse sales for six months! Away from the countryside most inspections are intelligence led, either from tip offs or from following people out of fuel merchants. Id still be careful.

Simon

'Used chip fat' would have to be processed before it could be used; chip shop oil is always contaminated with animal fat. Virgin vegetable oil is best but the law prevents unused oil being used as fuel, even after youve registered as a fuel producer. With regard to your friend; he doesnt know what hes talking about. The pump impeller not being able to cope with the increased viscosity of vegetable oil has nothing to do with lubrication does it? The injection pump type-issue is well known; as you will be able to confirm by spending a little time with Google.

Simon

honestly hands up, I can only ever remember one of my friends getting pulled for it, but he lived on a farm and got away with it.

james :)

Mansfield horse sales was always full of gipsies so it was popular with HMC&E, but he did get stopped in his horsebox outside the Whitworth Institute in Two Dales too.....

Strange that the AA didn't mention any of that when they did a report about using veggie oil

If you want to run veggie oil, you DO need to pay excise duty. No idea if it works properly, but given that the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil then I reckon you couldn't do too much harm running 50/50. That said, Simon may know better than the AA, so 'taint my fault if it all goes chip shaped :D

Have a friend who buys up used chip oil, has an amazing filtration system in his workshop. Runs it in his golf diesel, the only thing is the smell.
As for getting caught how many people do you know who have been stopped and had their fuel tested?
Costs him 8 pence a litre.......

I thought you needed to add an "additive" to successfully run on veg oil without knackering your engine??

A mate of mine runs his landy on 50/50 very successfully, and there's only a slight smell of frying food when he drives it. :D

Of course he keeps a careful log of the amount of veg oil that he uses and declares it all to the tax man. :)

8p a litre eh........:cool:

As fast bloke says, Herr Diesel's first engine ran on peanut oil. A diesel engine will run on vegetable oil quite happily, the problems, where there are any, concern the diesel injection pump. Five litres of ASDA vegetable oil will run in a car with a Bosch injection pump quite well, it might even run OK in the winter. The issue is the viscosity of the oil, it 'gloops' out of the bottle, unlike diesel which is extremely thin. This becomes a far larger problem when its cold and even a Bosch pump will struggle; a Lucas type pump with a plastic impeller will fail quite quickly. Someone mentioned that you 'nned an addidive'; not as far as Im aware, were it legal you could run your car on veggie oil, what you would need is a fuel warming system; vegetable oil thins when its warmed up a little.

With regard to Fast Bloke's observation; I havent seen the AA's report about vegetable oil and I dont know when they researched/wrote it. It may well be that you can run unused SVO as a fuel and pay duty on it now; but I researched the subject thoroughly in 2000-2001 and you definately couldnt do then, using virgin SVO was expressly prohibited. The state was keen to prevent individuals from registering as fuel producers too... Straight vegetable oil (SVO) shouldnt be confused with biodiesel though; thats heavily processed to leave Ethyl Ester of Rape Oil. EEoRO (also called Rapeseed Methyl Ester or RME) can be used exactly as DERV, its nasty stuff though, it dissolves rubber fuel hose.....


Simon

I believe the additive you are refering to is.... white spirit..

this thins the oil, and gives a little help with the combusting process..

afaik you can legally run a diese on veggy as long as you pay the duty portion to hmg


MArt

Anyway just went out and got £10 of diesel and put 9 litres of vegy oil in total cost £13.96 and have got over half a tank will let you know how it goes tomorrow :D[/QUOTE]


Any news on how things are going , oil bottle at the ready!!

Does anyone know whether my X Reg 2000 golf tdi will have a bosch or lucas fuel pump?

Gonna get some veggy oil this weekend :D

How about a 1999 Rangerover dhse? :D
If it can be done with a rangerover what mix would you use ie; 50/50

Common rail diesel engines dont run properly on SVO; you could use 'Bio diesel' (RME) though..... Ive read up a little more and the Government has lowered the fuel duty from that payable on petro-chemicals to under 30p per litre so itll be markedly cheaper. I cant find any references to un-used SVO being prohibited for use as a fuel now either so..... All youll need to do now is register as a fuel producer; fuel duty can only be paid at source/production except in an emergency.

Simon

Red is easily bought around Coventry if anyones looking :)

I can remember when you just drove into a fuel merchant and paid 11p per litre for it. I allegedly made a small fortune buying it in 200 litre drums and selling it to Sheffield cigarette smugglers at half the pump cost of DERV.....

GC8, Can you still get it ;)

I dont think so, supply of rebated gas oil has been tightened up considerably over the last couple of years. In 2002 you could buy gas oil at Morrisons petrol station at Hellaby but thats long gone now.

Simon

Ah well, veg oil it is then :D

Yes veg oil for me as well, just got in from work and still running that half tank, covered 180 miles so far as well. I can feel no problems whatsoever in using my mix, must put 5 bottles down on the shopping list. And to be honest if diesel goes up any more i`ll think about using cherry.

Clamp down(?)
 

There was a well publicised story a year or so ago about drivers in Swansea.
Basically they were buying 10s of litres of cooking oil and running their cars on it. It got around that you couldn't buy cooking oil in Tesco and then....

HMC&E decided to dip peoples' tanks one day on the main Fforestfach road.
There was much humour in the article but I doubt anyone caught on that day would have been laughing much. Can't find a link to it now. :(

J.

What car are you running this in . Will 206 stand up to this??