What do i look out for when using biodiesel?

[vtec-e]

There's a guy near me that has a biodiesel factory set up in his farm. I am naturally interested in using this stuff but am concerned about the quality of what i put into my engine. What things should i ask/look out for if i decide to use biodiesel? My car is well outside warranty so no worries there.

ollie

[dogbreath]

One very quick test is to put BD in a glass jar add water and shake; after a few seconds it should start to separate into two distinct sections with BD part becoming crystal clear and water clear too. Any cloudiness means there are still contaminates in BD. Have a spare fuel filter, BD is a solvent and will clean out fuel line, pump and injectors quickly.

[Ryland]

depending on how old your car is you might need some new seals and hoses, you might call up the dealerships that sell your vehicle and ask them if there are any issues with it using that fuel, older VW's had some hoses that needed to be replaced, total cost was about $30.

You can get PH test strips, find out what PH it should be and compare it to what he is making, if this guy is any good he should be testing it before and after the proses, because otherwise you are just guessing as to how much lye and methonal to add, also find out how fine of filter he filters to, and how long he lets the crud and water settle out for before passing it on to you.

[tasdrouille]

I don't know what your injection system is like, but with bosch rotary pumps like in my TDI one thing's for sure, you don't want to spend you time switching between bio and ulsd. Bio diesel will make the seals swell, and ulsd will make them shrink. Eventually, you get a leaky injection pump, and some seals are more tricky to replace than others, so you might very well end up with a junked pump.

[vtec-e]

Thanks for the help guys. If i think of it i'll ask him tomorrow.

ollie

[theunchosen]

I would be wary of destroying your pump. . .they are expensive to buy and expensive to replace(usually located in very incovenient places.. .)

Although. . .if you are just running bio and not switching back and forth(adding a little mix to keep it from gelling doesn't count) the stressing on the seals shouldn't be too terrible of a problem though. . .

I'm not much of a diesel guy but if you take a little diesel along as well as water and repeat the test with it it ought not become cloudy or have any precipitates.

If it does there are some derivatives in the fuel and who knows what they do when burned at compression. . .?

[alohaspirit]

they do make aftermarket full pumps/lifts

which is pretty common to the biodiesel crowd


you could just run straight veggie if you really wanted to

[dremd]

I wash test all of my fuel (very minimum) before filling the tank.

I don't know about your car' but the VW pumps dont fail 0often and can often be purchased cheap. (mechanics swap them out whenever they don't know what is wrong leaving loads of questionable pumps on the market for fairly cheap' As an
FYI 95% of VW pumps swapped out are just fine . . .