Running old diesel cars on vegetable oil - 50% off your fuel costs

anh1904

The governement changed the rules late June so that you can now use up to 2500 litres of veg oil as fuel before you have to pay any tax on it (which depending on what you used, used to be between 25 and 40p per litre).

You shouldn't just do this without a bit of research, but if you have an old DIESEL car which you just get by with rather than love and cherish, then it might be for you.

There are companies out there which do professional conversion kits to allow you to start up (and stop) on diesel, but the rest of the time run on pure veg oil. If you can find a source of used oil, and filter it, this can mean massive savings on your running costs. Veg oil is about 55p/litre, while Diesel is currnetly about 95p at the local supermarket.

Not all diesels are suitable, typically the older ones run better, and if your engine is a common rail diesel, or has a Lucas CAV fuel pump, then because of the reliance on the fuel for luibrication, and the increased viscosity, you shouldn't mix more than about 20% into your diesel.

Anyhow, I have a totally unmodified 1.9TD Citroen (same as the 1.9 Peugeot engine) which has the all important Bosche fuel pump (externally lubricated)which I paid £200 for and I am currently (1000 miles and counting) running on between 50% and 100% veg oil. I will keep a log of any issues I get and log them here so anyone else doing the same, please post your problems too. I am currently scouting local restaurants and pubs for their used oil to build a filtration system in the shed so I can "fuel for free" - I will update any positive progress here too.

Sources of info are plentiful, you can just type "Diesel Vegetable Oil" into google and spend hours researching. DieselVeg.com in Wolverhampton will convert your car for about £1000 all in, and there are others that fit similar tanks dotted around the UK. That's less than the cost of an LPG conversion, and veg oil is similarly priced to LPG, but you do more MPG on veg oil than you do on LPG and it is environmentally more sound (I believe zero carbon emission).

Hope some of you can find similar savings to me on this, as currently running my car at less than 6p per mile. Can anyone do better?

scottishsuz

I'm intrested in how you get on with this. I have a 1.4TDCI Fiesta, can a turbo take veg oil? My car is only 4 1/2 years old so I'm not quite sure about giving my car something different to drink just yet. Once my car is older and the engine has bedded in a bit more I'd definately like to give it a try.

Going on my previous experience working in pubs and coffee shops they may possibly gladly let you take away the waste oil. I can remember lots of hassle trying to get it collected and you had to pay to get it collected.

Good luck, keep us posted.

anh1904

My Citroen is a 1994 1.9 Turbo Diesel - Turbo is totally inconsequential in this.

First batch of used oil I collected form the one pub was really "nasty", totally congealed and the top bit I managed to pour off and filter was very limited which just transferred the problem of disposal to me. The trick is going to be in finding an outlet which uses oil just the once and moreover, uses the "liquid at room temperature" PURE vegetable oil. Interestingly KTC oils would not sell me a 1000ltr tub as they only deal with the trade. Costco had 20L cubies for £9.48, but it had gone up £1 when I went in at the weekend.

I think the TDCi has a different configuration (no pre-combustion chamber), so would not advise doing this without significantly more research.

rog2

Good luck with your project. I am really surprised that the Government does so little to promote the use of 'green' fuel, when other European Countries, such as Germany, actively encourage the use of 'bio-diesel'.
The only thing, though, I would echo your advice to anyone contemplating the use of vegetable oil:

CHECK THAT YOUR CAR ENGINE IS SUITABLE FIRST