Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

madmazda wrote:I'd say throw some extra virgins in there lol...

dbox wrote:I recently noticed that mine is also puffing out white smoke on cold start.

Should I sacrifice extra virgin olive oil to the Delica Gods or will regular virgin do?

cute, but just to be clear Olive oil is not the greatest choice, go with canola

it may seem odd to us, but many people run these vehicles full time on canola oil that's already been used to make french fries ("WVO"), so this isn't that far off...

More over though, in the UK they frequently talk about it, because over there the price of canola oil ("rapeseed" as it's called outside of North America) bought in bulk is often CHEAPER than diesel at the pump (unlike here where canola oil is more than double the cost of diesel last I checked).

It makes even more sense if you know about the origins of the diesel engine, Mr. Diesel himself ran his original engine on peanut oil and stated that it would be a boon to farmers everywhere (at the time he didn't even think of running it on the crushed stale dinosaur juice we use today)

You can run your van on WvO?
I am going to have look into that.
sounds cool!

Right on!

Luna-Sea wrote:You can run your van on WvO?
I am going to have look into that.

There's a whole section of this forum dedicated to it...

http://www.delica.ca/forum/wvo-and-biodiesel-12/

I heard about people using the Canola oil but thought it required some special mods to get away with it! I will have to do some more research on this~!

mycale wrote:I heard about people using the Canola oil but thought it required some special mods to get away with it! I will have to do some more research on this~!

When running it as an additive (as discussed in this thread) no modifications are required.
When running it full time, there are mods required, this is because vegetable oil gets very thick at much warmer temperatures that diesel does, so you have to warm it up in colder weather before you use it. (in the summer you could probably get away with just pouring it in to the tank, but in the winter you'd never get the vehicle running)

Thanks for all the tips guys
Just an update on my white smoke;
Toasted Glowplug!
only starting on 3 cyl hence unburnt fuel out the pipe (ie:white smoke)

Luna-Sea wrote:You can run your van on WvO?
I am going to have look into that.
sounds cool!

Right on!

No I think that this is just a vicious rumour !!
Mine runs on a wing and a prayer !!!

Bringing this one back...

I live in Victoria where it's warm and at sea level.

I had a little white smoke on start up that went away after I ran a few tanks with some canola oil.

While driving to Calgary recently (in case climate will cause a change), I ran a couple of tanks with some fuel injector cleaner. I'm thinking that this may have cleaned out my canola oil because...

Now when I start in the morning, I'm getting copious amounts of white smoke, low idle that will even stall if I don't rev it a bit. If I try to rev it a lot, it chugs and struggles for a while before kicking up to the higher RPM. It gets better once I hold it there for about 30-60sec.

It's fine for the rest of the day.

I have tried cycling the glow plugs multiple times but the effect is the same. I'm running canola again to attempt re-lubrication of my injector seals but I've only been through 1 1/2 tanks and still struggling.

I'd appreciate some tips as to what might be happening.

Thanks.

dbox wrote:Now when I start in the morning, I'm getting copious amounts of white smoke, low idle that will even stall if I don't rev it a bit. If I try to rev it a lot, it chugs and struggles for a while before kicking up to the higher RPM. It gets better once I hold it there for about 30-60sec.

It's fine for the rest of the day.

Having experienced these same symptoms first hand, it sure sounds like the IP seal to me. I picked up a L400 last summer and it started/ran nicely until about mid-September when the rough starts, smoke clouds and stalling showed up (mornings below 8 celcius).

The van would feel like it was losing power and end up always stalling at the same place every day - the first hill about 500m up the road from the house). Tried some the usual things like cleaning the busbar and changing plugs which needed the attention anyway but the problem remained until I had the IP seal replaced. If it hasn't been serviced by the dealer/importer I'd suggest getting that looked at since it really is a well known problem with dozens of threads on both the Oz and UK (and this one to some extent) sites.

I had mine serviced by CC Autos and there was an immediate and dramatic improvement (i.e. no more stalling!) in the mornings and the smoking issue cleared up after a tank of diesel worked through. From what I've come across, it seems like the dying seal actually causes some mixing of the oil and diesel and can sometimes be spotted by sniffing your oil, although in my case I didn't actually notice anything.

//rant on
Since these vans are fairly new to Canada I suspect that we'll start seeing more and more of these sorts of discussions until this becomes a standard item to service on all new 400s coming into the country. With the long history on a known and common problem I hope that more dealers do start getting this changed on all new vans coming in because it can be an incredibly frustrating problem for a new owner who may not have much experience of knowledge of the mechanical aspects of the vechicle yet. Ends up taking a long time to get it sorted out (i.e. where the heck do I start?) and doesn't leave a great impression.
end rant//

Good luck with it and if you want to hear more about the symptoms that I had on mine, feel free to drop a note.

Thanks for the tip. Time for a repair.

But I'm no longer in a huge rush as running 8L of canola has seemed to do the trick yet again. There were apocalyptic quantities of smoke coming out for several minutes. And now nothing. Smooth, clean start-ups. An amazing fix for leaky seals.

I'm wondering if the canola additive should be used more as a temporary solution. The first time I had smoke it was minor. Many months later (after a fuel system clean out) the smoke was hugely embarrassing. My van actually stalled on start-up. Part of me thinks the seal got worse without any symptoms or it was already bad but swollen with oily goodness from before I got it.

dbox wrote: Part of me thinks the seal got worse without any symptoms or it was already bad but swollen with oily goodness from before I got it.

Mmm... Oily goodness. Mmmm....

I am having this problem also. However, I took my van to "remain namless" Delica shop, and now it is even worse!!! They rewired my manual glow plug system, changed my glowplugs from the 6.?? to the 12v kind, oil change and filter and finally new fuel filter and a couple of new clear fuel lines. The next day the van wouldn't start at all. I had to drive ALL the way back to the shop after cranking my engine for about 45sec beofore it finally sputtered to life and almost killed my battery....... That's when they changed the glowplugs for me, and I had just put in brand new plugs a couple of weeks before I took it in. Now when I start it up there is a ton of smoke...... It wasn't this bad before I took it to them. Not to mention that the van is now running worse overall compared to before I brought it in. When idling it shakes big time and it never did this before. All of my queries are met with brow beating and comments like " hmmmm I think maybe your are mistaken". I am pissed and just want the problem fixed................

hesser wrote:However, I took my van to "remain namless" Delica shop, and now it is even worse!!! ... I am pissed and just want the problem fixed...

Maybe you should not keep the shop name a secret to prevent this from happening to another driver? Is it because you want to be 'polite' or 'politically correct' or you are afraid of pissing off the shop? What is your point? We need to know the 'heroes'!

dbox wrote:Thanks for the tip. Time for a repair.

But I'm no longer in a huge rush as running 8L of canola has seemed to do the trick yet again. There were apocalyptic quantities of smoke coming out for several minutes. And now nothing. Smooth, clean start-ups. An amazing fix for leaky seals.

I'm wondering if the canola additive should be used more as a temporary solution. The first time I had smoke it was minor. Many months later (after a fuel system clean out) the smoke was hugely embarrassing. My van actually stalled on start-up. Part of me thinks the seal got worse without any symptoms or it was already bad but swollen with oily goodness from before I got it.

I was rooting through my papers and came across a work order that reminds me that my front IP seal, glow plugs, and other filters etc. were replaced last November (approx 7000km ago).

Can the front IP seal go that quickly? Or might it be the rear IP seal? Or something entirely different...