Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

I've been thinking of installing a WVO kit on my truck and have a lot of oil from the local chippie that I have been converting to biodiesel.

The oil is not the best quality and I was wondering what your experiences were with different quality of wvo. The oil titrates at about 9.

Any insight appreciated.

Thanks
Kuan

1) How much is "a lot"?" of oil
2) It is possible to neutralize WVO. I don't, I'm not that worried about it, but a few years ago we licensed a simple, patented process from Texas A&M University invented by Dr. Hernandez there, a filter-refining method using sodium metasilicate. You heat the oil, add the beads, then filter out the solids that result, and you end up with a neutralized oil using a safer product than sodium hydroxide, and no soaps. There's been some discussion and experimentation with this on the infopop forum, mostly by the biodiesel folks, since I mentioned it a while ago on the WVO side.

Thanks for the reply.

Lots of oil for 2 cars but not enough to justify a new process. I am already setup making biodiesel so probably will use the high FFA oil for that and save the better oil for wvo.

Its interesting you say that you are not that worried about it. Does that mean you don't think it has much negative effect on performance or the engine and IP life?

Thanks
Kuan

Technically, WVO does not come anywhere close to the DIN standard (DIN 51605) for rapeseed oil that was developed in Germany.

Practically speaking? For a 15 year old vehicle with a 10 micron filtration standard and relatively inexpensive injectors and pump (compared to a PowerStroke, Duramax, CDI engine, etc.), I've been doing this long enough with no problems (a lot of years, kilometers, and customers later), that I'll take my chances on this engine, and continue to do as I have always done...Canola oil, collect oil in cubies, not from dumpsters, same sources all the time, settle it at least a few weeks, take it to 70 microns with the Wand filter on the end of the pump inlet hose, from partway down the drum or tote (the one at home), pump it into the tank, run the engine hard enough and hot enough, switch over at about 50C coolant temp, purge a minute or two, and change the onboard filter (in this case 5 micron water absorbing type) a few times a year or as needed if it plugs.

(By the way, the Jetta TDI on our home page? Over 500,000 km now on WVO, with our kit and a simple 6-port valve, and the above is what he does. One injection pump replacement, at 600,000 km. (The engine had 200,000 on it when he got it. And that's a TDI, and they're not as forgiving as the IDI engine in a Delica).

I had the pump rebuilt in my Town Ace a few years ago, as it had developed a bad shaft seal leak, I figured while it was out might as well get it gone over. I had a partial rebuild done on it. The tech showed me the parts, this was after several months of WVO use. He said, see the corrosion? I said "is it any worse than you see on a 15 year old diesel, low sulphur diesel, or "biodiesel" (from home brewers, the stuff that half the time is not properly made biodiesel.....see William Kemp's comments on this in "Biodiesel Basics and Beyond"

....his response was that, well, no, not really much different. That was the end of the discussion.

It's a decision each person must make for themselves, based on what they are comfortable with considering their own personality, experience, their driving type (highway?), the engine, the cost of potential repairs/replacement and how that compares with the time they invest in collecting and pretreating the oil before use.

So, without a lot of treatment, it's a bit riskier, overall, than other fuels. It's also free, and my time is not. I don't have to play with methanol or sodium hydroxide, or sodium methoxide, I have nothing explosive or dangerous to store, I have no glycerine to get rid of any more, and no water usage. If I have to replace a pump or a set of injectors some day, so be it. That's my choice.

On the other hand, other people are more cautious and like to spend more time ensuring the fuel is better. More power to them, absolutely, do it if you want to or feel you should. I don't. I'll let you know what it ends up costing me over a 20 year period (I'm about halfway there). So far, repairs as a result of using WVO? Nothing. Just lucky? Maybe. So far my cars have cost me a lot more in every other way compared to any repairs made necessary by using WVO using just the approach above.

Wow, that's interesting!

Basically you only filter down to 70u? And I was concerned to be "only" filtering down to 10u!

My injectors seem to keep on clogging which brings my egt higher, might have to install a "T" in the fuel line just before the IP to see how warm it is... Suggestions?

The oil settles out typically, a lot finer than 70 micron, so a 70 micron strainer filter on the end of the Pump we use works, it is not overly restrictive, at least at room temp, for the transfer pump to be able to move the oil. Finer than that you have problems. You can hardly see through a 70 micron stainless mesh Wand filter, by the way.

So, anyway, it's really just there for quality control, I expect the oil to be cleaner than that by a wide margin after settling, undisturbed, for at least a few weeks at at room temp. And it is....I go a full season without having to clean off the Wand filter.

So then, at whatever level of cleanliness the oil is at (cleaner than 70, a lot cleaner, we'll say), the onboard filter catches the rest, in my case, down to 5 microns. And again, I know it's quite clean, since I typically will go at least 5000 km on a filter element, often longer.

My oil settles in the cubies at the restaurant, inside, for however long between the time it is set there, and when I come by, every week or two, to get it. Then it settles again, in the cubies, for weeks, usually, before I decant it into a 1000 litre tote.
From there, it is pumped into the fuel tank, with the 70 micron filter on the Wand of the inlet hose, from halfway down the level in the tote.

I drain off the bottom drain of the tote once a year. I really got next to nothing in terms of visible dirt last time I did that, after using the tote for about a year.

I once had a cold press representative from Monforts (Komet) presses, from Germany, tell me that cold pressed oil, which looks like mud coming off the press, will settle to 5 microns or less in 2-3 weeks at room temp. You try to defy gravity!

A centrifuge is the same process, just speeded up and operating at higher G-forces, so I don't want to get into a lot of discussion on this, and I will likely use a centrifuge myself soon, just to keep up with the Jones', I guess, but all I can say is that I have been doing it this way a looooong time now, and no problems.

The old 91 Jetta we had until recently had been on this regimen for about 5 years, and 100,000 km or so...similar engine and pump design to the Delica...we gave it an Italian tuneup once a week (run through the gears to 4300 rpm or so), drove it on highway a fair bit...it was on the same 6-port valve and injectors and injection pump the whole time. I finally thought it was getting dirty injectors, maybe, and threw in some injector cleaner, that helped clean it up a bit (put it in the diesel)

The onboard filter is big, it's there for a reason, it's nicely heated, and it's receiving fuel at a very slow rate, since we loop the return back in between filter and engine, so it's acting like a bypass oil filter does, filtering a small amount, slowly...which means it can be really effective.

I wonder if the automatic Delicas are revving out enough on WVO....David, if yours is an auto, you might want to toss some injector cleaner into the diesel tank once in a while and then take it our for the Italian Tuneup, run it hard up a hill through the gears, full throttle.

For that Jetta I mentioned, this became an early habit. A week of slower, easier runs back and forth into town, it would act a bit fussy, I noticed that one, particularly, would be like that early on.

A weekly run like I mention, minus the injector cleaner in that case (that dosing came only once or twice, years later) became the norm, and kept it cleaned out so that the injectors never became an issue. We have said forever to run them hard and hot on WVO, to avoid idling and light engine loads on WVO. Those light-footed 2000 rpm shifts on an automatic, and putting around town in overdrive with a lightly loaded van.....not the best for a 4 cylinder diesel on WVO.

(That's a general comment, David...your recent cross country trip should have cleaned it out....so that is still a mystery....)

(For the record, my van colds-starts rather badly on diesel, has since I got it, when it is cold - even now in spring, it's not great. I will be checking the plugs (again...the mechanic at the dealer swore they were fine, when I complained), and the relay, and maybe put my own timer relay on there, to get the bloody things to stay on a bit longer...just a few more seconds, please!..)

I will likely also get the injectors cleaned, tested, and set pressure, soon, so all will be up to snuff as I begin running WVO in earnest, so that I have a good baseline to start off with.

Sticky injectors was the cause of my year-round rough starting issue, apparently the stuff that gets stuck to the injectors warms up and they work great but when starting cold they sometimes won't pop since they're pretty much glued shut. Had them cleaned and had smooth cold starts ever since.

Schwa wrote:Sticky injectors was the cause of my year-round rough starting issue, apparently the stuff that gets stuck to the injectors warms up and they work great but when starting cold they sometimes won't pop since they're pretty much glued shut. Had them cleaned and had smooth cold starts ever since.

So was that caused by early switch over and/or improper purge? or is that to be expected?

G'day Kuan, Ed!

And thanks Ed, great to hear from you what I also learned on my trip. The fellow in Winnipeg that I met seemed quite knowledgeable and shared the same advise as yours:

Make sure the oil is nice and real hot.
Run it hard on wvo, Italian style...
Add 10% diesel if to help keep the injectors clean (option).

Yes, mine is an automatic and I wasn't running it hard enough once I got into the prairies, only 2500rpm which might have gummed up my injectors. Before that I had no problems through the Rockies. I tried the Italian way since but it's not getting better, I'll try a diesel purge to see if it helps. But nice to see my filter is still fine after 5000km.

(morning symptoms when dirty injectors: harder starts, began with puff of black smoke followed by a alternance of puffs of white or blue smoke and black smoke. After 15 sec. ran almost normal)

By the way, I just ran out of wvo last night, 15km before making it to Montreal and over 5000km into my trip.

As for oil filtration I'm very happy to hear it's been working good. I still filter my oil with a pump pushing the heated oil through a series of filters down to 10u but not for long.

I started filtering my oil using a cold upflow filtration system. So no heat needed. I haven't completed a batch yet but I think it will be very similar to what Ed is doing, just with a finer filtration result (5u).

David

Kuan wrote:

Schwa wrote:Sticky injectors was the cause of my year-round rough starting issue, apparently the stuff that gets stuck to the injectors warms up and they work great but when starting cold they sometimes won't pop since they're pretty much glued shut. Had them cleaned and had smooth cold starts ever since.

So was that caused by early switch over and/or improper purge? or is that to be expected?

This was before I had the WVO kit - got the van from Silk road - so pretty much nothing was done to it and I felt it needed some kind of service since it started unsmoothly.

Just to share...

When I got to Montreal I actually ran out of wvo so went on Craigslist and only one guy had wvo for sale for about $0.45/L. Turns out his oil was Canola oil used by a company that only frys onions. Must be red onion 'cause the oil is a deep orange and has a real potent smell! Don't know why but I don't get anyone tailgating me anymore... And when I say a deep orange I mean it, the oil is weird looking but works great! After seing my van and chatting a bit the wvo guy was so impressed that he gave me the oil for $0.25/L!!! Can't beat driving a Delica!

Cheers,