Xantia - auxillary coolant input / output feeds location?

howiedean · Post by **howiedean** » 04 Feb 2011, 00:20

falling-out-with-my-car wrote:Howie are you asking me or telling me???? exactly when did I mention the thermostat in the above post? you brought that up,not me so who's not being correct now??? besides you said "it was a bit of a pain" your way.

whats the matter fed up because you took your knuckles off fitting yours to the back of the engine? I like many others have very large hands I don't know why I bother sometimes what difference does it make you wont get any decent heat until the stat opens anyway, 1 or 2 mins doesnt really make much difference the fuel pump return lines start to raise the fuel tank fuel temperature within ten mins. so no help there then.

Heat exchanger or no you still have to start on cold oil, the secret is fitting a 4 to 7 psi facet pump because heat exchangers on xantias increase the distance that fuel has to be dragged by the fuel pump unaided, fitting a facet pump stops the mechanical pump from struggling to drag the fuel the extra distance and causing a vacum inside the the heat exchanger introducing air into the fuel line when cold this also stops the cold engine hunting on cold veg oil, no facet pump eventually a broken fuel pump that wont suck fuel up to the engine hot or cold. I'm not going to argue with someone who obviously can't be given the easy way to do something or wants everyone else to do it his way. theres no,pleasing some people, I even bothered to check the internal diameter of the oil cooler lines 12mm. the outside diameter is 18mm. maybe it just racks people off when they realise your paying next to nothing for fuel.
I was talking to romie not you, its his car let him make his own mind up.
afterall he did ask for an easier way to do it, the oil cooler is behind the oil filter. as for being correct Ive done it matey and spent most of last summer sorting out all the issues brought on by fitting a fphe. as I said above the HE gets nice and hot very quickly. Im glad I don't get this kind of critizism on the veggie website esspecially when I dont even mention something someone accuses me of not being correct about. hey ho theres one born every minute;.

FFS fella calm down

Sorry that you thought that I was questioning your reasoning. I wasn't sure if you had found a water pipe that heated straight away, you read more into my post than I intended.

I am trying to pass on some information, as I have previously connected my heat exchanger to the oil cooler and decided afterwards I'd prefer to have it heating the oil before the thermostat opened. Been their, done it and have the T-shirt, 100,000 miles of bio fuelled miles on numerous cars.
On really cold mornings my previous 1.9 td Xantia would take up to 5 miles to get up to temp, this is a long way when running on cold WVO.

Everyone has their own ideas and own ways in which they tackle problems, I try to listen to all ideas and make my own opinion based on sound judgment. Apologies if I have upset other forum members, there is no intention to wind people up whatsoever.

Howie

falling-out-with-my-car · Post by **falling-out-with-my-car** » 04 Feb 2011, 13:53

Howie, I spent a lot of time appolagising to ppl yesterday Wed night I had a total of 3.5 hours sleep, and woke up like a bear with a sore edd. Parcel force let me down on delivery of a parcel that should have been delivered last week so sat here like a lemon wondering when it would arrive.

a friends computer I agreed to have a look at wont allow a memory upgrade and Ive tried everything possible to fix it, my dvd recorder dvd drive caved in recently and that wants fixing, my sons car has a nasty ABS fault and Dad gets to fix it once again cos he apparently has more time on his hands. the only thing that went well thuis week was the car passi g the MOT first go, maybe I should use that to my advantage and take a load of veg in the boot a b*gger off for a holiday.

Now back to the issue in hand the oil cooler pipes on the xantia / one comes out of the engine block and goes up tothe bottom of the thermostat. the other goes to the bottom of the radiator so I tried that because one comes directly out of the engine block there would probably be heat there quite early on, I would say I probably have to do 1 mile before heat is produced that starts to warm the pipes from oil cooler.

As i understand it the water circuit goes something like this cold water from the bottom of the radiator flows to the waterpump it is pumped around the block and water passeges in the head then it flows to the oil cooler and then up to the thermostat which is closed when cold. so I thought that maybe the oil cooler sees a flow of warm water before the heater does Both are fed with water directly from the engine the heater matrix from the back of the head and the oil cooler from the front of the block. it kind of makes sense that the oil cooler acts as a heat exchanger transfering heat from the oil when the oil is hot, I am under the impression that the oil would heat up quite quickly, in fact probably quicker than the water in the heater matrix, now learnning from cleanning veg oil that oil is less dense than water and takes less energy to heat it up for the same volume of water can you see where i am comming from?

I believe that the engine oil is probably quite hot a long time before the heater matrix, the oil cooler transfers this heat to the water in the oil cooler circuit which on my xantia is plumbed in to the HE.
I know I'm getting into the realms of science here but the theroey is correct I believe.

I think I need some more sleep

jgra1 · Post by **jgra1** » 04 Feb 2011, 14:15

veg in the boot a b*gger off for a holiday.

a good idea Nigel

I am thinking the very same thing maybe over easter when someone who is important (to someone else) is marrying..

Northen Italy may be a nice place to visit

never been there before.

John

howiedean · Post by **howiedean** » 04 Feb 2011, 21:29

falling-out-with-my-car wrote:Howie, I spent a lot of time appolagising to ppl yesterday Wed night I had a total of 3.5 hours sleep, and woke up like a bear with a sore edd. Parcel force let me down on delivery of a parcel that should have been delivered last week so sat here like a lemon wondering when it would arrive.

a friends computer I agreed to have a look at wont allow a memory upgrade and Ive tried everything possible to fix it, my dvd recorder dvd drive caved in recently and that wants fixing, my sons car has a nasty ABS fault and Dad gets to fix it once again cos he apparently has more time on his hands. the only thing that went well thuis week was the car passi g the MOT first go, maybe I should use that to my advantage and take a load of veg in the boot a b*gger off for a holiday.

Now back to the issue in hand the oil cooler pipes on the Xantia / one comes out of the engine block and goes up tothe bottom of the thermostat. the other goes to the bottom of the radiator so I tried that because one comes directly out of the engine block there would probably be heat there quite early on, I would say I probably have to do 1 mile before heat is produced that starts to warm the pipes from oil cooler.

As i understand it the water circuit goes something like this cold water from the bottom of the radiator flows to the waterpump it is pumped around the block and water passeges in the head then it flows to the oil cooler and then up to the thermostat which is closed when cold. so I thought that maybe the oil cooler sees a flow of warm water before the heater does Both are fed with water directly from the engine the heater matrix from the back of the head and the oil cooler from the front of the block. it kind of makes sense that the oil cooler acts as a heat exchanger transfering heat from the oil when the oil is hot, I am under the impression that the oil would heat up quite quickly, in fact probably quicker than the water in the heater matrix, now learnning from cleanning veg oil that oil is less dense than water and takes less energy to heat it up for the same volume of water can you see where i am comming from?

I believe that the engine oil is probably quite hot a long time before the heater matrix, the oil cooler transfers this heat to the water in the oil cooler circuit which on my Xantia is plumbed in to the HE.
I know I'm getting into the realms of science here but the theroey is correct I believe.

I think I need some more sleep

No worries, I'll get me coat.......

Your probably right about the oil over water heating up quicker but I found that there was no flow untill the stat opens (cant remember exactly which pipes I used). I guess it depends on what you want to achive. I used to have some pics of the oil cooler set-up but cant find them at the moment.
The 1.9td was brilliant on WVO/SVO but mine got a dreaded air leak which I never resolved, the final straw came when a neighbour said it sounded like a bag of spanners.

Regards,

Howie

falling-out-with-my-car · Post by **falling-out-with-my-car** » 05 Feb 2011, 09:55

Howie,

romie, sorry its a bit off topic but I Have to try to help- Howie here with his air bubble issues it is kind of on the same lines as fitting an HE.

That dreded air leak I suffered very badly with last summer when I first fitted the HE to my xantia 1.9TD.
I even removed the orriginal fuel filter holding the bottom seal suspect and fitted a £20 delphi filter unit on a special bracket. mainly because it was cheaper than buying a new citroen filter which was my only option at the time as seals were not available. citroen wanted £67+vat for the whole filter unit, which is full of rubber seals that I thought were rotted by the veg oil.

you mentioned having an HE earlier I wondered if the air problems started about the same time as you fiting the HE.
if so the mechanical fuel pump seems to struggle to lift the fuel from the tank and through the fphe when the oil is cold, fitting a facet pump gets rid
of the air and any vacumm caused by the lack of effort put in by the mechanical fuel pump, veg unfortunately carries a small amount of air with it as it is shaken in the tank, these bubbles although very small can burst in the fphe once the warmth has expanded them creating bigger bubbles, if I remove my fphe my bubble issues go away completely which does question the reason in fitting the fphe in the first place, except to say that it does the job of heating the oil quite well. if I turn off my facet pump my fuel pump starves and my engine management light warns me that the pump is starving. I recently had the management light come on when driving with the facet pump on this warned me that my filter was blocking up.

I have replaced all of the fuel line with new and proper fuel clips and simply cannot find any air leaks at all, I have even put the HE in a saucepan of boiling water and connected a compressor to it with 10psi of air in it and there are no leaks the first HE I purchased did have a leak but there was water transfering from the water side to the fuel side.

There is a modification on the veggie site to adapt the orriginal fuel filter housing so that all the heat from the orriginal heat exchanger goes to the veg oil I think maybe I shall explore that this summer and dispose of the dreded air bubbles for good, which should mean I can remove the heat exchanger putting strain on the mechanical fuel pump.

it is really suprising how fast the fuel enters the pump and I often wonder how the fuel in the tank lasts so long if you fill a 500ml container with injector cleaner and connect it to the HE rev the throttle three times it vanishes rapidly thats 6 revs to drink a litre of fuel a constant throttle setting must be exceptionally economical compared to reving the engine.
these engines seem to run a little hotter on veg oil and I read

somewhere about doing oil changes a little more often something to do with the possibility of veg oil entering the sump if oil changes are left to normal service intervals although that may be more to do with direct injection engines which are twin tanked any way my Father and I choose to change the engine oil every 3 thousand miles, I dont want to get into any arguments about his we have been there before many times on this forum I once had a nice long conversation with an XM taxi driver who was selling his beloved XM he used for work with 500K on the clock he changed his oil every 3 K not with expensive stuff by the best 15w/40 he could find for a tenner. I would be seriuosly chuffed if my car made it to 500K.

I hope this helps somewhat Howie, and appolagies if I ranted to much as usual.

MikeT · Post by **MikeT** » 05 Feb 2011, 10:34

falling-out-with-my-car wrote:it is really suprising how fast the fuel enters the pump and I often wonder how the fuel in the tank lasts so long.

FYI, the pump draws and pressurises far more than it injects into the engine. The surplus is bypassed back to the tank.

The reasons are twofold - 1. to ensure the pump is cooled by the excess fuel and 2. to ensure there's always sufficient fuel at the correct pressure to meter and feed the high pressure plunger. Next time you run injector cleaner from a seperate container, immerse the return pipe also and you should find it lasts a lot longer.

falling-out-with-my-car · Post by **falling-out-with-my-car** » 05 Feb 2011, 10:39

Mike,

thanks for that it is much appreciated I will try it out, might even do a better job of cleanming the injectors out, I did this cleanning a week before my MOT this year the car passed ok on emmissions but the tester did say that the exhaust clogged up the machine on the first attempt.

which I couldnt understand because I left the house an hour early for an italian tune up on the A14. and i was running a 50/50 mix of diesel and veg oil, last year the emissions were much lower and I was running veg oil with 5% petrol in it. so I think its back to that mix for MOT's. I am starting to wonder if my EGR system or the turbo is clogging up running on veg oil, performance doesnt seem to be affected at all.

thanks again.

Nigel.

MikeT · Post by **MikeT** » 05 Feb 2011, 11:27

falling-out-with-my-car wrote: I am starting to wonder if my EGR system or the turbo is clogging up running on veg oil, performance doesnt seem to be affected at all.

It's very possible. I can tell you I found my intake was severely restricted (at least 25%) by the EGR/breather mix at 116K miles - see my blog for pictures of how bad. The turbo remained unaffected, fortunately.

romie · Post by **romie** » 07 Feb 2011, 21:48

falling-out-with-my-car wrote: ps you don't half look like that Jimmys farm dude on the telly.
regards Nigel.

WHAT WHAT!?? B( - grrrrrr! :p

Great set of posts, was a good set of reading

Cheers, thanks for the heads up. Interesting bit on the heat exchanger causing a restriction of flow? I'll have to investigate the flow thorough the original fuel line and the HE (when I get it).

I've read arguments that the flow through the injector pump is so slow that the fuel ends up at the same temp as the injector pump anyway - regardless if it's passed through a HE or not. This would then suggest that the HE only serves the purpose of:
1. Melting the larger fats/waxes for just long enough to go through the fuel filter but then these larger fatx/waxes only return when the oil cools in the injector pump.
2. And now talk of flow restriction.

But then on the other hand as Mike T mentioned, there is a large excess that just flows through the injector pump and is then returned to the fuel tank.
This would say the injector pump should then 'come up to temp' of the heated oil that has passed through the HE and so the HE does make a beneficial difference?

Ugh. More, more pondering.... I'm looking at a HE from ebay at mo. How does this one look?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/High-grade-steel- ... 2a03beaaa7

It mentions 10 plates so I presume it will be smaller than the one in the picture.

So would this do the trick?

Moooooore pondering :/

Cheers, Romie aka - 'Jimmys farm dude'

Post by **Peter.N.** » 07 Feb 2011, 23:22

I think you would have to drive your Xantia continually flat out to produce 22kw of recoverable heat so I think that one might be a bit of an overkill

Peter

falling-out-with-my-car · Post by **falling-out-with-my-car** » 08 Feb 2011, 09:21

romie/jimmy

its a lot cheaper than my dieselveg unit. seems to have a lot of copper in it which is OK with water but creates a nasty green sludge with veg oil.
I hope the plates inside are not copper but alluminium, it might be worth asking a question about this romie.
10 plates is fine, Just remember to make sure you have the space for it in the engine bay. It might be worth building a cardboard box at the exact specifications and trying it in different locations under the bonnet before you decide.
regards Nigel.

romie · Post by **romie** » 09 Feb 2011, 10:17

ok, question asked but I'm not hopeful as the soldering material is 99.9% copper :s

Ok, so if they are copper then I'll ask him if they do an aluminium version.

Cheers for that point

romie · Post by **romie** » 09 Feb 2011, 11:45

hey-up.

It says:Plate material = stainless steel AISI 304.

Yayy, think am just going to have to find a place for this under the bonnet :p

Bahaha

romie · Post by **romie** » 09 Feb 2011, 11:54

. . k, now to find the 1/2" and 3/4" nipple connectors/converters for the hoses and the cross-over valves.

Any pointers?

Ta

howiedean · Post by **howiedean** » 09 Feb 2011, 12:38

falling-out-with-my-car wrote:Howie,

romie, sorry its a bit off topic but I Have to try to help- Howie here with his air bubble issues it is kind of on the same lines as fitting an HE.

That dreded air leak I suffered very badly with last summer when I first fitted the HE to my Xantia 1.9TD.
I even removed the orriginal fuel filter holding the bottom seal suspect and fitted a £20 delphi filter unit on a special bracket. mainly because it was cheaper than buying a new Citroën filter which was my only option at the time as seals were not available. Citroën wanted £67+vat for the whole filter unit, which is full of rubber seals that I thought were rotted by the veg oil.

you mentioned having an HE earlier I wondered if the air problems started about the same time as you fiting the HE.
if so the mechanical fuel pump seems to struggle to lift the fuel from the tank and through the fphe when the oil is cold, fitting a facet pump gets rid
of the air and any vacumm caused by the lack of effort put in by the mechanical fuel pump, veg unfortunately carries a small amount of air with it as it is shaken in the tank, these bubbles although very small can burst in the fphe once the warmth has expanded them creating bigger bubbles, if I remove my fphe my bubble issues go away completely which does question the reason in fitting the fphe in the first place, except to say that it does the job of heating the oil quite well. if I turn off my facet pump my fuel pump starves and my engine management light warns me that the pump is starving. I recently had the management light come on when driving with the facet pump on this warned me that my filter was blocking up.

I have replaced all of the fuel line with new and proper fuel clips and simply cannot find any air leaks at all, I have even put the HE in a saucepan of boiling water and connected a compressor to it with 10psi of air in it and there are no leaks the first HE I purchased did have a leak but there was water transfering from the water side to the fuel side.

There is a modification on the veggie site to adapt the orriginal fuel filter housing so that all the heat from the orriginal heat exchanger goes to the veg oil I think maybe I shall explore that this summer and dispose of the dreded air bubbles for good, which should mean I can remove the heat exchanger putting strain on the mechanical fuel pump.

it is really suprising how fast the fuel enters the pump and I often wonder how the fuel in the tank lasts so long if you fill a 500ml container with injector cleaner and connect it to the HE rev the throttle three times it vanishes rapidly thats 6 revs to drink a litre of fuel a constant throttle setting must be exceptionally economical compared to reving the engine.
these engines seem to run a little hotter on veg oil and I read

somewhere about doing oil changes a little more often something to do with the possibility of veg oil entering the sump if oil changes are left to normal service intervals although that may be more to do with direct injection engines which are twin tanked any way my Father and I choose to change the engine oil every 3 thousand miles, I dont want to get into any arguments about his we have been there before many times on this forum I once had a nice long conversation with an XM taxi driver who was selling his beloved XM he used for work with 500K on the clock he changed his oil every 3 K not with expensive stuff by the best 15w/40 he could find for a tenner. I would be seriuosly chuffed if my car made it to 500K.

I hope this helps somewhat Howie, and appolagies if I ranted to much as usual.

Some good stuff there. I was thinking of progressing further with my old Xantia unitll the comment it sounds like a bag of spanners.

I wish I'd kept it now although I would have got the pump tweaked for more power.
A guy just down the road from me had a diesel veg twin tank conversion. I remember he used to do a 100 miles a day but then people starting charging to collect WVO, his garden was full of veg oil containers.
To be honest I think it was more hassle than it was worth.

Regards,

Howie