Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

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Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by ecohouse1 »

I have read on the forum that some members run their XUD with the Bosch pump on Veg oil.

My question is, to what extent can I use it without modifying the car? ie no preheaters etc.

Do I have to mix it with Diesel, and if so can I just top up a half full tank of diesel with Veg Oil?

Will Veg oil gunge up in the winter?

Any prefered Veg oil (I am unlikely to get hold of old used oil), eg is sunflower, rapeseed or general veg best? Also I stay in a rented cottage with no outbuildings so buying a bio diesel making unit would be out.

My car is a 99 1.9TD with a Bosch pump - I have just changed the fuel filter etc.

Will I notice any major savings as the preice of Supermarket Veg Oil is not that cheap?
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Dommo »

If you have a local Makro you can get 20 litres for £20, so £1 per litre which is nice. If you have a local chippy/pub that you're friendly with you can get and filter their old oil but it's a bit of a faff - it's what I have done for the last 3 years though!

I run approximately £25 of diesel with the rest of the tank filled with veg oil and thats a standard car with no pre-heaters. In winter however you should run more like 50/50 I find or you risk the tank gelling up, I've had that a couple of times!
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Foggyoutcome »

There is a fuel filter mod that is done and really works well. I always add a splash of petrol and diesel then add a cetane booster.
I done 70 thousand miles in my old 406 and that was using rape seed oil with some sunflower and soyer. About 30 thousand miles was on well made bio but the car started better on wvo and the mpg on bio was really bad.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by ecohouse1 »

Just hypothetically of course, I have a 1300 litre tank of Domestic Heating Oil next to the cars. I know that due to lack of lubrication it would not be safe on its own - but say mixing 50/50 central heating oil & veg - would this work?

Just filled the heating oil and its £0.575 per litre.

Other thought was heating oil with 2 stroke mixed in for lube?

Anyone tried an XUD on heating oil?
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Xaccers »

ecohouse1 wrote:Just hypothetically of course, I have a 1300 litre tank of Domestic Heating Oil next to the cars. I know that due to lack of lubrication it would not be safe on its own - but say mixing 50/50 central heating oil & veg - would this work?

Just filled the heating oil and its £0.575 per litre.

Other thought was heating oil with 2 stroke mixed in for lube?

Anyone tried an XUD on heating oil?
As long as you paid the ~60ppl duty on the heating oil rather than just pouring it into your fuel tank you'll be ok, make sure you keep the reciept from HMRC though incase you get stopped.
Personally I'd rather not risk the hassle and potential crushing of my car by using fuel which legally would cost nearly as much as diesel to use, so I'd stick with just veg and diesel bought from the fuel station (ie not red).

There's no point using biodiesel as the TD's can run on SVO/WVO
If you use SVO then at least in the summer you should be able to run 100%, I do unless there's snow/frost then I add some diesel (unless of course I can't get to Costco and have to just put diesel in).
No modification required.
If you get hold of WVO then keep a spare fuel filter in the car.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by myglaren »

ecohouse1 wrote:Just hypothetically of course, I have a 1300 litre tank of Domestic Heating Oil next to the cars. I know that due to lack of lubrication it would not be safe on its own - but say mixing 50/50 central heating oil & veg - would this work?
That would be illegal and as such the forum cannot condone it.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by ecohouse1 »

Absolutely myglaren, perish the thought that anyone on the forum would even consider the idea. I certainly wouldn't - it was purely a hypothetical topic of course! Sort of discussing over a pint type of topic! :lol:
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by ecohouse1 »

SVO/WVO
Sorry I am being a bit slow here but what does SVO & WVO stand for?
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by myglaren »

ecohouse1 wrote:
SVO/WVO
Sorry I am being a bit slow here but what does SVO & WVO stand for?
Straight Vegetable Oil (Mazola etc.) Waste Vegetable Oil - collect it from the chipshop :)
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Spaces »

Using new veg oil as fuel is questionable both on the cost saving to hassle factor and the fact that vast tracts of virgin rain forest are being ploughed up to make way for get-rich-quick soya plantations. Used oil has already served its purpose and can easily be found for 0-40ppl and with a readily-repayed investment in filters the satisfaction is enormous.

Modern diesel injection equipment (even the good old mechanical systems like yours ecohouse) is designed to work on thinner fuel than veg oil so make sure the injectors are in proper working order and the glow plugs are similarly good. (Advancing the pump 2 or 3 degrees will compensate for the slower burn characteristics of veg compared with modern diesel if you're technically competent.) It will search out any weak links and cause you more hassle than you'd believe. Dragging more viscous fuel through the lines can draw in air through an imperfect joint, this is probably the biggest cause of problem for the casual veg-user. Remember that years of mineral-fuel deposits in the tank and lines can be dissolved by veg oil (much more so biodiesel) so replace the fuel filter before you start using it and expect to replace again after a few hundred miles - replace after the first 1000 as a matter of course.

This forum is regarded as the authority on the subject by people from all over the world, just don't ask a load of questions in your first post which could easily be answered by doing a few quick searches within the site - they don't suffer fools gladly! It's a simple thing to alter the fuel filter preheater to remain on even when the fuel temperature rises, see Rotary Motion's quick and easy mod on that forum. Tee-ing the return to the tank back into the inlet recirculates pre-heated oil rather than cooling it back down the lines and in the tank - useful if you do lots of short journeys. Adding 5% diesel can improve the mpg significantly over running 100% veg (additives in diesel are nasty but clever) and up to that amount of petrol thins the oil well in winter weather, but reduces power a little.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by MPV »

It's mainly palm oil that's destroying the rain forest at the moment. Soya franken oil is not great but will work with a bit of petrol, but rapeseed and sunflower will work in a Bosch injection pump XUD beautifully at 100% veg oil(SVO= straight veg oil - from the supermarket shelf). Add a bit of petrol (5-10%) in winter. There is a mod you can do to the fuel filter to bypass the thermostat in it (NOT the water coolant thermostat!), so that the fuel is always heated by the heat exchanger - this helps a lot, but should not be essential. Info on how to do this is available on the web (see link in post above). Fit larger diameter (eg 9mm) and shorter fuel hose in the engine bay for the section feeding the fuel filter, this also helps a lot. Also make sure the fuel tank strainer is clean.

The concept of using waste veg oil (WVO) is nice, but a bit of a faff. It's also getting quite difficult to find as more and more people use it for fuel. I've seen it being sold on fleecebay for more than 60p/l. You'll also need to obtain a waste licence notification if you want to pick up waste oil as it's classed as waste and you will have to sign for and give receipts for what you collect (costs about £150 for 3 years). Then you will need to let it settle, dewater it and then filter it to about 1 micron before you can use it. Then you have to dispose of the bit of crud left over. Waste oils often contain free fatty acids which are more likely to gum things up or corrode components in the fuel system. So using SVO from the supermarket is a no brainer for me when you can get it for 90p/l or less.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Spaces »

Most diesel engines and their fuel systems aren't designed for running on veg oil, so there are a number of risks which go with its use - even if you know what you're doing. There is a risk of old seals giving way under the greater pressures of running on veg from cold, injectors need to be removed, checked and refurbed if you're serious about running on the stuff for tens of thousands of miles without problems, glow plugs can wear quicker, fuel lines and leak off pipes will need replacing, the chance of air leaks is greater and running in cold weather can cause several problems unless a decent flat plate heat exchanger is plumbed in. Older engines with a bit of bore wear/sticky rings risk more veg contamination of sump oil, so the risk of polymerising the lubricant increases.

Saving 20-30 pence a litre or so may save little more than the extra money spent making sure the engine and fuel system is good for veg use, let alone the cost of having a garage remove a fuel injector pump and have it rebuilt. I have never had any problems other than the initial air leak from a poor joint in cold weather running on it, but know that using fuel which is free/almost free covers me for any unforeseen misadventures. Best bit is, when I changed from running on 'new' oil to used (same brand, same oil), the performance improved. It wasn't down to any fats present in the oil as any would have been cold-filtered out, the only reason I could think of was that the repeated heating and cooling of the oil in the cooking process made it more combustible.

I do believe there is a moral incentive not to use food for motor vehicle fuel. But I place the blame on government's over-taxation of mineral fuels rather than the individual user.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by Xaccers »

Cassy's run on KTC soy veg for 100K mostly at 100% with no modification, only issue was the pump seals needing replacing after about 70K due to age. After 10+ years practically all seals on a car go hard, hence why the hydraulic pump starts to leak, and stop fitting as well. Veg gets in to those gaps, hardens and expands when it goes cold causing the seals to leak.
Changed the glow plugs the weekend before last as they'd been in for 4 years, and upon testing they were actually all fine, so they'll be kept as spares.
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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by jgra1 »

Mine was a piglet to start today..

really really bad.. been quite good for 4 months.. must have lost a couple of glows overnight :)
in fact it was not too bad yesterday morning, and that was a touch colder...

I have 25l WVO and a couple of pints of unleaded in there this week...

looks like i will need to hunt for my spare GP's Xac ;)

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Re: Xantia XUD TD on Veg Oil

Post by MPV »

Spaces wrote: I do believe there is a moral incentive not to use food for motor vehicle fuel. But I place the blame on government's over-taxation of mineral fuels rather than the individual user.
Only a few lucky car owners are able to run their cars directly on veg oil (mainly us Citroen and Pug owners!) and that's a rapidly decreasing number as only the old, indirect injection engines without all the computerised injection crap can handle it. So the overall impact of these people putting a bit of veg in their tanks is negligible compared to the leather sofas people sit on made from Brazilian leather made from cows raised on cleared rain forest...or ethically speaking, the mobile phones we all use with components made from materials minined in dubious circumstances in Africa...or all those consumer electronic goods made in very crappy factories in China by people being paid b*gger all. So please, let's not get preachy about a tiny bit of veg!
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