VW Cold Start On WVO

Old Stinky gave me a little scare today. After some serious loss in power, I changed her fuel filters, only to find the problem got worse. I was pretty much running 100% WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) at the time, and thought I was in some trouble. After driving some 100km to burn up about 8 liters of oil, I went to the gas station to top up the tank with $10 of diesel. The diesel didn't help. The car wouldn't idle, it would die at every traffic light, sputter, and lack power. After a day of thinking about it, I got into it, and found an air leak at the new filter, sucking air in. I double hose clamped the fuel line, and its running top notch again.

Running 100% WVO has its disadvantages. One disadvantage being it is harder to start. In the summer it starts like it is -20c outside. Here is a video of a "cold start" at about 15c. This was when I had the air leak, I think it is much easier to start most of the time, I will make another video soon.

Filtering Fryer Oil

Just a simple vid of my simple cheap fuel filter. The car has a filter to its required specs, this just takes the french fry bits out, that can cause problems with the tank pick up tube and stuff. Even still, be prepared for road side filter changes if you haven't gone through the tedious task of pushing this stuff through a 10 micron filter.

This vegtable oil was progressively mixed with less and less diesel fuel. I now run it at 80% fryer oil and 20% diesel oil. The car puts up a bit of protest starting, but less than it did starting in the winter. That gets me 160 mpg on the diesel fuel I have to pay for.

Soon I will have the biodiesel reactor dialed back up, and I can run B20, 20% biodiesel, 80% fryer oil, and never stop at a gas station again.

This website will go through the process of adding a seperate fryer oil tank for the winter, making biodiesel, dropping a VW diesel into a Dodge minivan with the sole intention of running it on fryer oil, and rebuilding the old vegie truck.

Adjusting Fuel Air Mixture

Mega Squirt system that can be used to adjust the Fuel Air Mixture. This display runs on any lap top as the interface to the Megasquirt ECU, where you can see your fuel air mixture. I am very excited about this, I already have TBI on my 91 truck, but I intent to parallel the ECU and set up some different maps for efficiency and towing. Full details are at http://www.megamanual.com/index.html

It looks to me like typical cold weather starting puts 500% more fuel into the Chevy TBI I looked at on DIYautotune.com. The video, that I failed to successfully embed, also taught me 2 disadvantages of TBI over Direct injection. One being cold starting where fuel is essentially lost sticking to the cold manifold on its way to the cylinders. The other I was somewhat aware of, and it is the obvious, as each cylinder is separately controllable, the temperature of each cylinder can be equalized.

I will be getting one of these kits, and taking it with me on my next car too. The Megasquirt is about the same price as a Fuel Air Mixture gauge, but you can actually adjust fuel air mixture at the same time.

Converting from Gas to Diesel

There are a few reasons to go with Diesel instead of gas in your truck or car. The fellow in the video intends to run Biodiesel in his truck when he gets the Mercedese Diesel installed. Diesel is also more efficient and the motors don't wear out as quickly. I am really excited to see the the final product with a Mercedese Diesel in a little Chevy truck.

30mpg in an F250!

Lots of respect for this guy. He has made a lot of effort to improve his gas mileage, although they are not the most esthetically pleasing. To get 30mpg out of an F250 is amazing. He has 2 advantages over my truck, being diesel and standard, but my Dodge 1500 should weigh a lot less.

When my diesel Ranger is complete I will do these mods and see if I can't get 40mpg on the smaller feather weight diesel, standard transmission. Thanks for the inspiration Bakari.

A full list of the F250 mods are available here

How to convert km/L to MPG

I am constantly surprised at how few people take their gas mileage. Even those that "have an idea" are usually just going by what the dealer had told them about their car. The funny part is almost everybody can tell me how many km they get to a tank, and how much it costs to fill, but they never know how many liters nor gallons they put in. If you know the price of gas it is easy to divide the cost by the price to get the liters or gallons. Even easier is to just check the pump when you fill up.

Zero your trip meter when you fill up and check how many liters you put in. Now the next time you fill up do the same thing and you will have the previous trip reeding, in Canada here it will be KM, and you can simply divide that by the Liters you just put in. This gives you Kilometers per liter of fuel. Everything I see on TV and the internet is the american standard of Miles per Gallon. So I convert KM/L into Miles Per Gallon simply by multiplying it by 2.825.

For example, I used to run my 240 liter tank empty at 800km. 800km divided by 240 liters equals 3.33km/liter. Now 3.33 multiplied by 2.825 equals 9.42mpg. Hope this helps more people keep track of their mileage.

The Biggest Increase In Gas Mileage

The truck all packed for the return trip home to Alberta.

Because I have to do a lot of driving in my 91 Dodge 1500, my gas mileage is a going concern. I initially got only 9mpg when I purchased this truck. I never took the "check engine light" seriously, and still haven't put the light bulb back in its socket tucked behind the dash. 1991 truck computer readers are pre standard and so they cost a lot more, are make and year specific. With a lot of research I figured the oxygen sensor was probably malfunctioning, and an oxygen sensor ultimately cost less than a computer reader for the truck. The truck had 280,000 km, or 174,000 miles on it. From what I read Oxygen sensors only last for 200,000km at best, and then very poor mileage results from the worn out oxygen sensor.

I feared changing the Oxygen Sensor, as it is in the exhaust manifold, and I have broken many bolts holding exhaust pieces together. The heat it produces accelerates rust and corrosion. I procrastinated for months and then purchased the special "Oxygen Sensor Socket" on sale at Princess Auto. I am so glad I got this socket before I attempted the Oxygen Sensor change, but I still procrastinated another couple of weeks before I changed the sensor.

The final kick in the pants was a 2400+ km road trip to Victoria, which would make a great mileage test. So I got the sensor changed last minute, filled up the 240 liter fuel tank, and off to Victoria. I usually run out of fuel in that tank after 800km, and then run on the smaller 150 liter tank until I can get to a station. No surprise, on this road trip I didn't run my big tank out at 800km. To my surprise, the new oxygen sensor, and all the other mods I did got me just short of 1700km before I ran out of fuel. That is close enough to 20mpg for me, which was my ultimate goal. As it turns out part of that great mileage was my non stop driving for 12 hours, with virtually no traffic lights, and the motor never got to cool down or even stop. After that trip I got a consistent 12-13mpg, which is still a huge improvement on 9mpg. But there is lots I can still do.