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diesel running fast food fuel

Gnomestur

Gnomestur

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2008
Location
santa clarita
(83 240 non turbo diesel)

Drained my tank today.... smelt like french fries. Turns out the pervious owner put fast food grease in it. How bad is that for the injectors?
 
I think the issue is during extremely cold temps. I worked at a shop once where some customer ran some kind of biodiesel that clogged up the system during a bout of unusually cold weather. I think the stuff gets hardened as temps approach 0. We just sucked the stuff out, put in pump diesel, and it eventually started up again and seemed to run normal. You may be fine after you run a few tanks of pump diesel. I suppose you could try an additive like fuel injector cleaner if you want, but I'm not an expert on how that stuff would combat cooking oil.
 
People who run biodiesel usually supplement some of their fuel with pump diesel. It is known to congeal (it is fat/grease after all) in colder temperatures. Same concept as not dumping bacon grease down your sink. When it gets cold, clogged everything. Now, I was under the impression that there was a little work that had to be done in order to run biodiesel? New soft fuel lines, a few in line filters and some other simple stuff. Does your car appear to have anything like that?
 
Bio is quite a bit different. Lots of people don't understand the difference.


30+ micron particles will do signficant damage to IDI injectors, but if filtered, by itself veg oil doesn't affect them much.
Unheated is a bad gamble IMO.

My injectors after 20,000? miles on grease and ???,??? on dino oil were in no different condition than any other injector of similar vintage.
 
theknave said:
I think the issue is during extremely cold temps. I worked at a shop once where some customer ran some kind of biodiesel that clogged up the system during a bout of unusually cold weather. I think the stuff gets hardened as temps approach 0. We just sucked the stuff out, put in pump diesel, and it eventually started up again and seemed to run normal. You may be fine after you run a few tanks of pump diesel. I suppose you could try an additive like fuel injector cleaner if you want, but I'm not an expert on how that stuff would combat cooking oil.
Click to expand...

I put regular diesel in not knowing "biodiesel" was already in the tank. The car runs, before the tanks was pulled for draining and cleaning it was smoking quite a bit. Not black smoke but gray. I have diesel purge injection cleaner that I'm going to run through. Think some seals might have suffered ?
 
If you don't know specifically what went into the tank, it's pretty pointless to speculate.
As far as diesel 240s go, switching from old diesel to ULSD is probably the single worst thing you can do for fuel seals, and that happened years ago.
Biodiesel swells rubber seals which can keep them from leaking, veg oil does not. Veg, bio, and old diesel all lube the pump, ULSD doesn't really, so a lubricity additive is a good idea for old style pumps.
Your best bet is run a clear return line so you can see if there are bubble, and if there is a leak, you fix it, no biggie. I suggest getting 4 feet of the small return hose form a VW shop and replace all the little hoops between the injectors, its cheap and they tend to leak if even looked at funny ~2 years on bio, maybe 5 on dino.
 
Brets s class ran about 75k miles on used, filtered rice oil before he died and his dad parked the car.
Only cost him the filters, manual transfer pump and a couple 55 gallon drums to make his own fuel. The fuel heater cost him about 225 with the add on filter kit. The oil was free.

He would add a couple gallons of diesel per tank when the weather was cold, otherwise it was all about the rice oil.
 
One of my old instructors had set up his old 7.3 ford diesel to run off two systems, he would start the truck on a pump diesel system, once it was warmed up he would flip a switch and run filtered veg oil to wherever he was going. Upon arrival, hit the switch again and let the pump diesel clean the lines out at the motor for a minute or two then shut it off. Has never had an issue with the fuel systems in some 100k miles
 
turbotankshane said:
One of my old instructors had set up his old 7.3 ford diesel to run off two systems, he would start the truck on a pump diesel system, once it was warmed up he would flip a switch and run filtered veg oil to wherever he was going. Upon arrival, hit the switch again and let the pump diesel clean the lines out at the motor for a minute or two then shut it off. Has never had an issue with the fuel systems in some 100k miles
Click to expand...

I did that on mine till I clogged the tank. Now I just straight used motor oil. Been doing fine for years.
 
Single tank always ends in tears.
I took my veg tank apart after 5 years of service, and much to my surprise, it was still cleaner than any fryer I've seen.
 
I was running straight WVO in my Mk2 until the pump O rings started leaking.
No heater...no nothin. Right into the fuel tank.
I parked it and am running my beater Civic in the snow.
I'll re seal the pump come spring as I have about 60gal of WVO saved up.
I dump it in my transfer tank through a screen. It goes through a cartridge filter when I pump it into my car.

Oh. I ran it in my 7.3IDI a few times too.
 
Yeh, the guy I know uses two tanks, and has some super-in-depth filtering/purification/blessing ceremony he does on his. But alternative fuels is his specialty. I told him I'd eventually have a tdi volvo I'd let him work his magic on
 
I have a tendancy to post uninteligible gibberish.
To be clear;
I run pure, unaltered waste vegetable oil in my Mk2 Jetta.
I store it in a 275 gallon tank with a hand crank pump and spin on filter.
I pump it directly into my car's fuel tank and drive away.
My car is unmodified. It starts when cold down to about 45 f.
It runs exactly the same on vegetable oil as does on diesel fuel.
When the weather starts to get cold, I cut my veg oil with diesel fuel 50/50
 
gashog said:
I have a tendancy to post uninteligible gibberish.
To be clear;
I run pure, unaltered waste vegetable oil in my Mk2 Jetta.
I store it in a 275 gallon tank with a hand crank pump and spin on filter.
I pump it directly into my car's fuel tank and drive away.
My car is unmodified. It starts when cold down to about 45 f.
It runs exactly the same on vegetable oil as does on diesel fuel.
When the weather starts to get cold, I cut my veg oil with diesel fuel 50/50
Click to expand...

No hable el jibber jabber

But, impressive
 
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