Going Greener (It's not easy being green!)

[chnlisle]

It's Getting Easier

Holy Canola!!!
I just paid $3.20 for B99 at a new station about 3 miles from the house. It is the cheapest diesel in Tucson. Will see how long it last but for the moment I'm Thankful for that.

 

[chnlisle]

WOW!!! Its down to $3.15 at the same station. They're selling D-2 at the same place for $3.50.

 

[rich]

That's awesome!

That's great news,

If we can keep renewable fuels below the price of fossil fuels we will be doing really well. There's a guy in So Cal selling a '97 Ford diesel with an '01 Grandby on it for $19,500. Great truck, the 7.3 liter is a bullet proof engine and converts great to SVO or WVO http://www.wanderthewest.com/ads/lightweight-popup-campers-2/2001-grandby-craigslist-orange-county-ca-16/

The camper alone would sell for 8 or 9G.

Ah, if only I had a spare 20G laying around!

Rich

 

[Sam]

Cool, very happy to hear that. This may be the begining of widespread avalability of the bio fuels.

 

[chnlisle]

D2 is $3.20 in the town of Catalina but alas its 25 miles from here the cost benefit is a loser. I'm not sure I'm comfortable running 100% bio. I know that somewhat contradicts my earlier post on the subject and I dont have any real evidence on why not to go 100% bio. Any of you guys have any thoughts on this.

 

[Sam]

Jay,

I am far from an expert on the subject but I have read quite a bit and nothing I have found says it would be bad, in fact some articles I have seen say it is actually better, as there is more solvent and it cleans out the fuel system.

Rich would probably know alot more about it.

 

[rich]

B100 or SVO / WVO

Chnlisle,

Based on your earlier posts when you are saying 100% bio I think you are talking about B100 Biodiesel not SVO (straight Vegetable oil) or WVO (waste vegetable oil). If you are talking about B100 Biodiesel which means it is 100% clean vegetable based fuel you will be fine. Here's a description of what it is from another web site:

"Biodiesel is a renewable, cleaner burning diesel fuel made from vegetable oil or animal tallow.

Technically speaking, biodiesel is called methyl ester or ethyl esters. Take vegetable oil and strip out the glycerin molecule and replace it with three alcohol molecules. Simply put, Biodiesel is vegetable oil modified with a lower viscosity to fool your diesel injection system to think it's still pumping petrol diesel. Biodiesel can also be produced from animal tallow.

B100 is 100% pure neat biodiesel. No diesel."

The important word in the above paragraph is viscosity. The problem with running SVO or WVO is that they are more viscous than modern diesel fuels and they gum up your injectors without pre-heating them to cut down the viscosity. The combustion products of them can also coke up your cylinders. B100 doesn't have those problems because they have stripped out the glycerin to make it less viscous and burn cleaner so your vehicle can't tell a difference at all.

The diesel was originally designed to run on peanut oil and likely would have remained a bio fuel engine from it's inception if not for an unfortunate accident. The original desiger of the engine was on a boat between France and england and never made it. No one knows for sure what happened to him, there have been speculations of foul play because he was going to sell the diesel engine to a foreign millitary. The upshot is that his research assistants took up the project and buckled to government pressure to use a petrol based fuel so they ran the engine on that. Early diesels can run on vegetable oil with no problem because the injectors were designed for it. It is only modern diesels that have the viscosity problem because they have been designed to the viscosity of modern diesel. This is one of the reasons that old mercedes convert so well to veg, their injectors were not yet designed to accept only modern diesel.

The short version is you can run B100 in any diesel with no conversion and no problems. I hope this helps.

Rich

 

[chnlisle]

Rich & Sam,
thanks for that. I was slowly coming to the same conclusion I just needed some input. So its 100% B99 at $3.15 from now on. I wonder if there will be a milage difference.

 

[rich]

Mileage

So far I hear the veg zealots say they get better mileage and feel that their engines run better. I have never seen an actually study or heard those words from a mechanic so I chock that one up to them feeling better about their decision to use veg or B100 and that feeling giving them the impression that their truck likes it better. Let's face it, we all anthropomorphize our trucks a little bit. So I wouldn't count on better mileage but it certainly shouldn't go down.

 

[chnlisle]

Rich,

You're right about that. I made my decision on the Ram because I felt if the best can get is 15mph with the FWC on and 17 without I'd rather drive something more powerful and roomy. As it turns out I get better milage with the CTD (22 at 1800 RPM and 17 pretty much at any speed over 70mph) and the comfort and overall driving experience is superior. This Dodge is really the best vehicle I've ever owned. And I've had my share of Porches, Jags and hot rods etc.

The T100 was good for what it was but this Dodge in in a different class entirely. With what I sold it for the Toyota ended up costing me about 10 grand for the 12 years I owned it so I really cant complain.

And Tom Tierra also got the benefit of my decison-of course it helped that we were moving to AZ in a day or two.