Altenativly you can buy the equipment for £1000 & canvas your local chippy & curry house to take away their used oil for free

I cant say i have heard of the fats still in it you talk about Rob, maybe you could expand?? for numbnutts like me?

And maybe Ray would like to come back and tell us about this if you know of many using it straight as they say, have they reported any such issues? i suppose changing of filters more often is not a bad idea although mine is well over serviced anyway so doubt that would be an issue here!!!

I am also in an ideal position to distill my own out in the middle of knowwhere, i have to say i have seen on TG or FG one of them where they made their own deisel [in fact something tells me it was Wheeler Dealers or chop shop anyway i degress] and i saw easily the fat content but that was from used chip pan and kebab oils not clean new veg oil?? the general public would be horrified if they knew just how much crap/fat is in a kebab anyway i digress again so i can understand issues if using it staright and doubt you could without clogging everything up..

Didnt i see somewhere that you need to instll some sort of pre heater thingy ma bob to heat it if running straight im sure i did as at a current cost of well under 90p a litre it could almost 1/2 the running costs of our deisel T4's but if at the expense of an engine obviusly it wouldnt be worth it, if on the other hand it would in actual fact do no harm that normal deisel doesnt why not........

I refuse to run on red for a number of reasons least of which we live in farmlands where desiels are regularily stopped anyway so i would be done very quickly, apart from the fact its full off water which wrecks filters, engines etc i ahve also heard of all sorts of mixes mostly deisel/kerosene mixes some heavy trucking companies use it i beleive maybe Rob could tell us about that something to do with the way tractor units run, all off which will run our vans but at what cost, an 18 wheeler will run on almost anything i am led to beleive where as our engines are a bit more refined...

So is the answer straight Morrisons, Tesco, Asda bought veg oil even if that has to be bought in 5 gallon tins from a cash and carry to get the savings ???

Or is a lot of it urban myths again this is what im worried about some more explanation is required here and some more research i feel pre doing anything...

The fast I put it though probably not the right name for it - in all that used oil & good oil is good stuff what you want to run your engine on & the bad stuff that clogs it up really bad i know some one who physically cleaned this crap out of all the ports in his engine

there are two methods of seperating one of putting oil in a jar adding certain ingrediants shake & leave 24 hours & then you skimm off the good stuff on top

the other is to use like a big still? massivce container where you put your oil & basically turn it on & after a while out the bottom comes good oil to use.

ive a link somewhere ill find it & add it.

that was quick here we go read this Make Your Own Bio Diesel

If i am not mistaken then ALL 1.9 deisely weaselies will happily run on new fresh veg oil without making any changes at all to the engine running as you would on normal pump bought deisel, most usually it seems on a ratio of around 50/50 pump bought deisel and shop bought new clean fresh cheapest veg oil, from Asda Tesco or the likes or that indeed wherever is cheapest [is not advisable to do this before spring or after late autumn]

After late Autumn the veg oil turns a lot thicker as it gets colder making your engines a lot harder to start, although a heater to pre heat it and thus make it looser and more able to flow your engines will start but only after almost flattening the battery and putting masisve strains on it so not adviseable thus as soon as the temp drops significantly ie when you have to put your hous eheaters on it is advisable to revert back to 10% pump bough desiels

As for used veg oil old kebab oil and such like requires to be sieved and purified to remove all the c**p deposits etc that are now in it from cooking with it, which can be done at home although its in the region of £1k for the still to make it so you would have to have a good supply of old oil and likewise need a lot of miles to be covered to make that route worthwhile.....apart from having to have large enough supplier which wouldnt be easy i wouldnt of thought all the carrying it about all the mess and your garage taken over with distilling gubbins.......

The 1.9 and 2.4 T4 engines, new vegetable oil and properly prepared Used Vegetable Oil is ABSOLUTELY FINE - even when run 100%.

The ONLY downside to with very high % of veg oil when compared to diesel alone is the difficulty in COLD which definitely increases the more veg oil you add to the mix, which is why most stick to around 50/50.....some have been known to use a 80/20 veg oil/diesel mix and have had NO problems at all – apart from when the first frosts hit where it takes a couple of minutes to fire up. If yours suffers with cold starting in this way it is said that if you get caught out in the cold an immediate remedy is to pour boiling water over the injectors – it will fire straight up after this quick and effective remedy it is recommended however if using veg oil mixes during the winter months if you mix 5% petrol in it will stop it waxing in winter. It is advisable to over service with x2 oil and filter changes in the normal service periods, just in case there was anything in the rumor about filters getting clogged up and/or oil getting thickened by the SVO – although most report NO differences at all has been the case.

Many run 1.9’s with increased boost/fuel with no shown increase/risk/decrease whatsoever and use their vans every day, dispelling all rumors that it can and will damage your engines, There is a rumor circulating about filters clogging and/ or the veg oil being thicker than derv both are true. But let’s look more closely at them shall we: In the case of clogging, a specific algae grows in derv and breaks down the derv leaving rubbish behind. The veg acts as a solvent and strips this out, so in fact it's not the veg clogging up the filter, it's actually cleaning it and the tanks out but sometimes it does clog on the first 2-5 tanks. After that you should be fine, hence the points about over servicing on your filters being prevalent..

A lot of owners like our very own Stan Lumb have been using theirs for several years without loss of anything for well over the 5 yr mark often in a variety of vehicles far less just a VW apparently the viscosity of the veg oil is greater than found in pump purchased diesel resulting in the engine/pump running at higher pressures, ideally the T4 engine and pump are suited then to this mix so long as your seals can take the extra pressures involved pump seals weaken with age with the added pressures involved they often weep if this happens in your particular T4 either weaken your veg oil/ diesel mix or replace all pump seals for running 80/20 without any such issues…

Further advice is if you have any vehicle with the 1.9PD engines it will kill them do not attempt any veg oil/ diesel mix if yours is a 1.9PD

There is no way around it, veg uses 5-10% more fuel that derv this is just the nature of the beats but with the gross savings available and obtainable it is a small sacrifice for a far larger gain most counter, many swear by this method of running often specifically buying 1.9 and 2.4 diesel T4’s for the sole purpose of running with veg oil supplementing the fuel bill somewhat, which on the face of it sounds like an all round winner

The second way is to run a twin tank system with diesel in the main tank and veg oil in the secondary tank allowing the vehicle to be started on normal diesel in the normal way and when started and hot switched over to the veg oil in much the same way as any LPG systems operate thus cutting out the cold starting issues completely, most often utalising a 3 way switch mechanism just before the injectors allowing a free flow of 100% pump bought diesel at start up and running on for a while until the engine reaches optimum temperature where upon switching to 100% veg oil from the secondary tank with-in about a mile or so of starting it further the same again as LPG is recommended that a couple of minutes before stopping the engine it is switched back to diesel only which is preparing it to it is a quite extensive system with the veg oil running through often a VW filter surrounded by a water jacket heated to 60-70c and through a heat exchanger to ensure the veg oil is kept at about 70c when it gets finally to the injectors which is important if running solely on veg oil to keep the viscosity right and saving the engine components from excess wear and premature failure

I am confused, I have a 93 2.4d Caravelle. From what I read, I can run this on SVO without modification. Could somebody confirm I have this right?

Also, do I need to mix this with Diesel, or petrol? and I can only do this during summer (with no mod?)

Sorry for all the questions but it is vexing me.

I went onto one of the links and it appears to be 790 euros to mod, but I didnt think i needed one.

like I said, confused.

Hope that helps if not read and re read the posts above all the information is contained with-in them and the links set out above, it is pretty clearly stated above what you can and cant do buddy, if we can help dont hesitate to ask ...

Don't put petrol in your diesel bio-mix as it will knacker your engine. Also you can't run a petrol engine on bio.

so I would on a monthly basis go down to the shop & fill with £50 worth of bio & run it for a few days then freak out the petrol station by putting £5 worth of petrol in on top then as I ran it down & if i didnt have the time to go back for more bio chuck a tenners worth od Diesel in it.

It ran fine......

Look at it like an additive [but Jim is right also] put to much in a tank and you will knacker it although it's not as bad as putting deisel in a petrol i have done it twice as long as the mix is not over 50% petrol in a deisel tank you can burn it off using it to drive the engine it's just a bit smokey as it cleans out the engine my guys say a gallon per tank works much like a clean out and is in fact good for the engine .....

5th gear done a test put Petrol in a Diesel & Diesel in a Petrol = Result both ran but the petrol ran better on the the diesel.

I once worked for a guy & one of his drivers made the mistake of filling the vans tank with petrol, he was told to just drive it & not rev it to much & as the tank ran down top it up with derv - he done just that & said it ran fine just a bit smokey.

Back on topic please .....