Fortunately the beauty of antique diesels is that they function wonderfully on straight vegetable oil or B100 biodiesel, so for those in the PRC (Peoples Republic of California) you can hug your tree before anyone else.

Not to mention that home-spun biodiesel reactors are right up our collective tinkerer's alley: www.biodieselcommunity.org/

Hi Joe, correct me if im wrong but surely it matters not, what fuel is used, but how the emissions are controlled, be it by advanced electronic fuel delivery or captureing those so called darn particulates ? Regards Gordon.

Joe-
As I understand it diesels only run on veg when both are warmed up. Will they start on veg?

I understand they'll run AND start on vegetable oils, if it's warm enough to flow.

The gelling is the reason for two tanks and heaters if someone is trying to run straight vegetable oil/white grease etc.

Biodiesel is not the same as vegetable oil though. It has had the glycerine taken out and the fatty acids reduced? to saturated hydrocarbons. Much less tendency to gel than oils, good lubricity, and from what I understand, it is highly detergent, but that may be due the additive package that goes into blended fuel.

As ccjersey stated diesels start and run fine on vegetable oil as long as it can flow. You have to remember Rudolph Diesel designed his revolutionary "compression engine" to run on vegetable oil allowing farmers of his era to free themselves from fuel dependancy. Of course that was almost 100 years ago and we don't have those kind of problems now.

As for emissions, what goes in has everything to do with what comes out. Biodiesel and vegetable oil exhaust is significantly cleaner than petroleum diesel, and also as ccjersey mentioned has excellent detergent properties. I've got a 1980 Mercedes diesel with over 500K miles that has been run on straight vegetable oil with no conversion and the engine oil stays pretty clean. Ideally you should change seal and hoses in contact with the fuel to viton as rubber will deteriorate quicker.

I do get riled up with our current energy issues as history paints a different story than most believe. Gasoline was the original "alternative" fuel as the bulk of motorized transportation at the turn of the century ran on either electricity, ethanol or vegetable oil. Now, almost a century from that past, we don't have the technology or will to get off foreign oil. The true tragedy of it is that most Americans are more concerned about who's winning "Dancing with the Stars" than about the future of their very lives.

I'll go put away my soapbox now.

My question was based on info I've read about the systems sold to run veg. They are basicly a tank, a means to heat the veg and a big filter to get the fries out. They claim the engine should start and shut down on diesel. Is gelling the only concern? Can you be more specific about 'warm'? What do you do if a cold snap blows in, or is your garage heated? Can you turn the car off on a cold day?

Are we getting to far off topic for this forum?

Carl, by no means are we getting too far off topic for the forum! If the questions are addressed to Joe Black, he lives in Florida, where so far as I knonw, they don't have cold snaps. GWH

I can tell you first hand these new caterpillar motors have a lot of problem. Our 6.6 cat was just recently replaced by caterpillar, with about 1000 hours because of so many problems. The pressure they are running to burn the fuel clean have been soo hard on the injectors and injector pump. They have replaced all of the injectors, re did the fuel system by adding more filters (it had 5 fuel filters), replaced injector pump, etc. Just yesterday, after being in the shop for three weeks, we got back the machine with a new C7 motor. I'll keep you posted on the new motor

From what I understand of the multi-tank systems they are for use with newer diesels made after the mid to late 80's. Due to design changes in the fuel delivery systems to accommodate increased petroleum diesel emissions requirements they apparently don't start very well on straight vegetable oil. Switching tanks to start and stop on petroleum diesel would ensure smooth starting, so it's not temperature related. If I remember correctly though, vegetable oil will begin to gel in the 40's and biodiesel the 30's. I do stand to be corrected on that! As George mentioned we're in central Florida, so we only get a few weeks of anything much below the 70's. Off-the-shelf fuel heating products for diesels (fuel filters, line and tank heaters) work fine for those in chillier climes, plus many have been cashing in on the green-trend making specific fuel heating products for converted cars and trucks.

There is plenty of great information out there on using vegetable oil and biodiesel, but unfortunately about 1000% more disinformation requiring you do a lot of cross-checking and additional research. But the link I posted earlier is a good solid place to start if interested in biodiesel which I personally find the best solution. We're converting our tree farm to bio-fuel production by replacing the pines with African Oil Palm which yields on average over 600 gallons of produced fuel per acre. We also recently purchased a new VW TDI Jetta for the daily driver and it runs fine on B100, not to mention being a very nice car that gets 50MPG.

Now if I can just get the pony motors to run on ethanol I'll never have to go to the pump again!