Using SVO (straight vegetable oil)?

[Jaco Versfeld]

Has anyone have more info on this conversion.

Apparently you can run a diesel engine from SVO. Some modifications are needed (The oil has to be at 160 Degree Celsius to obtain correct viscosity).

Although much cleaner solution than biodiesel (you don't need your own plant), it seems to suffer the same fate - how do you get enough "raw" material, i.e., used vegetable oil from Fast-Food restaurants, etc.

Your suggestions will be appreciated
Jaco

[dalkill]

Jaco

I had the same idea.
Ended up going the LPG route

our right, waste oil (WVO) is gonna be you biggest problem.
Not sure how the situation is up north, but in the cape it's become a mafia business.

Yes you can run clean oil as is, but you will have a problem with the thickness of the oil
You need a preheater to thin the oil, else it gonna clog up your fuel lines.

Biodiesel also has the problem of erroding natural rubber seals.
Asked around and Toyota only advises 5% BD mix. more than that you void your warrentee.
I phoned Toyota and they confirmed a couple of their clients running 100% bd without any problems, but would not put it in writing.

Cost is a prob at the moment.
WVO is hard to come by, and clean oil going for cheaply at about R8 / R9 a litter.
So until we heading for R10 / liter again - which looks like it will be pretty soon - it's cheaper and more convenient to run to you local garage

[krazy_kameleon]

Hi Guys,

saw a program on TopGear in UK where they ran a volvo on SVO,
no nead for a pre heater, they thinned it our with 'white spirit' by 5% (95%SVO) and then strained out all the old chips and stuff and put it straight in the car.

ran great!

If it runs in a volvo we can definately do it in our 'luxers :)

been wanting to try it out myself but haven't had a chance yet

(also not too sure what 'white spirit' is)

[Mr_B]

Could be a very expensive lesson to learn if it buggers up the engine???

[krazy_kameleon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit

mystery solved on the white spirit (easy enough)

[DaveG]

We have been using SVO in 4 of our vehicles for the past year without any problems. Before that we made our own Biodiesel and i wish i had converted to SVO a long time ago. it is a pleasure to run on SVO, we dont have the hassle of making biodiesel, we dont have the glycerine problem, we dont have the blocked fuel filters anymore. just filter the oil and leave everything to the onboard computer. the only thing my drivers have to do is to manually switch over to diesel at night 5 minutes before they shut down the engines. waste oil is not a problem as we have contracts with most of the major catering companies and can supply the filtered ready to use oil at 20% les than the pump price.
if you need more information go to http://www.dieseltherm.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Ivan4x4]

Hi Dave

I'm very interested in installing this into my Hilux ....
Who is the local distributor in South Africa for the ATG Kit.

You have done this approximately 2 years ago... Any news or update "Would you still recommend it ... ?

[Hoppy]

I used to run SVO that i obtained from a catering company we worked for, i used to strain it with a kitchen strainer, a cloth took to long. My Microbus had a Toyota 2C motor fitted, i did no changes and never had problems, but the exhaust smelled like a fish shop. The motor was old and i had a spare one so i tried to run it on anny oil i could get, we used to service tractors and when we drained the hydraulic tanks, i filled my bus with 80 L hydraulic oil, it worked well, so did ATF, SAE30 was a bit thick, had fuel starvation over 60km/h, but if you add 50% clean diesel it ran well.

[DaveG]

We have be running our company Dyna's on WVO for a few years now with no problems, one of them has done over 130,000 Kilometers so far and next week is going from Joburg to Durban to Richards Bay and back again to Joburg, it costs more in Toll gates than it does in fuel. We fitted a conversion kit a few years ago and it was the best thing fuel cost wise we could have done, its a two tank system with the smaller tank starting the engine on diesel and when it warms up the on-board computer switches over to cooking oil., as long as the engine is hot it will run on cooking oil all day.