Glort

Running a 4.2D on veg oil. The 4.2 is a great candidate for veg oil use. Having inline or rotary Bosch pumps, IP failure is not an issue. I have been running my ’88 NA engine with 560K km on straight veg and blends with NO modifications ( other than a lift pump) for about a year now. I did have a Heat exchanger installed but due to it being too restrictive once I turned up the IP, I have bypassed and haven’t worried about it. I will probably try to fit a larger one this winter. When I first got the Vehicle near the Qld border, I merely purchased a spare fuel filter, pumped up the tyres, topped the tank off that had about 20L of Dino in it with Veg oil and drove the thing back to Sydney without a hitch. I ran round in june- july with the thing dead stock and just adding 10% petrol. I later added a heat exchanger and CAV fuel filter as well as a Walbro fuel pump. In summer I run on mainly straight oil but add 5% petrol when I remember which helps with performance on oil. I recommend a 5% min blend all the time. The petrol helps bring the ignition speed of the oil back closer to that of Diesel and makes a big difference in power and Torque. Personally I wouldn’t bother running one of these on a 2 tank setup. 2 Years experience has been enough to tell me it is in no way necessary unless you live in a climate where it regularly gets to zero. When it did, I’d just run high ratio Blends of petrol and dino for a couple of months till the temps came up again. My experience with my NA engine when turning up the IP was that the lift pump on the IP struggled to pull sufficient fuel through. I fitted a walbro pump and it made all the difference. I also replaced the OEM fuel Filter with a CAV filter for cost and ease of availability. That said, the OEM filters seem to have much more dirt holding capacity and less flow restriction. To run a 4.2 on oil requires nothing much more than pouring in clean, dried veg and go as long as the ambient temps are around 15 oc or above Most of the time. At this time of year I would suggest adding 10% Unleaded. One could also add a flat plate heat exchanger ( FPHE) to the fuel line to help thin the fuel. This is most beneficial in melting any fats that may accumulate in the filters and block the fuel flow. That said, If the oil is processed correctly, there will be little to no fat drop out anyway. Heat exchangers are available on ebay for around $100. A 20 or 30 plate is sufficient. For optimum performance on veg, the timing can be advanced 5 degrees on stock. I have never bothered with this myself but for those with a power thirst it will make a small difference.

The Veg oil Primer. No way to keep this short so make a cuppa and settle in or go to the next thread if your concentration is short. I have tried to address commonly asked questions in this post to make the info as informative as possible and answer as many questions as possible instead of just creating more. Vegetable oil based fuels are a replacement for Diesel Fuel only. They CANNOT be used in petrol engines. There are basically 3 ways of using Veg oil: * Straight Veg oil Known as WVO ( Waste Veg oil) and SVO (Straight Veg oil.) Any vegetable oil can be used. Cottonseed, canola, Corn and sunflower are the most popular in oz. Peanut, olive , palm and other oils can also be used. There is little to no difference between the way they work in an engine. Straight Veg is best not used in everyday start stop traffic unless a water injection system is fitted to clean out potential deposit build-up. SVO Fuelled vehicles also benefit from regular full power squirts to keep injectors and engine internals clean and short runs as with any Diesel are not recommended. Veg is at it’s best on long drives and under load. WVO generally requires modifications to the fuel system of the vehicle. The common mods are to fit a heat exchanger to the coolant circuit of the vehicle so the oil is heated as it passes through. The heating thins the oil and reduces it’s viscosity to make it easier for the IP and injectors to spray into the engine. Normally also fitted is a 6 port or Pollack valve. This enables the vehicle to be started on regular diesel and run till the engine is up to operating temp and then switched to WVO. Before shutdown the engine is returned to the Dino so the oil is flushed from the system. The valve is operated from a switch fitted to the dash so can be operated by the driver on the go. The fuel is changed over because WVO is much harder to “ Light” than diesel and makes starting much easier on some Vehicles, particularly if they are older and have less than perfect compression. WVO systems are known as 2 tank systems as another tank ( generally a 20L drum or such) is fitted to hold the diesel for start-up and shutdown. Many people also fit a 2nd set of larger fuel lines for the oil and as a backup however this is not at all a necessity and few vehicles requite it. The 6 port valves are designed to run on the original lines and just swap feed tanks. Once the engine is hot, it can be run as long as required on veg. If the engine is shut down for a short time, 2-3 hours depending on ambient temp, there is no need to change over back to diesel. The oil will stay warm and thin enough to easily re start the engine on. With regards to performance on Veg oil, the oil itself has about 10% less energy value than Dino. Some people say they gat a slight power loss, some say no different and a few say they get an increase. It really depends on the tune of the engine and the vehicle although assuming a slight full power loss is most practical. The addition of 5% Petrol has been found to restore a lot of the lost power and has other benefits in cold starts and thinning of the oil. SVO is collected from restaurants and has to be cleaned of food particles and any water. Many people do not “ Dry” their oil and unless the oil has had water added ( rain in the waste oil drum or washing dregs for the restaurant) then short term use is OK. ( Say on a trip where drying is difficult) The reason for drying the oil is stated as preventing damage to the IP but practical experience of hundred’s of people is that bacterial growth forms in the fuel tank and causes problems long before any IP damage occurs. Anti bacterial additives are usually compatible with Veg. Most people filter the oil to 5 Micron (Um) through “ Sock” filter bags which are available from industrial filter suppliers and there are also some sellers on ebay. These bags are properly rated and remove all the particulates to their rated size. They are also available in 2 and 1 UM, some people preferring to go to the smaller size for good measure. By comparison, Regular Diesel is generally rated to 10 Um filtration as are most on-board filters. Another way of filtering oil is with household type water filters. These are also rated in Microns and can be obtained in sizes from 20 to .5 Um. When using these filters, It is highly preferable to use the “ String wound” Types as against the expanded foam type as the latter has much less dirt holding capacity and blocks much faster. Water filters can be very handy for filtering oil on the road and the filter cartridges can be bought from hardware stores and the like on ones travels. There have been highly incorrect news reports over the years that the veg oil can be merely poured through a disposable “ Chux” type cloth and into the tank. This will work for a short time till the particles block the tank pickup, stuff the fuel pump or block the on-board filters in VERY short order. It is highly preferable to have a reserve of veg oil and let it sit as long as possible before use. This allows much of the crap and any free water to drop to the bottom of the tank and leaves much cleaner oil on the top which allows the filter bags to last much longer when the oil is processed before use. * Biodiesel. Unlike with WVO, Bio requires NO modification to the Vehicle. One pours it in as they would diesel. Biodiesel is basically a chemical filtering/ stripping of one Molecule of the oil to make it much thinner and a direct, pour in replacement for Regular diesel that can be used in most engines save for the later DPF types in some cases. Biodiesel requires no preparation of the oil as far as filtering but free water in the oil is to be avoided as it reduces the yield of bio and increases the amount of waste product. Most Bio makers just strain out any bits of chips, batter, bones etc with a few layers of fly wire and call it good. Any junk is pulled out in the by product. Biodiesel is made by Mixing Methanol (generally at 20% volume to oil) and a caustic base ( KOH, NaOH… AKA, Drain cleaner) together, heating the oil to about 50oC to speed the reaction process and mixing it with the oil generally for an hour to ensure complete conversion to Bio. After being left to stand, A thick black goop drops to the bottom and is known a Glycerine. This is generally around 20% of the oil volume but depends on the quality of the oil to begin with and how used up it was. This is drained off the Bio and the bio is then washed with water to remove any dissolved Glycerine and residual methanol/ caustic and then dried. The drying is generally done by use of a powerful aquarium pump and a bubble stone to evaporate the water out of the mix until the Bio is clear and shiny. Bio can be very hard on rubber components and seals etc. Generally rubber has not been used for many years in vehicles but occasionally it may be encountered on older vehicles. Most new components are relatively impervious and a material called “Viton” can also be obtained in may applications which is Bio proof. One character of Bio is that it is a fantastic solvent. When used in fuel tanks, after a while a lot of black rubbish will start being seen in fuel filters. This is NOT from the bio itself but rather the bio stripping out the rubbish that has built up from the years of diesel use. People fit cheap disposable filters to catch this and save the more exy OEM filters or remove the tank and clean it out properly. The age and quality of the fuel used determines how much crap is liberated. Bio will thicken in cold weather ( below 5oC) but it depends to what extent on the oil used and how pure the Bio has been made. In cold weather many people cut the bio with alpine Diesel or Kerosene to keep it flowing easily. * Blending. This is my personal favourite way of using Veg oil although it is the underdog of all the methods despite offering all the advantages and few of the drawbacks. Blending is simply mixing or cutting WVO with a solvent. Popular choices are Dino, Bio, and Petrol. Other things such as Avtur, avgas, Turps, thinners and Kero also work well depending on available supply to the user. The WVO is Cleaned as normal and simply mixed together with the solvent and poured in the vehicle tank like one would with dino or Bio. NO mods are generally required to the vehicle although some people fit a Heat exchanger for good measure to help thin the oil component. Blending ratios can start at 95% oil and go down to 95% solvent depending on what is being used and most importantly, the prevailing temperature at which the fuel and vehicle are being used in. One could use 95% Dino, 5% oil or it could also be 95% oil, 5% Dino. The only limitation is with petrol/ avgas blends where it is unwise to go over 15%, 20% absolute max in sub zero weather. DEPENDING on the vehicle, as little as 5% Petrol or Kero can be used in summer. Some vehicles prefer more, but 10% in summer with petrol would be a safe limit. For Dino, in summer anything from 10 to 30% would be workable but you can add as much dino as you like obviously. In winter and as always depending on the vehicle, anything from a 30% ration of Dino up would work. The guide to how much solvent is used is generally based on how well the vehicle starts. It is not necessary for a an engine to fire on the first compression stroke as some seem obsessed with but it is desirable to have the engine fire within 5 sec. When the blend is right, this is easily achievable. After starting there may be a little stumbling for a few seconds till the engine gets some warmth into it but after this the engine will run as if on dino. Obviously starting is much easier in Summer. Ideally blends should be varied according to the prevailing conditions for best efficiency. No use using 50% Dino when 20% would allow the vehicle to operate perfectly well. One would also not want to be running 20% petrol on a 35o summers day as the possibility of the fuel boiling in the lines and creating vapour lock would be be high. Blending takes a little while to become proficient at but soon one gets a feel for the vehicle and the engine and knows what mix to make. 3 part mixes can also be effective where say one is already up to 15% petrol but starts are still a little hard so additional kero or dino can be added. Generally people try to keep the solvent content which is usually bought and paid for fuel as low as possible and the free veg oil ratio as high as possible.

Honesty sometimes comes across that way. I certainly have a lot more respect for people that have the gut to say their piece rather than suck up even if I do disagree with them. Seems that's getting a rare thing on the other site. And yet again, rather than defend his position , Jet had to fall back on his favourite argument ..... Threatening to ban anyone who dosen't follow his way of thinking.

I was surprised by jet's little hissy fit but I see he's had a rethink today and over his little tantrum. If anyone else did that they would have all sorts of chit put on them but for him it will be ok. The amount of sucking up going on there is ridicilous. Not taking anything away from the efforts of those trying to save the forum but I really have to wonder.... If they couldn't contact the owner as they have said, what the hell was all the hard work they were putting in to savng the forum? You would only send so many unanswered emails or leave so many messages surely. Anyway, looks like they have finally made contact with the man so all appears to be OK now. That does beg the qustion though, if they hadn't been able to contact him for so long, exactly WHAT were they basing all the " She'll be right, we'll fix it comments on? Either they were planning something underhanded or just feeding the membership a load of baseless crap to keep them pacified and stringing them along. I think this whole little chit fight has really shown a lot of insight into a few people there.

I just had an idea I thought I'd throw out there to see what level of interest there may be. I was wondering about organising a Photo day for people to bring their Vehicles along (Patrol or otherwise) and have them properly Photographed like would be done for a magazine. There would be quite a few options with this but the aim would be to give people professional quality shots like in car mags ( or better) of their own vehicle. Everything from a single pic for a poster could be shot or a full detail coverage showing a few angles, interiour, engine etc. Images could be put on Disk or printed as fully edited and enhanced poster size prints and everything in between. If there was sufficent interest, I could arrange a model to pose with the cars. Owners could also have their Girlfriend, wife, ( or both, together or at different times) Boyfriend, themselves with their vehicle or the whole family as a lifestyle portrait. The idea would be to organise a location somewhere around the greater Sydney area and book people in. Ballpark prices would be around $150 for a basic poster size print but if there is interest I can sit down and work out some packages and put together a full price list. I have shot for various car mags in the past so know how to get the best angles etc and also have a full lighting set I can take onsite to get the best pics and detail possible. To help with the running of this forum, I'd be happy to donate 10% of sales to help with the expenses in operating the site. It could be run as the first Mypatrol get together with a BBQ and Meet and greet to make the day more enjoyable and added value for the travel. Would anyone be interested?

So C'mon Ray, Spill the beans, what do you think their plan is?

Things are starting to sound pretty dodgy over there. I asked what was going on with the forum and was told to contact a mod direct. WTF is the big deal with telling people what is going on unless they are doing something dodgy or underhanded? Does anyone know if there are any tricks to gaining access or control of a site legally if the owner can't be contacted? The way things are being put, it's really starteing to sound like a case of "we can't get permission so given how we want it so bad we are just going to take it. " I would hope that's not the case but it seem like either the members are being strung along and a lot of BS blown their way or there are underhanded plans afoot. Pitty there is no info to clear things up.

Just for you Jacket, I have started writing a Veg oil guide. Yes, it is long but I am trying to make it informative so it answers more questions than it creates. I'll also do a bit specifically on the 4.2 based on my experience of 2 years with one.

I just had a look. 34 new posts since I last logged in. Looking through them, I don't see a single one that required and of the information there that people seems to make so much fuss of. Anything worthwhile I may have to say I'll put here where the chances of survival look a whole lot better.

Oh come on! It just wouldn't be a proper 4Wd forum without Ray's daily news and political extracts. I didn't see him post anything on the other site and I started to wonder if he had met an early demise. Good to see he's still around and kicking and back into full form. On this one I agree. I know a guy who's family have owned a dairy farm for a bit over 100 years down Nowra way. A few years ago they had to give the game away because it was simply no longer worthwhile for them to operate it. Dairy farmers in Cahoots with the big supermarkets had been paying less and less for the milk until there was more money for the family to go get a Job on a servo counter than what they were making from the hours they put in on the farm. Guy I know is very bitter because he grew up believeing it was his destiny to run the farm like generations before him and pass it on to his son(s). The farm has everything going for it except the ability to sell it's product at a viable price. I have to laugh at Dickie getting his nose out of joint over costco. They have 3 stores in the whole country and I think the last one was only opened a few months back. If 3 stores are affecting his business that much, I think he ought to go back to electronics. Of course the product lines might be a bit thin if he sources Australian made only products. None the less, his point is not completely without merit. I have seen califiornian oranges in the supermarkets as well as several lines of produce I known are grown localy. My Mrs and I won't touch it. Firstly I don't see why our own industries aren't protected from this type of thing and secondly, I'm not going to risk something grown in Human Chit and sprayed with whatever chemical was cheapest, may be because it was toxic. Really, does it matter if the weekly groceries cost $5 more a week with what people pay over all? And don't give me the down and outs and starvingpentioners bit. They are a small minority always blown out of proportion. Of course if all our produce had to be localy grown where available, there would be a hell of a lot more jobs in a variety of industries and a lot more money staying here to lessen the burden of some of these people. Another thing is we generally shop at the green grocers not coleworths. Generally the produce they have is better, localy grown and cheaper except where the supermarkets have gone on a predatry pricing binge to try and take them out of the picture. I'm also a fan of roadside stalls. Nothing fresher lest it's out of your own garden than that. Even though I'm in surburbia there is an old guy round the corner that sells his garden harvest out the front and we regularly buy from him. Sometimes he gets a bit carried away with price but he also has very heavy Kg's for your money so swings and roundabouts. It's great to see someone take a genuine pride in their product though.

I think that's because Hardly anyone CAN get in on the other forum let alone post. Dunno why people are going to other forums when this one is here. It could be the new and much improved version of the old one with a different address. Question will be how long the other one stays down and how many people will bother going back. Not much use posting where the info is going to be lost.

If it's a 4.2d I might have some veg oil for the trip home save buying that horrible expensive Diesel Stuff.

Old mav was a bit out of his depth on that one. I had a run in with the owner of a local Veg Fuels forum on some behind the scenes issues and he got bitchy and stoppd me from posting. When I started deleting all my posts he threw a hissy fit about that too. The upshot was I said I did wnat any thing to do with his forum or to be associated with it any further and asked for all my posts to be removed. At first he wanted me to pay him fr his time to take them down ( couple of presses of buttons) and then refused outright. Knowing a bit about copyright I also knew of a gubbermint department that looks after that and got in touch. They said I had a sold case and were drawing up papers to serve on the twit owner. He must have woken up and got his own advise because a coupl of days before he was going to get hung out to dry, he deleted everything. The best part was this department was acting on my behalf with no cost or risk to me at all. They are keen to basicaly prove their they are worth their budget and are protecting the interests of people in their charter. they are a very effective department as it's one thing to take on a private person, quite another to take on the far reaching resources of a gubbermint department. What you post on a forum comes under literary works and also intelectual property. No matter what a forum terms of service says or membership conditions, you won that work unless you specificaly sign it over. You are also free to post it to any or how many sites you like. I see old mav has posted something today about ownership rights and the owner potentially getting nasty about things being taken from the site. Given the owner has demonstrated a distinct lack of interest in the forum, the chances of him taking any action I would say are remote. Even if he. did, the costs of pursuing it would be significant. Everyone threatens to sue, doing it is quite something else. In this case the owner would be all on his own and I can't see any legal entity taking on the case for less than $5-10K up front. Even if he did get it started, it could b spun into a veritable minefield of jurasdiction questions that would cost a pile to sort out even before the case got started. I -believe- under the terms of fair use, education purposes and a few other possible terms, infomation by someone else could be copied from another site as long and the source and authour were refrenced. I'm not 100% on that but I believe there is something to it. I thought they may be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat with the other forum, now I'm beginning to think it's not near as likley to be saved as the powers that be are saying. Between people getting Virus warnings and now not being able to post, it won't be inspiring confidence in a lot of people.

Care to share what they are doing that supports that Hope? I'm intreauged as to what they are actually doing they seem so positive about. I think the people taht can get in atm are doing it through their phones. Keener than I am!

There is no doubt many members will cling to the old site by their fingernails till the thing has sunk, is dead and buried and cremated for good measure. There seems to be an unusual dedication to what is just a website and in technical terms, a far from outstanding one. IF it survives, great, if not, personally I can't see it as any great loss. All the info there can be passed on by people joining this site so what's the difference? AS for the 50K members on the other site, I gaurantee you they would be lucky to have 1000 active members or proabably even that many people that have logged on in the last 12 months. Members is always a hollow and inflated number. It's also apparent that the other site would be burning through members at a prolific rate with all the recent troubles. I don't think the numbers of members is as important as the quality and knowledge level of the people that make up a forum.

Anyone had sucess with this? I read about it somewhere years ago but the thing seemed to be the temp was really hard to control and obviously depended a lot on the terrain you were driving in. I recall one guy in the piece I read had a fashioned a double walled oven and had it on the back bumper. He had one of those exhaust cut out things and a temp gauge and could regulate the temp quite well. Seemed to be enough heat at the tail pipe to cook with. Would take a bit of creativity to make an area that was suitable to cook anything around the manifold on most patrols I'd think, not an awful lot of room around there. I can just image a trip with my crew with something cooking under the Bonnet and the smell wafting in the cab. " Are we there yet?" would change to "Is it ready yet"? Probably just as annoying as the first question.

Exactly what I attempted to post yesterday in reply to Jet's comments about things going on in the background that they can't tell us about. As I tried to say, sounds like a Hostile take over or a koo. The forum admins have always taken a moral High ground, it now seems they are determined to take over the forum by hook or by crook. If there is a legal way of doing it, fair enough but I can't see any and then there is the moral question of " I want it and you weren't using it so I did some manouvering and took it". IF they can convince the owner to part with it, good and well but all this stuff supposedly going on behind the scenes at this point dosen't sound exactly Kosher or as straight forward as buying it off him. Peter had a go at someone the other week at the suggestion of copying and transfering the info there to here, it would be pretty hypocritical to take over the whole forum by anyother means than with the owners full permission and consent. Maybe that's what they are trying to do and I hope it is, but they sure are making things sound complex and somewhat underhanded. I still don't get the obsession with it as a forum. The info that's there is only as good as the search engine really. Nothing that isn't known by people now and could be answered again with up to date info. There is also just as much opportunity for frindships to be forged here as anywhere else. A forum is just a URL and as far as that goes, from what I can see here, this one has more to offer. It's the people that make any forum what it is so a lot easier to start again here and carry on as usual I say.

Could it be low on oil?

I'm amazed at the obsessive Compulsion some people have with the old site. Yeah sure there is an info base there and all that but if anyone has a question is there no one with the answer amoung the current membership? Seems to me everything needed to pick up where the old one left off is right here. Like I said over there, who cares about a URL, it's the people that make a site. If it carries on, great, if not too bad. I really wonder if the effort some like Old mav and jet and maybe others are going to is really worth it when it would just seem a hell of a lot easier to carry on here without all the obstacles and difficulties of the old site. I reckon things will get real interesting Come August when the domain expires. I reckon there will be a scrapping match to get it even though I doubt it has much more than sentimental value. It might be able to generate a few buchs with ad lacements but I reckon that would put a lot of users off and if it went to a pay membership site, well then it could kiss it's arse goodbye for sure. Forums that go from free to paid memberships rarely if ever survive let alone work.

On the other forum there seem to be a lot of people concerned about the info that is already there. as I posted yesterday, so what? It's the members that have the knowledge that put it on the sie in the first place. If people come here then the info others learned from there can be passed on here. I have been asked a couple of times about doing a thread n using veg oils. I think I'll post up there that if there is interest I'll do one..... Here given that I have my doubts about the future of the other forum. Hopefully that might drive a few new members this way. I can't really thing of anything else I know inside out enough to hold myself out as any kind of auhourity on that might interest people. I'll see how it goes anyway, dunno there is much more I can do to help.