W80: keeping it mixed

Put close to 250 miles on the wagon in the last day. Ended up sitting in traffic and it started getting rather hot, about 3/4 up the travel of the gauge. I pulled over and let it cool off for a while. Drove fine after, but I found a bouncy oil pressure gauge and empty coolant res once I got to work today. Found some people saying an o-ring can go bad and cause the bouncy measurement and hoping I have a small coolant leak somewhere and didn't blow the head gasket... I just have no luck with old things.

It was extremely smokey while driving slow or stopped. People looking at me, rolling up windows, following several car lengths behind. Scored about 45gal of veg I plan to use, going to start running that almost exclusively, even if it means dialing back a lot in the winter and paying $1/gal for it. WMO smells awful, isn't good for you, and seems nearly impossible to get to burn clean in these things. I know too many people having good luck running veg without any of these issues. Too bad, it seems to do ok at 70-75 on the highway, but that's about it.

JP is possible that engine didn't get "worked" or run hard enough and its smoking cause of that???

Brad S. said:

JP is possible that engine didn't get "worked" or run hard enough and its smoking cause of that???

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I'm almost sure that's exactly it. Seems to be almost unnoticeable at speed. As soon as it goes unloaded for a few minutes, lots of smoke.

It takes a lot of heat to burn oil cleanly...

Anytime my 4bt or my friend's IDI idles for any length of time, it'll start hazing heavily... get it back on the road and under load and it cleans back up. I'm going to say its just cylinder temp being too low to burn the fuel completely.

Have you thought about adding in a FPHE and see if that helps any? They are farily cheap and would be worth the experiment I'd say.

Not to poo-poo WMO, but I've always hated the smell and idea of how unhealthy the fumes are. I am tired of seeing the huge cloud of smoke behind me when I'm stuck in traffic. $1/gal for veg is pretty stomachable and achievable around here. I think injector line heaters, timing, and diesel kleen help a lot, but just not enough for a clean burn when not under load.

O I'm not knocking veg... however do keep in mind it comes with its own set of problems.

If veggie oil was easy to get around here, I wouldnt mind trying it.

No, each definitely have their own pros and cons. Just like anything.

I have a sample of 80/20 wvo/stale gas in the freezer right now. I have friends doing this into the high teens temp wise around here. If it doesn't work out, luckily I have another vehicle to drive.

May experiment with two tanking WMO at some point, too. Seems that could alleviate some of my problems. Could have just switched to D2 in traffic and been OK, I bet. On the other hand, that's a lot of f'ing around with fuel system stuff and still having to buy diesel. At $1/gal and 10-20% free stale gas, I'm still well under $20 for a fill up that will last me 300 miles.

For what it's worth, my wife hates my truck and will say just about anything negative about it when she gets the chance. She followed me home last night on a 45 mile trip, lots of hills. Any time I was on an incline, I could see smoke in my passenger side mirror in the lights from her car. I was dreading the comments when I got home, but she said she didn't notice my truck smoking at all, which is weird. Anyway, my point is, maybe it's not smoking as bad as you think. I know that I see a lot more smoke in headlights at night than I do in the daytime.

At times I find myself worrying about the smoke and smell and all that...then I remember that my fuel is nearly free, in fact its almost putting money in my pocket, and it's still better than a high school kid with a cummins blowing smoke because he thinks it's cool...

FNG nailed it, I totally ignore anything I see in headlights behind me, I don't know if it's condensation or what, but on a 400 mile trip my wife followed me and while I was thinking it was foggin the interstate the whole trip she said it was none to very very little smoke.

Forgot to mention I was running 100% W85 made from 15-40 diesel oil. Outside temps were 55ish.

I've had multiple people tell me it smells while following me. I hoped it wasn't noticeable but apparently it is. In traffic, there were HUGE, smelly plumes around me.

Who cares what others think??

Ive followed behind gassers running so rich it makes my eyes water, I also got pulled over in Mass the other day becuase there was so much "smoke" that he thought one of our trailer tires had locked up, I think it was me messign around on the small hills on the back roads on the way to VT pulling my jeep, but the officer swears it didnt smell like a diesel ( I think he just wanted to look at our jeeps to be honest)

I also agree with the others about seeing the haze at night, heck I see haze on my all stock truck at night rolling from stop signs.

I had roll my windows up in traffic when it was smoking because it started to bother me. I can afford $1/gal in order to avoid submitting myself and others to that.

I don't have any issues if anyone else wants to run WMO, but I don't want to anymore. Maybe if I had a two tank setup where I could switch to D2 in situations like traffic. Spent 250 miles driving on veg today and no noticeable smoke on the entire trip, even spending 15min idling while it was warming up.

Made 250 miles today on WMO-75 D2-25 and had NO smoke except the two times I floored it and got the tach up in the 4K's. It typically smokes a tiny bit at speed and a moderate haze at idle/low rpm on greater amounts of WMO, but I'm thinking 75/25 is the sweet spot for little blue.

Buying 25% diesel or spending under $1/gal on fuel is basically the same cost wise. Here in the northeast anyway. That is good info to have though, I may try the 75/25 mix when I can't get wvo to stop from yelling this winter.