WiDE - Water in Diesel Emulsion

[bbjordan]

Made it to the farm!

Update: Truck didn't want to start this morning. No smoke. Checked the Schrader valve. Fuel there. Cracked an injector line. No fuel there.

Think, think, think. Why did it work last night and not now? It was warmer out.
Hmm, what if I warm up the IP? I dug out the heat gun and focused it on the Injection Pump for a few minutes. Tried cranking it again. Smoke!
Glowed the plugs and it fired right up. So we packed up the truck and hit the highway.

Shot of the truck and trailer:

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The truck seemed to run alright. Not fantastic. I took it easy doing 110 kph (65mph). It seemed to have more black smoke going up the hills, especially near the end of the trip where we were facing more head winds. No problems at all without the fan, even with towing the trailer. The temp gauge hardly moved even going up some pretty good hills.

We stopped a couple of times, once for a burger, and again for a *** break for the wife. Truck fired up again both times.

It took a full front tank to get to the farm which is normal for this truck without towing a trailer or hauling stuff. The best ever for this truck was about 7/8 tank. The trip from Calgary to the farm is about 370 km. My understanding is that the front tank holds 76 liters. 71 liters for the rear. So early calcs suggest 4.87 Km/l (11.46 mpg US). Nothing to write home about, but I think the timing is still off. Maybe too far advanced now? This thing really needs a turbo.

Over all, I am very happy with this fuel experiment, although I think I am still being plagued with some bad biodiesel.

I love my truck!

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[Brad S.]

Nice info jordan.
Do you think the 20% bio mix has more crud settled out then 10%??? and/or do you think the crud settles out faster with 20% bio???
And what kind of temps did those samples see???
Keep it coming.

 

[bbjordan]

Update: same thing this morning crank no start. No smoke. Put heat gun on the IP for a few minutes and got smoke. Started right up after that.

Brad, to answer you questions:

I'm not sure if more crud come out with the 20%, but it does seem to come out faster.

For the first 3 weeks, the samples were in the house...so room temp. After that, I put them outside for about a week so they would see some freeze/thaw cycles. Yes, we are getting frost in the mornings here.

In other news...I spent the morning doing the semi-annual start up of the the vehicles in my outdoor auto museum.

 

[Brad S.]

How long can you run the bio, before its gets too cold???
Like to see some of the museum cars.....

 

[bbjordan]

Be careful what you ask for

Brad, I found that 100% bio clouds at -6C. We'll see what this stuff freezes at.

Outdoor Auto Museum pics:

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[bbjordan]

Aluminum body

So, the big news is that the new Ford F150 has an aluminum body. Big deal. This Land Rover had an aluminum body in 1965.
This particular one was a pickup truck that was converted to a DoorMobile. The top pops up and has 2 bunks. This one is not mine. It belongs to the old man. He's still emotionally attached to it. Rolls eyes. Don't know what that's like.

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[Brad S.]

Like all the Ford stuff.
Tell him the Land Rover would look good with a IDI in it... My guess he won't roll his eyes...

 

[AcIdBuRn02ZTS]

Negative... 4bt in the landrover would be a beutiful thing however.

I wonder if you are getting air in the system at some point....

Another thought is injector line heaters... might ease cold starting. My buddies NA 7.3 struggles to cold start on W80... it will do it but it struggles and thats with fresh glow plugs and a new harness.

 

[ZWilson07]

Noob question but..

What do you do with the "fuel" to get the crap out that settles out to the bottom from the biodiesel?

I can see it being pretty easy to seperate using the glass jars that your showing for reference but what do you do to get all that crap out of the bottom of a big tank or whatever one is using for bigger batches?

 

[AcIdBuRn02ZTS]

Most have a large drain valve on the bottom of their settle tanks... I use 3 275 gallon IBC totes for storage/settling of waste oil so the 2" drain on the bottom will flow sludge just fine. lol

-Chris

 

[bbjordan]

ZWilson07, I mixed up the fuel cocktail in a 210 L (55 US Gal)steel drum, and let it settle for a week. I have a barrel pump that works on air pressure. The pump has 3 sections for the down tube. I took the first 2 sections off and just pumped from the top of the barrel. It's a great little pump. I have two of them. It only takes 5 psi to make the fuel move as fast as I want it to. It's really nice and quiet; only the hiss of the air through the regulator. I will now add another section on the pump and pump 'till it gets to the last 20 liters. The last of it will go into a 20 litre pail which I will decant into 20 L fuel container. That way I can see how much crap is in there. Remember, all of this stuff has already gone through a 10 micron filter. By crap I mean the particulate matter in the "stuff". The crap (triglycerides, diglycerides, monoglycerides, and glycerine) from the bad biodiesel will settle out over time (months) especially with freeze/thaw cycles. It's better just to start with biodiesel that meets ASTM standards. The bio that I got was produced by a local boy here. I pretty sure it doesn't meet ASTM standards.

 

[bbjordan]

Good news and bad news

Update: I have good news and bad news:

The good news is that it started this morning without having to use the heat gun.

When we got to the farm I had switched to the rear tank which had D2 in it. Yesterday, I had it running while boosting other vehicles. I got nice and warm with no fan. Not overheated, but warmer than any point towing to the farm.

The bad news is that now the key start doesn't work. I had to use my remote start button on the starter relay.

After going about 75 kms, I decided to retard the timing because the engine seemed to make to much noise. I suspect it is around 9* advanced now. It quieted down a bit and seemed to have less black smoke under load. It also ran a little cooler: needle on the O vs the R in NORMAL. I think I could retard the timing even further with this mix.

We travelled at the same speed we went to the farm 110 km/h (65 mph), and had a 10 km/h head wind on the way back. Calgary is higher in elevation than the farm too. I still have over a 1/4 tank left according to the gauge.
I figure about 20 Litres left in the tank. If so, that is about 6.5km/l (15.33 mpg US). I'll have better calcs when I fill the tank.

More good news: The cruise control works again! It held a steady speed on the hills too. Some black smoke, but still good power.
This is going to rock with a turbo!

All in all, a successful experiment, and a good ThanksGiving Day long weekend.

 

[Blownoiler]

Some pics of the fuel filter with and without flash:

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Close-up:

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I scraped it with the razor knife three times:

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I think it is the glycerin/glycerols plugging the filters and causing me grief. My producer had gotten some WVO mixed in with my biodiesel a while back. This resulted in a gunked up Injection Pump and plugged injectors. I thought I had this all sorted out, but maybe not.

Any one else have fuel filters that look like this?

Check out this article- make sure you scroll down to the pics if you don't want to read the whole article.
http://dquirk.com/Diesel/Bacteria.htm

 

[bbjordan]

Hmmm, might be onto something there! I'll have to see if I can find a test kit.
I'm still thinking it's the glycerol/glycerides tho.

 

[bbjordan]

Update: I drove to Vancouver (Maple Ridge) BC. to visit my brother. Ran the truck on the "new fuel" without a fan and rad shroud. I topped up the tank with the 10% bio mix. It ran like a charm. Even going up the hill from Kamloops to Merritt it did not over-heat! We're talking a 6% grade for kilometers. You can see the spots where vehicles have burned down at the side of the road. Normally the temp gauge was between the O and the R. The warmest it got was the M.
I checked the timing today. It was 9* advanced. It seemed too advanced for the new fuel, but not advanced enough for the D2. Still blowing a little black smoke, but I think it is a little over fueled.

I solved the no start issue. It was a jumper missing on the neutral safety switch connector for the automatic transmission. It must have fallen out when I was going thru the long grass at the farm.