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18 Comments

1. What’s the shelf life of WVO?

   What additives do you add for cold weather?

   Great introduction via this post and would like to see more details and the nuts and bolts to make this all work.

2. Tri Angle farms. In winter the bottom sludge will freeze solid. My friend cuts the 5gal jugs into a screened vat. Frozen junk goes to the pigs. They love it and get as big as Volkswagen’s.

3. This article has my vote for one of the most useful articles of the year on this blog. Even if someone does not have a diesel-engine vehicle it would be good to bookmark and print this one because, you never know. My copy will be with my War Dept. booklet on wood gasifier conversions for tractors.

4. I’m a sight oriented guy. Too bad there weren’t a few pictures and diagrams to illustrate this excellent article.
   I don’t have a Diesel, nor do I intend to get one. But a continuing education is never wasted.

   1. Look at a diagram of a two tank fuel system in a pick up.

5. Even with my homemade biodiesel, I have to start cutting in petrodiesel when the temp gets down to 40 degrees or so. What has been your experience?

6. Fantastic article. Thank you.
   Articles such as these are why we keep coming back to Survivalblog.

7. I run black diesel (WMO waste motor oil) I like the simplicity of running WMO, the way you process your WVO is also very simplistic. As for the waste animal fat you can always make soap out of it (:(:

8. Fantastic article… especially the part about processing the oil. Years ago I looked into bio-diesel, but I was put off by the chemical process required (potassium hydroxide, etc.)
   Processing with water is brilliant.

9. I’ve had injector issues running filtered used vegtable french fry oil in my 2016 toyota hilux truck, due to the unseen sediment, and the type of fuel pump in the ‘common rail’ injector system. The injectors would clog, and are expensive to replace. Using heating oil has the same effect.

   However, on my other diesel motors, like the perkins in my mf-35 tractor, and the older motor in my Mercedes unimog, the french fry oil works fine, but only in the summer. In the winter it is more of a pain in the butt to get flowing than it is worth. I have also tried it with a separate filtering system in my Viesmann house heating system, but the burnt residue collects in the exhaust heat exchanger and shuts down the system. After cleaning all jets and pumps, and converting back to heating oil, the residue caught fire and burnt the modern polycarbonate flue, and about burnt down my house. The two 4,000 liter HDPE oil tanks almost caught fire in my basement.

   So, my comments are that you should use caution when using french fry oil and heating oil in a modern common rail diesel, and never use the french fry oil in a modern home heating furnace. Yes, I live in Europe, and my comments may not apply in the US.

   Some of the ‘residue’ can be used to make soap, but is a lot of work. I use the french fry grease residue to mix with sawdust and burn it in my basement wood stove after i have a good bed of coals. It smokes real bad, but puts out a lot of heat. I have a used motor oil drip system (don’t tell the gummint!) Heater that i can also run on the used french fry oil, but it burns too good, and sometimes the flame backs up the supply line, and that always creates a real exciting situation. My general observation is that it is good to know how to do it, and keep that info handy for the future, but used french fry oil is a somewhat pain in the butt work, and the benefits outweigh the mess, inconvenience and smell. I seem to smell like french fries for days after i monkey with it.

   Good article though, thanks.

   1. You have no idea how jealous and am that you can buy a diesel Toyota Hilux!

10. As mentioned in the case of the Hilux above, WGO doesn’t do well in modern, high pressure, diesel fuel systems. Basically, if the diesel engine requires (has) a computer to run it, WGO should be avoided. If you do use WGO in these modern fuel systems, you’ll be replacing injectors, pumps, and the fuel lines between the pump and injectors.

11. Would to adapt this to my 5 diesel farm tractors the cost savings would be significant as we go through 1000+ gallons a season! Thanks for the details.

12. I’ve been meaning to read up on this for a while now. My family used to do this in the early 2000’s with two old Mercedes station wagons. I remember that we had a large straining operation going in our backyard, but couldn’t really remember the process. Thanks for the article.

13. Rudolf Diesel received two US patents for his Diesel engines in 1892 & 1898. Does the author mean that Germany foresaw WW1 at that early date?

14. I know a diesel mechanic who had a 1999 Ford 7.3L van towed into his shop. Engine wouldn’t run. Fuel system was fouled very badly with veggie oil, and after about $4,000 in repairs, the van (owned by a rock band) was ready to leave. With diesel fuel in the tank. When asked how long their work was warranted for, the mechanic said, “Our warrantee expires when I see your tail lights, because I know you’re going to put that veggie oil crap back into that perfectly good engine.”
    I think WVO may work on older engines, but as Even Martin noted, anything of recent vintage with a computer, it’s not going to end well.
    I know that some batches of real diesel fuel have ruined a lot of engines because it was out of specification. Just wondering, what is the cetane rating on WVO? Or, WMO?
    My 7.3L has run just fine for 440,000 miles on real diesel. I won’t be using WVO in my engine, but you never know…..it was an interesting article. In 2015 I ran 14 year-old fuel through it for a year without a hiccup. Could get a speeding ticket in any jurisdiction in North America. i store about 2500 gallons of diesel for rainy days. [When diesel hit $1.45/gallon I filled up the large storage tank!] Think I’d trust older fuel over WVO if I had it.
    Thanks to the author for noting all the engines he used it in. All were older engines…and he’s obviously good at keeping these on the road.
    i got a batch of bio-diesel in New Mexico once, and it sure cleaned up my tank! All the crud that was living in there clogged up my fuel socks (in the tank), fouled some other fuel system components, and sent me to a shop in Amarillo for a day. That fill-up cost me $2200.00. Not a fan of bio.

15. Just a note to those who may have tried WVO/WMO and had trouble with fouling.
    As the author has noted, it is best to run two tanks, one with pure diesel the other for your wvo/wmo….it is imperative to filter well, warm your incoming waste oil and start and stop the engine on pure diesel. Do you due diligence it is WORTH the trouble!

16. That was a really great article, and I’ve saved it as a PDF for the future. Thanks for thinking it through so clearly!

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