vegetable oil enfield

[FoolishGhoul]

I'm in the UK and there is a company here selling Royal Enfields with Fuji diesel engines in them (its at classicmotorcyclesltd.co.uk).

What I would like to know is if anyone has ever succesfully ran one of these (or similar) off vegetable oil. Not Biodiesel, but Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO)

I know you can modify most diesel cars to use SVO, but have never heard of anyone doing the same with a bike, but thought someone out there might have some info!

[Darren]

Most diesel bikes use direct injection air cooled engines which makes a reliable conversion challenging. (I think this is the case with the Fuji?)

Cold starts would definitely be a problem, possibly difficult to achieve and causing deposits at the injector and/or piston rings. A two tank system would be the way to go.

see http://www.dieselbike.net/phpBB-2.0.21/ ... c.php?t=95

A liquid cooled indirect injection engine would be a good candidate. A Kabota, Diahatsu VW or Peugoet / Citroen engine.

see eg. http://www.dieselbike.net/phpBB-2.0.21/ ... .php?t=165

Best

Darren
[/url]

[SUMO]

im looking into this setup

looks pretty good - more research needed and im not that far down my diesel bike path yet but its worth a look

http://www.vow2.co.uk/vow2.htm

[Darren]

I would not use one of those myself. I know plenty of other people who know about vegetable oil fuels who caution against the use of these also.

As I said above for reliability with a direct injection engine, especially an air cooled one you need a twin tank system.

Combustion will be poor until the engine and fuel are hot. Due to the lack of cooling regulation most air cooled engines take longer to reach full operating temperature.

When vegetable oil is cool it will not inject correctly and will not burn as well.

When the engine is cool the fuel will not burn as well.

Combine both, especially in a direct injection engine and you are asking for trouble.

Best

Darren

[Diesel Dave]

It's tricky to do but not imposible.

You will need twin tanks, a regular diesel tank for biodiesel or dino diesel for starting and to ensure the pipes are clean of SVO before stopping.

Heating the SVo is more difficult on an air cooled motor, a wrap of copper pipe around the exhaust with some lagging over the top does not appear to be suffecient in the winter.

It may be necessary to wrap a copper pipe around the cylinder barrel and it will take time to warm up.

The Fuji motor has a strange fan arrangement that prevents easily controlling the cooling air flow, on most air cooled engines it's easy to install a variable shutter on the intake grill.

You won't have suffecient electrical power to use a glowplug to heat the oil.

From experience you will need a bit more maintenance on the motor, else you get a poor dispersal spray from the injector and the rings clog up.

regards
Dave

[travelcrazy]

Hey Diesel Dave,

Are you talking from your own experience? I'm into the biodiesel story but there is little info.

2 Tank system & fuelline warmup thru exhaustwrap sounds like a simpele plan to test the system.

I've heared a story that only insulating the injectorline form the pump (what's the englisch word?) to the injector should be enough because the pump warms up by the engine temperature. Do you have experience with this idea?

Thanks!

Travel

[coachgeo]

If you want to start on veg.....Not even counting the issues with thickened fuels due to low ambiant temps.......

the problem with air cooled engines is getting the cylinder walls up to temperature to fire w/out heavy wear on start ups. It has been tested over and over by very poor studies on diesel tractors. While they claimed results of these studies proved why veg is a bad fuel..... what they really proved is why an engine designed for diesel must be warmed and the fuel thinned prior to use of a veg. fuel. Well.... that and engines with easy loads coke easier on veg. But they coke easier (but less so) on diesel under that environment too. Seems the cold walls and not yet hot piston chamber and piston is just to condusive to coking when doing straight veg. start ups and easy loads. Less so, but still an issue with a blended veg.

Consider a water cooled engine and a small camp bottle of LP and brew together a heat exchanger LP burner to coolant. This can be arranged to warm both the engine AND to warm the fuel with heat exchanger in the tank too or a Flate Plate Heat Exchanger as fuel exits the tank (or both). A blend of fuel with diesel or??? will make this even more possible. Include a land line coolant heater unit for places where you can plug up.

Another option that might.... and this is ONLY a guess, would be to go back to something like the ANCIENT diesels where you had a device to warm the piston chamber. Maybe a way to flame torch the chamber ?

With any of these or combination of you should be able to have less issues with starting on Veg.; how much less