First off, please note that I'm not making any claims, nor am I claiming that this was particularly scientific or thorough and it definitely didn't study any long term effects on the engine. It's just a very rough write up on my experiments with running a Yanmar L100 on vegetable oil.
One of the main things I wanted to do with my diesel motorcycle was run it on SVO, and reading the 'Riding on Salad Oil' article (http://www.altmann.haan.de/riding_on_sa ... efault.htm) that seemed straight forward as the author did not specify anything special to do.
So soon after getting my Yanmar L100 I tried running it on SVO.
This was during November/December in the South East of England so ambient temperature was less than 10C.
It did not like it too much. Starting it with the pull start was never going to work, but it started with the starter motor, but only after several seconds of cranking. And even then it wasn't very happy, making lots of noise and smoke and would not idle.
So I tried warming the vegetable oil up before it goes into the engine and that worked a treat.
I sheathed 2 meters of 20 SWG Nichrome wire with fibreglass sleeving and wrapped it around the metal high pressure fuel line that runs between the fuel pump and the injector.
This gave me around 3.5A current draw at 12V which heats the wire to around 200C according to some document I found somewhere on the web. (http://www.wiretron.com/nicrdat.html)
I don't really know how hot it got, but it got pretty hot.
A lot can be done to improve the heat transfer from the wire to the fuel line over my setup.
I'm sure a better sleeving can be used that conducts heat better. Please note that the sleeving needs to be an electrical insulator to prevent the wire from shorting out on the metal fuel line.
I didn't try to limit the heat loss to the air.
The engine cooling fan blew air over the fuel line and therefore cooling it.
Heating the oil in this fashion made the engine start almost immediately with the starter motor, although I still could not start it with the pull start.
The engine ran a lot quieter with A LOT less smoke than it did running on unheated oil, but it still made more smoke than diesel. The noise level seemed to be about the same though.
I never ran it long enough for the engine to warm up properly, but suspect that with the engine warm it will smoke even less.
Below is a picture showing the heating wire wrapped around the fuel line.
Sadly, I'm now selling my entire project as I'm moving soon and it can't come with me:
https://www.dieselbikeforum.com/view ... 01&start=0
Regards
Neil
![Image](http://www.vanzyl.co.uk/diesel/Heated_pipe.jpg)