The Toyota Landcruiser Owners Club

[Leslie]

The excise duty was scraped on 1 July 2007 on bio fuel use on quantities under 2500 lts use per annum.Sounds tasty to me.
Who"s going to give it a try.

[Google]

[Wandering Willy]

I think the duty on bio-diesel was about 4p/litre so the difference is not huge. In south-east England there are several places processing bio-diesel which will deliver in quantities from 25 to 1000 litres in suitable storage containers. The price is around 90p/litre so the saving isn't huge. But you can have a stock on site to save a long round trip to buy some. In some areas that might be a big plus.

You have a choice as to whether the raw material is old cooking oil or new oil - mainly rape. Different suppliers use different stock.

There are a couple of points to remember.

This oil may set in cold weather. It contains waxy products which form a jelly blocking the fuel lines and filters below about 4 degrees and then requires either an additive to dissolve the wax or only use 25-50% in normal diesel. The wax melts again when warm - it's not permanent. Try putting some cooking oil in the fridge to see what I mean. You can add a heater to the tank but it won't protect the car when stood out at night or in very cold weather when the oil will set in the fuel line before it arrives in the engine.

The second point is that bio-diesel flushes out the muck in the tank and fuel lines so the fuel filter needs to be changed after about 200 miles of using it. This is only for the first use not every 200 miles.

I wouldn't recommend using raw cooking oil like the guy on 5th gear. It is much more viscous than normal diesel and puts a big strain on the pumps and filters. You can add some to normal diesel but I wouldn't. You can modify the car fitting heaters to thin the oil but it's not a trivial change. You can get kits to do this (properly) but its only worthwhile if you have a cheap source of oil.

You can convert your own oil using caustic soda and meths but again the process is best left to an industrial unit (the sort of company mentioned above who process and deliver). The caustic soda causes the meths and vegetable oil to react creating a thinner oil which is the bio-diesel. Used oil needs to be filtered then warmed and mixed with the chemicals before the usable bio-diesel separates from the glycerine which is also created. The dirty oil from the filtering process and the glycerine then need to be disposed of.

If you want to find a local bulk bio-diesel supplier look on Google. Be careful as there are small start-up companies around with good intentions which then go under. You could place an order and find the supplier isn't trading any more. This happened to a local firm after 12 months operation. This is a shame but it happens.

Willy

[DJR]

The duty on veg oil was actually 48.5ppl, so the Government scrapping the duty is quite a big deal.

I was registered with the C&E as I used veg oil on my previous motor, and still use it now, in my 3 litre TD.

20 odd litres of veg oil (new) into a nearly empty tank, and another 20 or so litres of diesel on top.

Runs lovely......  And saves me some cash!!

[24Seven]

I use SVO in both my Hi-lux and LC, 50% in summer and 25% in winter (DERV mix) no problems so far.

Trouble is veg oil is getting more and more expensive.

[120man]