Very Serious Problem With WVO

[Swamp Donkey]

None of the damage was related to abrasion or particulate matter; although it looks like it was sand blasted, it is strictly a matter of chemical attack. Corrosion, pure and simple.

The vehicle is a 2000 F-350 Power Stroke with 242,000 miles and one owner. He has been running a 50/50 WVO/Diesel mix for the last 4 months / 12,000 miles and got all his oil from the same place in his home town (metro Atlanta, GA) except for the last batch, when he was out of town in Memphis, TN.
The truck developed a severe miss on one cylinder two days after he started using the oil from Memphis, and then two more cylinders went down two days after the first one. He figures that he mixed a total of 30 gallons WVO into his truck tanks, but probably didn't drive more than 300-400 miles or so before the problems developed to the point where the truck was no longer driveable.
He's going to send me a small sample of the straight WVO which I'll send to a lab for analysis.
His injectors showed the normal wear for the mileage, but this wear all occurs in the portions of the injector where the high pressure engine oil flows, and there is no corrosion whatsoever in this area.
The amplifier piston in the injector is pushed down by the high pressure engine oil, and it in turn pushes down the plunger in the barrel. There is an O-ring around the middle of the piston to prevent the high pressure oil from mixing with the fuel. The part of the piston that is above the O-ring in the oil area is fine (perfectly smooth and shiny); the part of the piston that is below the O-ring in the fuel area is pitted and corroded.
The Viton O-rings were not damaged.

I'm too lazy to pull anyone's injectors, but if you pull them my offer still stands that if you are running ay type of WVO or bio-diesel and develop injector problems, I'll disassemble the injectors and inspect them for free; you pay for new O-rings, repair parts and return shipping.

I consider this problem to be more or less a bizarre fluke, but if caustic agents in WVO are common, this could cause some very real, and very expensive long-term problems--like $2,000 worth of problem for the injectors, and more if the cylinder walls are corroded to the point where the rings won't seal!

(I'm glad I'm to the guy who ate the fries that came out of that place after they got done with what ever they were using for cleaning!)

[01stroker]

I will find out what the stuff is that they put in the oil to clean it. I picked some oil up the other day from a local resturant, he said that he poured it into his to prolong changes. I will try to talk to him this week. You would think if it was that bad it would make the food taste also. Dunno!

[IndianaDave]

It sounds if your on the right track, having the suspect oil tested.

If it was possible for the truck owner, it might not be a bad idea to make a trip back to the source of the suspected contaminated oil do a little friendly investigating.

I sure would like to see a photo of the damaged parts.

[Swamp Donkey]

I've uploaded 2 photos into my photo album here; I'm not sure how to post a link to them. Sorry!
It is really hard to see anything in the photos, except on the piston. The main thing to look at is the good injecor parts (on top) are shinyier than the damaged parts, which have more of a matte or flat texture to them, rather than glossy.

http://photos.thedieselstop.com/show...amp;thecat=998

http://photos.thedieselstop.com/show...amp;thecat=998

[freds]

[ QUOTE ]
I've uploaded 2 photos into my photo album here; I'm not sure how to post a link to them. Sorry!
It is really hard to see anything in the photos, except on the piston. The main thing to look at is the good injecor parts (on top) are shinyier than the damaged parts, which have more of a matte or flat texture to them, rather than glossy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's links to the two pictures that Swamp posted.

<font color="blue">Nozzle body</font>
<font color="blue">Corroded parts </font>

The first picture that you uploaded swamp is in a nice high resolution. The second is really low resolution and really doesn't show much.

FYI here's how to embbed pictures using windows and internet explorer:

1. Use two browers one for the post and one to point to your web picture archive.
2. Bring up the picture in achive browser and then single click on the address bar in your is should highlight the entire URL, depress and hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard and strike the letter "C".
3. Start your post and enter prelimary text, when you want to insert a picture link, click on the URL link where it says "Instant UBB Code".
4. It will popup a URL dialog box, depress and hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard and strike the letter "V".
5. It will then popup another dialog box to enter the text to appear in the web link. Enter the text.
6. A web convention is that blue text is a link to take you somewhere, so look at all the text that was pasted into the post by the URL function and locate the begining of the comment, place the cursor there and click once to move the text insert pointer. Then under font color click the color blue. It will insert a opening closing color commands. The closing one begins with a left bracket and a slash, highlight with your mouse and depress shift delete, position at the end of the discriptions and depress shift insert.

[jt911]

Pool PH strips don't work for checking PH in WVO. Is there an easy way?

[Monte1]

[ QUOTE ]
Pool PH strips don't work for checking PH in WVO. Is there an easy way?

[/ QUOTE ]

The confusion is because pH is defined in terms of acid or base in WATER. In wvo, pH has no meaning because it is not being measured in water. That's why biodiesel buffs do titration...to figure out how much acid is in the wvo.

None of this surprises me. I don't think the corrosion is due to a bad batch of wvo...probably due to the corrosive nature of wvo in general. There is a Thai study in the literature where two identical diesel engines were run on palm oil for the same amount of time. Piston rings were weighed in each engine prior to and after running the engines. The engine run on the palm oil showed significant piston ring weight loss, while the engine run on dino diesel showed much less weight loss. This tells me that the corrosive nature of the acids in veg. oil wear out metal parts over time and this is part of the cost of running svo/wvo.

[frashdog]

does anyone think this may have something to do with the lack of heating? May be this is a case for what happens when the oil is not heated enough.

Have not heard of many people who "seem" to know a lot about wvo who advocate straight up mixing with diesel and no heating. Sure it works, but so does used motor oil and hydraulic oil.

If it is a ph problem it must be an isolated one? I hear/read more about heating issues than ph concerns. Any one else hear of ph problems?

[Swamp Donkey]

I'll tell you guys what:
Lets have a bunch of you who are running WVO in Power Strokes post the following information:

Year and model of truck
Current mileage
Mileage when you started WVO
Months/Years running WVO
How you use it (filtration, processing, % mix with diesel or 100%)
Any other pertinant information

Then I'll pick 3-4 people and send you a spare injector. You install the injector in your truck and send me the one you take out for inspection. I'll inspect them for free, and post my findings and photos of the parts.

Also, would one of you explain "titration" to me?

[RickHredf250]

Swamp, great offer! Glad to see vendors stepping up and helping, shows they know which side of the bread is buttered!
I am not planning on running WVO but making bio so I will pass on the offer.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, would one of you explain "titration" to me?

[/ QUOTE ]
Neat word aint it!
Basically, a test to see hom much Free Fatty Acids are in the oil before processing.

"Titration is a laboratory technique by which we can determine the concentration of an unknown reagent using a standard concentration of another reagent that chemically reacts with the unknown."

Man that says nothing!

Try this...
"Titration is an indirect test for free fatty acids (FFA) in waste restaurant fryer oil.

Each titration only takes about 30 seconds (after you've made your initial bottle of reference tester solution), although it looks terribly complicated 'on paper'. Titration is done by reacting a small sample of free fatty acid (which happens to be in a ml of waste oil) with a measured amount of lye, and using pH to tell us when the FFA is all used up.

Why We Titrate
The biodiesel reaction needs alkaline lye (NaOH) or KOH, as a catalyst (methanol and vegetable oil wont' react to make biodiesel by themselves) Waste oil contains free fatty acids (FFA), and the free fatty acids will with lye to make soap before the lye has a chance to participate in making biodiesel.

We do a titration to find out how much free fatty acid is present and to find out how much to compensate for it by adding more lye so there's some left for the desired biodiesel reaction.

How To Titrate
The titration performs the lye/free fatty acid reaction on a very small scale, and we use pH to measure it (somebody before us has previously figured out which pH change indicates that this reaction is complete, and it's at pH 8.5, the color change point of phenolpthalein indicator. Phenol red is close enough and is a hardware store item).

How To Use The Information
The titration will give us a number (technically called acid value or acid number).

We know that we can compensate for the fact that the free fatty acid will consume some of our lye, by adding a specific amount of lye to 'sacrifice' to the soap-making side reaction that the FFA forces on us.

The way this particular titration is written, every 1 ml titration result (ie the acid number) will tell us to add an extra 1 gram of lye for each liter of oil/ffa you're using to make biodiesel to compensate for the side reaction caused by the FFA."
Credit Girl_Mark

Take Care,
Rick H...

[BandE]

[ QUOTE ]

Year and model of truck
Current mileage
Mileage when you started WVO
Months/Years running WVO
How you use it (filtration, processing, % mix with diesel or 100%)
Any other pertinant information

[/ QUOTE ]

05 F250 PSD
Miles on truck when I started WVO 3900
current Mileage 4710
Two Tank heated system. See Sig
Start and stop engine on Diesel.

[TravisT]

[ QUOTE ]

Year and model of truck
Current mileage
Mileage when you started WVO
Months/Years running WVO
How you use it (filtration, processing, % mix with diesel or 100%)
Any other pertinant information



[/ QUOTE ]

1997 F250
172000
145000
Almost 25000 of SVO.
13 months total use
Screen filtered, then 30 micron sock filtered, then heated to around 180* then filtered down to 2 micons - 300 watt filter heater that is turned on during the winter, then through heated fuel line, then through one last in line electric heater and then through stock fuel pump and stock fuel filter (what micron is a stock fuel filter?), then into the heads and through the injectors.

I ran the truck with straight WVO without purging to diesel from August of last year till mid December (chicago). The truck started fine and ran weak till it warmed up. The injectors were'nt acting perfect even before the WVO so I didn't care.I kept a 50/50 mix in the diesel tanks for the few days that I did not have oil. Then once the temps reached 30* outside, I started to purge nightly and 3 miles before reaching work with roughly 25/75 oil/diesel.

They say that running out of fuel is bad. I've run diesel tanks dry about 10 times, and had my fuel pump go out while on WVO and nursed the dying truck all the way home (10 miles and it took over an hour of having the foot to the floor). Alright, so I was a bit hard on the truck, but I enjoy fixing what I break.

By spring, one injector refused to work at all but I kept driving daily, eventually, nearly half of the injectors were failing intermittently. The injectors were pulled, inspected, rebuilt and modified, and reinstalled. The results?

The p+b's were not scored (I could have swore that they would be). One injector spring was broke (probably from starting daily on cold stiff oil). The reason that they were failing is because one injector tip was completely clogged and four other injectors had four out of the five holes clogged. This clogging problem was due to a batch of bad fuel filters (stock PSD filters, not special WVO filters) where the oil ate through the glue that holds the metal bottom on the filter. So, the bottom of the filter would come apart and un filterd fuel would enter the injectors.

Now the injetors are good as new, run strong (165cc) and perform great. I even force incredible amounts of oil through them with Tony Wildman's extreme burn and they still work fine.

Last words: Damage will always occur to an engine that runs on any fuel. Repairs will always have to happen. That's just part of the deal. I plan to remove the injectors every couple of years to have them gone through.

[TruckerDon]

Late '99
Current mileage 242,ish
Grease started around 228,000
50/50- tripple filtered WVO Diesel mix (unheated) 4mos.

As the owner of the aformentioned FUBARed injectors, I'll let you know how this progressed.

I put a drum of oil from my regulars in ATL in the back of my truck for a trip to Memphis. I mixed it on the road. A few days before I drove back to ATL, I went to a wings place and filled another 55 gal drum up. I settled it for a few days, then filtered it into my drum. I'll say that the grease smelled a little funny, but it didn't look bad. The color was actually pretty light... a bit "orangeish." As I mixed it, I ran it through another 5 micron nominal filter.

By the time I got home, I had a slight miss that got progressively worse as the tank ran out. I had about 35gal of that grease left in the drum, but filled up with diesel the next few weeks. During the diesel only time, the miss was still there. No better, no worse. About 2 weeks ago, I decided that I'd put another 15 gal of that grease in and run up to the station and fill 'er up while it was still warm from the days driving. I wasn't sure if the miss was due to grease, infected grease, or mileage. I was actually guessing mileage, since I'd run so much grease in the past. Well, I found out soon enough. I still have a bit of the grease that I'm going to send to Swamp's.

These guys have been FANTASTIC to work with, and I can't give them enough credit for helping me out. Both Johnathan and Dave are interested in our use of alternative fuels, and seem to be behind it's use. Instead of getting scolded and whacked with an outrageous repair bill without much thought, I've just gotten quite a few well thought out questions, and their determination to figure out what went wrong is impressive. I feel like these guys aren't just out to make a buck. They really wanna know what went wrong, and help us head this off at the pass. I'm very impressed at their offer to check out "greasy" injectors. Well, guys. You have 8 of mine.. whadda ya think?

I'm going to try to figure out what is up with this grease, and I'll let you know. It'll be a while, though, as I should be seeing an upgraded set of single shot injectors and a 4 bank chip on my doorstep soon.

Hey, maybe I poured junk in my filter housing for a reason to upgrade.

Oh, and one other thing. There was a little WMO in there, too. One oil change of Redline (to about 35 gal of grease). I believe Redline is ester based. I don't think that had anything to do with the damage.

Don.

[fordnut74]

Late 99
current mileage, 150,000ish
started unheated SVO at 115,000
Installed heated FN74 at 118,000

I have run almost exclusively oil since then, with a tank of diesel here and there. I bought my truck with 112,000 on it May of 04, and put a ton of miles on it in the following 7 months. I don't have a single source, but a variety of places I picked up from. Then found a guy who would deliver it for .20/gl. I heat it to 120, let it set at least 12hrs, prefilter it through a cummins air filter, then final filter through a donaldson 555823 fuel filter. Once in the truck it is filtered again through a 555823, and into the motor, only after the motor is at operating temp.

Swamp-Thanks for your involvement in this, that is great!! as many have already said, exactly the kind of studies we need to get to the bottom of this.

Gear_head- By any chance was that a mexican restaraunt you got that oil from? Last year I picked up several bathces of oil from a local mexican food place that was also good clean looking oil, but very orange in appearance. Wonder if there is any connection there? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shrug.gif[/img]

[roreri]

<font color="blue"> 1996 Ford F250 PSD </font>
Purchased April 2004 [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif[/img]
Mileage at purchase 98,024
Approx. Mileage at conversion to WVO 102385

<font color="green"> Mileage Today 139548 </font>

Converted using the <font color="red"> Greasel System </font> May 2004
Total Gallons of Diesel used 484 gallons
Approx. Total Gallons of WVO used 1954 gallons (actually pretty close)
100 gallon bed tank for WVO.

ALLWAYS pump from the top.
I use a flocculent in my “gathering” tank, before I fill it up.
ALLWAYS pump from the top.
Then pump it to my standing tanks.
Let the WVO “sit” for several weeks.
ALLWAYS pump from the top.
Pump it through a water heater to my 7” x 32” sock filter, rated at .5 (that's point 5 micron) microns nominal.


Truck info…
I use a biocide in both Diesel and WVO. Keeps the "Yabbies" out. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bleh.gif[/img]
Use a big LF1000 10 micron Raycor filter.
I do NOT mix diesel and WVO.
I run straight Waste Vegetable Oil.
Then the WVO passes through my stock filter.
Then the rest is history… [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smokin.gif[/img]


RoReRi

BTW... Jonathan, I'm the one that about a year ago, as I was replacing the mechanical fuel pump on my truck, dropped a hose clamp down the tappet hole. I called in a panic and your advice was to just let it be.
I did and its still there [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]