My ears perked up when I saw your posts on the hard starting problems you were having especially when things started revolving around alternators and especially when TWO were found to be faulty. This can be a pretty difficult thing to truly diagnose. The obvious conclusion when the battery drains but is a good battery would be a bad alternator. But when that is replaced and symptom still exists, then another alt is put in and problems persist, it is likely there is another cause for the problem.

A faulty glow plug relay will cause the glow plugs to stay on for longer than their 2 minute cycle time or it can come on also while driving, something that you can’t tell is happening.and because glow plugs draw more amperage than the alt can put out, the battery will drain. Cold weather just exacerbates the problem. Add injection line heaters, 8 amps or more is added to the already “draining faster” electrical system. [Read more →]

Well winter is here and my filtered wvo is pretty creamy. I filled up yesterday and the oil was coming out of the hose pretty slowly. I have had no problems starting up. I am using the glow-three-times winter strategy that a mechanic taught me. I turn the key so the preglow light goes on, then off. I turn off the key and do it again. Then I do it one more time before starting the engine. It has worked like a charm even on a 20-something degree morning last week.

We have started using 330 gallon “totes” to store and dispense wvo. Here I am with the 660 gallons we purchased a couple of months back. As the season warms up, I will likely get back to collecting and filtering my own. Filtering in the winter is just too slow with my current setup. I am still reluctant to put additional energy into heating the oil to facilitate filtering.

It has been pretty cold here, dipping below freezing at night and rising to the 40’s and 50’s during the day. As I filled my tank yesterday with wvo, as has happened repeatedly this winter, the bottom half of the cubie was kind of like jelly. New veg oil from Costco had the same consistency.

I have been using a 3 to 1 wvo to diesel mix and it has been performing very well. I have had no bogging lately. I don’t have a tank heater, nor a heated fuel line from the tank. I do have a booster pump that draws the wvo forward from the tank, taking some of the strain off of my injector pump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I purchased that booster pump from LovecraftBiofuels in LA.

I collected 45 gallons of wvo this weekend at my favorite Chinese place. Yesterday morning was cold (around 40 degrees). The cubies had been sitting on the concrete floor of my unheated filtering room and had obviously been chilled, to say the least. When I started pouring the oil into the funnel atop my 55-gallon filtering drum, out came something the consistency of oatmeal – or more accurately – stirred up jelly.

Much of it actually passed through the filter during the day as temperatures climbed into the high 50’s. My winter filtering has been and will likely continue to be quite slow. It was my hope to collect enough oil in the summer to carry me through the winter but that didn’t happen.

A couple friends and I have just ordered 660 gallons of filtered wvo from a guy who collects, filters and sells it. We will receive our delivery on Thursday. He collects all types of oil but filters and settles the oil rigorously. This is an experiment. I will let you know how the trial goes, running on the new oil.

I finally figured out why my car didn’t start the other day. The alternator died! This is the Bosch alternator installed by my mechanic in August. I brought my battery charger with my on the trip knowing that something funny had been happening. I thought the issue had to do with one of the electric appliances that I installed. These include the injector line heater and the booster fuel pump.

In the end it was the alternator and my mechanic installed another new on on Friday. There was no charge, of course.

The trip home was interesting. 365 miles and I couldn’t turn off the car and restart without a jump start. I stopped for some food in lovely Delano, CA and a nice guy and his girlfriend gave me a jump. The photo is of a sunrise at the meditation course.

Tomorrow I am heading to Joshua Tree. I’m going to be serving on a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It is a 364 mile drive each way. At 24 miles per gallon I will need roughly 30 gallons of veggie oil for the journey. My tank holds around 18, so I’ll bring 20 gallons in my trunk in cubies. I love pulling into a gas station in southern California, putting on my rubber gloves and pouring my own wvo into the tank.

The temperature has warmed up a bit here. Yesterday morning was around 35 degrees and the car started up fine. Morning temperatures in the teens seem to be the point at which I need to pre-warm the engine a bit.

I won’t be posting until I return from Joshua Tree, so to all vegcar.net readers…

Happy solstice, holidays, and New Year. May the new year bring peace and harmony to all beings!

Dan

This morning was a first. My car wouldn’t start. Sure, I have had other times the car wouldn’t start but for reasons related to failed equipment. This morning it was just too cold. At 9:00 am when I tried to start the car the thermometer read 15 degrees (fahrenheit). The engine barely turned over.

I turned on my injector heaters and left them on for 10 minutes or so. I figured I’d warm up the engine that way. It didn’t work. I wanted to get to work so I just drove my pickup truck. If I had taken more time, I feel confident that I could have warmed the injector pump enough to start.

My mom recently told me a story about our neighbor Herb, who, in the late 1970s drove a Mercedes diesel. We lived in the Boston area and the winter the mornings were frequently bitter cold. Herb would light a few charcoal briquettes and place them on a pie tin under his engine. Then he was off to work.

Temperatures in the teens are pretty unusual here, so I am not too concerned. I would like to see if the injector line heaters (from Fattywagons) are sufficient to get a start on a really cold morning. We’ll see.

UPDATE 1/4/07 – Now that I have received confirmation from my mechanic that the alternator that he installed in August failed, I know that the failure to start was due to a low battery charge and not the cold weather. I am happy to conclude that my single tank converted 300D has not failed to start due to cold thus far. My coldest morning start was last winter on an 18 degree (f) morning.

I have had two cold morning starts since installing the booster pump and I like the results. I have a 4 mile drive to work each morning that takes me up 1,000 feet in elevation. Going up the steeper parts of the hill, I was having a bit of a “bogging” problem last week. I guessed that the car’s fuel pump was just having a difficult time pumping the cold veg oil from the fuel tank, forward.

Since installing the booster pump, I have had two cold mornings to try it out. I have had no bogging at all. I know this is just anecdotal data, and on a very small sample size (2), but it seems like a significant change.

I’ll post more when winter really sets in here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.