Overhaul of Waste Vegetable oil system on '02 Jetta TDI

Just some notes about this overhaul, most of which I have probabley mentioned before. The car initially had a stock Plantdrive TDI kit installed . Getting a better understanding of things, or at least my opinions about them led me to change and add some things.

What I don't like:

• My car has no hose over hose(HOH) or hose in hose(HIH) on the fuel lines. Nor do I have a heated fuel tank. If I were to do it again would added the heated fuel lines. But I am in a realatively mild climate and it was a son of a gun to run those aluminum lines under the car . Most of my oil run under the car is uninsulated aluminum tubing - this I would not do again
• The Vormax (FPHE) is in the trunk. This to me does not seem like a good idea as there is heat loss on the way up to the engine bay & a section of oil is unheated before the Vegtherm for the initial switchover.
• The 2 micron Racor filter attached to the back of the Vormax is unheated. Again if I was to do things again I would use something else, perhaps a Frybrid TDI filter or the new Vegmax thast Plandrive sells. I would not go through the hassle of wrapping the Racor. I only did it because I had some leftover tubing around.

It's been about a month now and car is running good. As for the air leak, I found a line with a slit in it near one of the hose clamps.

I have noticed a quick change in temperature when I do the initial switch over but after that the change is not as great as I had hoped. In other word when I switch over the oil will go to 100º rather quickly but after that it take time more time then I would like for it to reach 160º.
I'm thinking that the heater coil around the Racor is more of a passive heater. The quanity of oil it is heating is more then is needed and it can not heat that amount of oil quickly.

To fix this I bought the Frybrid Heated filter. I have yet to receive it but I will replace the racor filter and homemade heater coil with this. My thinking is that the new heater will be using the same amount of heat to heat a smaller quanity of oil because it passes through the heater exchange on it's way to the IP.

I still have to insulate the lines and do a little replumbing. I will install the Frybrid heater at that time. Perhaps by the end of the month

Thoughts on future mods

Upcoming mods
I've debated on how to improve the system but the more I think about it I would rather start from scratch on another car - perhaps a Jetta wagon. Currently the car works and there does not seems to be any problems. I do not have the time to modify this one too heavily - the original convertion took me a week. After the install I kept tweaking it the more I learned about how it works. If I were to do another install I think I could do it in 2 days - barring any waiting on parts.

This summer I hope to achieve a few things that are easier to do and will help both my winter and summer driving. When I initally installed the kit we were in the midst of record breaking heat wave that lasted over a month with temps consistently over 100º. There were points when the temp of the oil may have been getting too hot for the IP. This is one reason I don't know if I should insatll a FPHE in addition to the Vormax in the trunk

Install additioanl 3 way valve
This will serve 2 purposes:
- It will let me return the oil (and some diesel) back into the veggie tank from the looped return when purging. This will reduce or eliminate veggie in the diesel tank. The downside of this is that while purging I will be pulling diesel out of an already small 5 gallon tank that is not returned to the tank, this means more fuel ups of diesel.

- The other benefit, and it relates to hot weather use, is I can eliminate the looped return while running on veggie and return the hot oil back to the veggie tank rather then putting it back directly into the fuel loop. How effective this is to heat reduction is questionable but I don't think it will hurt.

Install a coolant shut off valve
- Another item is a shutoff ball valve to prevent coolant from going to the Vormax , if I choose, so that I can go back to diesel in the stock full tank if I ever want to. Because of the 4.5G doughnut diesel tank I can not drive along distance on diesel. With my current commute I have to fill up with diesel once every other week. This frequency would really never change because once the car is running on Veggie I could go hundreds of miles and still use the same amount of diesel because I have to start on diesel and stop on diesel so the amount I drive on veggie - barring any long stopping periods (the engine cools off) is irrelavant.

Running strictly on diesel is something I could do during the winter months and never switch over to veggie. I would simply shutoff the coolant to the Vormax, refill the empty stock tank with diesel. The fuel going through the Vormax is not heated. My veggie lines under the car are not very insulated so they can go back to carrying diesel with very little heat gain . . .at least I think so.

Another benefit of shutting off coolant to the Vormax wold be on hot

Move the 2 microm Racor filter to the engine bay and wrap in coolant jacket

Plantdrive adds a 2 micron racor filter to their TDI kit. I don't understand why because the stock filter for the diesel fuel is 10 micron. Frybrid sells a heated TDI filter housing and it uses a stock VW filter. I guess there's no harm in filtering more then is needed.

Currently in my installation the the Racor is attached to the back of the Vormax housing in the trunk. I've noticed though that the racor does not get hot, at least not very quickly. This just seems to be something that should be heated to lessen stress on the IP. My plan is to move the racor to the engine bay and wrap it in a coolant jacket, similar to the one that Dana Linscott offers plans for on his website. This hopefully will lessen the viscoscity of the oil in the filter and also provide heated oil to the engine at swicthover to VO.

With the Vormax is in the trunk, the section of veggie line between the vormax and IP contains unheated oil at switchover (my lines are not heated). If I wrap the racor in aheated jacket and place it in the engine bay the initial section of oil to reach the IP will be somewhat warmed up.

I haven't decided on whether to use rubber or aluminum tubing as the heater element. Dana Linscott recommends rubber because of the amount of contact it provides to the item you want to heat. I have some left over aluminum tubing from the initial install so I think I may use that and wrap it in insulation. At the same time I will try and heat a portion of the veggie line that I can access with a HOH application. This coupled with the looped return, I hope,will increase the temp of the oil that is intially injected into the engine at switchover.

The Oil I use (currently)

I thought I would mention the particular oil that I use in my Plantdrive kit. The Plantdrive kit requires liquid oil. That is to say no Crisco or hydrogenated oils - it must be flowing at room temperature or colder. It can not be grease, part of the reason is their approach to tank heating and the Vormax would clog if oil congealed in it, as the filter and bowl take a while to heat up. They make this very clear in their sales material.

Currently I am catered at work and I should have this job for another year or so. After that it may change because I am freelance and go from job to job. Some jobs last a day others several years.

The caterer saves the oil for me. Because we are mobile they work out of one of those "roach coach" trucks. They don't store the oil on site, they either give it to the commissary or take it back to they're main kitchen for disposal using the cubees it came in. They don't use large quantities of oil every day but we have fries, Chinese, tempura, and other various items that are fried once or so a week. I would say I average 4-5 gallons a week. They fry the food and they're done with the oil. Currently this is plenty because I live close to work and the Jetta SIPS fuel.

It is non hydrogenated soy* and used once. He sets it aside to let it cool then at the end of my shift I come buy and pour it back into a cubee using a homemade funnel from the Greasecar forum with a paint strainer installed. Evidently soy oil is not the best oil to use because of it's particular makeup. It's more susceptible to polymerization.

Contrary to popular approach, I did not secure a source of oil before starting the conversion. Besides being confused about the whole filtering process I was concerned about "taking over" the oil removal from a source. I didn't want the responsibility nor did I think I would need that much, again this car gets mid 30's MPG. My idea was to do the conversion, get the car working, and in the meantime purchase some new soy oil from Costco. I figured getting a source of oil would be the least of my concerns I also was fairly sure I could get the oil from work (I work seasonally and was not working when I converted the car).

*I have to watch as the have snuck in a couple of "creamy" - READ: partially hydrogenated cubees of soy which I have inadvertently mixed in with the good soy

Water leak solved - I think

129,900

About 2 months after installing the kit the water light came on. The coolant fluid was low and I didn't think too much of it, since I drained the fluid for the installation. I thought perhaps I hadn't filled it up all the way, it was just below minimum level. I refilled it and went on my way.

About a month later it came on again, I thought that was strange. I filled it up and about 2 weeks later it came on again. At this point, I was hoping that since I had previously filled the reservoir when the engine was hot that the coolant receded and this caused the low reading. This wasn't to be as in another 2 weeks the light came on again and the fliud was low.

There were no puddles on the floor so I was a t a loss for where the fluid was going. The motor oil wasn't whitish, as some folks had told me this was an indication of a blown head gasket - water in the engine oil. I thought that was unlikely as I didn't mess with any of that stuff during the install.

I had seen some red "crusty crystals" on the hose that connects to the heater core that I had "tee"ed into for the coolant supply. I decided to look at that while engine was still hot. Sure enough their was a small about of liquid at the rim of the hose. I think what happens is that if the engine gets hot enough the water leaks from this location as vapor. That would explain why there are no puddles and no visible leaks and why the gap between refills is so long.

I think what happened during the install was that I used a razor blade to remove the OEM hose from the one inlet. After I removed it I noticed a few grooves I had cut into the plastic inadverantly with the razor blade trying to cut off the hose. I only did this to one hose. The other issue is that the replacement hose I used was 3/4" - not an exact match to the metric hose that was previously on the bib. Perhaps these crusties formed because of the slits and slight oversize of the new hose in the bib and created the leak.

At the time of the install I could have cut the OEM hose but decided that new hose would be easier to work with.

I tightened the hose clamp that had the water leak a little more - it wasn't what I would call loose. I've done acouple long drives - over 30 miles each way and have not seen a drop in fluid level. It's been about 3 weeks. Hopefully this is the source and the leak is fixed.

Stall on Veggie

Wednesday Oct 11th

Today I had to take the car out at lunch for an errand. I drove about a mile and got on the 101 freeway (at Laurel Canyon Bld. heading west) once on the freeway I noticed that the engine came up to temp quickly, probabley because I had driven it about 6 hours earlier. I debated as to switch to veggie or not but decided to do it. I got off a few miles & exits later (Van Nuys Blvd. and headed to Ventura Blvd.).

While I was sitting in the left turn lane onto Ventura Blvd. I heard what sounded like the engine pulsing. I looked at the tach and could see the RPM's dropping slightly then going to back up to the normal idle (about 820 RPM). I thought that was strange and swicthed back to diesel.

I drove about 3 more blocks to my destination and went inside for about 10minutes. I came out and decided to take ventura blvd. back to work and swicthed to oil. I drove about 2 miles and while sitting in traffic the car shut off without warning. I tried to restart but to no avail.. I was lucky as I was able to push the car directly into a parking lot .

I put it back on diesel and popped the hood. I briefly checked the new 3/8" brass tee I installed over the weekend but didn't see any leaks. The tee is on the return portion of the IP and is for a new temp gauge. The car has been fine up to today, Wednesday. I worked on it Sunday

I tried to start it (and get the oil out of the lines in case the engine cooled). I cranked it several times for 20-30's. As I cranked it it sounded like it was getting easier for the starter to turn until it finally started. I moderately reved it a couple times and returned to work on diesel - about a 1/2 mile with out incidence.

I didn't swicth to veggie for a couple days until I could look for an air leak. This was strange because of the way it just shut off. It's never done anything like it. Total fuel starvation while on Veggie. I emailed Craig at Plantdrive and he said chances are that it was an air leak, especially since I just openned the system. The only thing I could find as a possible cause was one of the hoses on the temperature tee had a 1/8" gap at the end and the clamp was a slightly smaller and not as tight as it should have been. One other thing was that I didn't pipe seal the temp sender in the adapter as per the directions for the temp gauge. The only other thing I can think of in terms of an air leak are the threads on the new temp tee. I sealed them as I have in the past so I didn't mess with them as I want to deduce a cause by elimination.

Friday Oct 13th
After replacing the hose clamp with a better one and eliminating the 1/8" gap by sliding the hose all the way onto the hose barb I swich to veggie after returning home from work. The car seems to run fine while idling in my garage.

Saturday Oct 14th
I take it out for a run and do some errands. I decide to go to veggie a few blocks from the house. After a minute or 2 the car stalls. I get it restarted on Diesel and head home. Looks like I now have plans for my Saturday.

Since I've more or less checked & rechecked all the hose clamps & fittings I figure perhaps it's a clogged filter. I figure I'll disconnect the line after the vegtherm and hook up my hand bulb pump to see if I can get Veggie to flow freely so I know it is reaching the IP. (sorry forgot to take a pix) I throw the switch on the Pollak to veggie & pump. I hear what sounds a like a sucking sound from underneath the car by the fuel tank. I look and see a fresh pool of veggie oil on the garage floor. I'm imediately relieved to find the source of the problem. I don't know what it is yet but it's not a loose connection.

I look closer and realize it's coming from the aluminum veggie line. I feel around and find that a support hook for the brake line has punctured veggie line. The weight of the three lines resting against the tip of the hook over the last 3 months caused it to wear through the tubing.

In the picture, above right, are the 2 coolant lines on top with the veggie on the bottom resting on the point of the hook The one in the hook is the brake line wrapped insulation to protect it from the heat of the system. The 2 rubber ones are the diesel supply & return. Left, is a close up of the puncture.

Since it's a small hole, in the middle of the line, and I don't have a flaring tool to repair it, I decide to patch it with a piece of rubber tubing & hose clamp. After the repair, I took it out for a drive today and it didn't stall on veggie or appear to be leaking. I'll keep checking it over the next few days/weeks. . . . .

I dewater my oil, filter to 2 microns, and only use liquid oil. If it was a clogged filter I would have lost faith in the system. The conversion is a pretty simple concept the problem is I keep interfering with it to experiment and improve my set up.