My Mav's gone Veggie

[Glenno]

As I've just renewed my forum subscription, I thought I'd post saying about the veg oil conversion I had done a few months ago on the Maverick.

It's a single tank Elsbett conversion, done by a chap in Wales. It now means I can use 100% veg oil, 100% diesel, or anything in-between.

It's still early days, but the car's going well (touch wood), but the fact that the fuel duty is now lifted for low users (less than 2,500 litres a year) means 60p a litre for good quality rapeseed is better than nearly a £1 per litre. I'm not completly sold on the whole carbon neutral theory of veg oil, but it feels greener than pumping diesel in!

The exhaust smells great too!!

 

[jace]

fair play mate most important thing to us mere mortals is cheap motoring leave carbon emissions to those who want to ofset by planting forrests be very nice in few yrs plenty forests to mooch through hunting wrabbits lol!

 

[Paul]

Hope you don't mind me asking whats the cost of a Elsbett conversion
just a round figure will do like the idea of using veg oil, but as our Maverick is getting on wondering if the cost of the conversion would be a waste of money.
Paul.

 

[jace]

you could get running costs down by getting cash carry acount! buy oil in bulk!

 

[Glenno]

The cost of the kit was £678.00 from Elsbett in Germany, its potentially a DIY fit and the instructions that come with it are not too bad, but not car specific. The Maverick kit is one of the cheaper ones. The guy in Wales that did mine has been doing conversions for years and did a very good job. It cost another £728.00 to fit, but he needed the Mav a week, so there was hire car costs and a train fare from/back to Camarthen.

This is the first month of us 'veggies' not having to pay fuel duty, this was another 28p for every litre used. I still keep a fuel log to record how much oil and diesel I use. I've not worked out mpg yet. I get a batch of 20 litre cans with a friend in my street whos had his Delica converted. It fills the shed up and is working out to be about 60p a litre. I have got some 3 litre bottles from Sainsburys for 58p a litre, but you get some funny looks in the car park with a trolly full of rapeseed bottles!

So the conversion cost is not cheap, but I like the flexibility of fuel I can use.

 

[Guest]

Now I'll be the first to admit maths is not my stong point :lol: but doesn't that make it about 3500 litres or 19000 miles to break even? (without the hire car and train fare)

 

[Terranosaurus]

If its a single tank system, what does the conversion consist of?

I thought the twin tyank systems were the complicated and expensive ones, needing change over valves and pre heaters on the SVO, but if its a single tank systm I can't understand where the expense is. People just stick SVO in their tanks and it runs, what's the need for a conversion?

 

[Glenno]

There's no doubt I probably won't recoup my outlay any time soon, if at all, but I like to think I'll be able to tell the Grand-kids that I had a go at being a bit 'Greener'.

I've read on the web that apparenlty one of the old Mercedes engines can take veg without suffering and there does appear to be people running a fairly low % of veg with Diesel, but I thought I'd do it properly. The Elsbett kit is well put together; changing the hosing right back to the tank (the old rubber stuff can start breaking down with veg oil), electric heater on a new fuel filter, a water heat exchanger, new injectors heavy duty glow plugs and various relays etc (and I have a LED on the dash to tell me when the glow plugs are still on).

We'll see!!

 

[Ogri]

Just for your interest, I got fed up with the price of diesel a few weeks back and went to Tesco filling station and put in 40 litres of diesel. I then went into the shop and bought 13 x 3 litre of Tesco vegetable oil (59p per litre), and chucked nearly all of that into the tank. I drove for about 10 miles to mix it all together and there seems to be almost no difference. As the tank emptied I topped it up with the leftover vegetable oil so I estimate the mix to be between 45% and 55%.

The tickover is very slightly lower (pulling the adjuster to the first click cures that), and the starting is also very slightly harder, but not so you'd really notice if you didn't drive the car every day. I have done a fuel filter change after the first tank of veggie and it looked clean and good.

Fuel consumption is approximately the same and the exhaust smells lovely!

I have since filled up with pure diesel to make a comparison and next time I'll be going back to 50% veggie. I can't say that the veggie oil isn't damaging the engine in some unseen way but it's a risk I'll take to save £16 per tank of fuel and make driving the Terrano more affordable.

Just my thoughts. Anyone else running vegetable oil, either pure or mixed?

Ian.

 

[Paul]

XR6R just had a read of this, lot of work to save some money, good read though.

http://www.veggiepower.org.uk/page208a.htm

Paul.