on biodieselsupply.com they had a coolant fed reuseable filter from the company webb. i think. it looked very nice but a little oversized it was for a big truck. check the company out maybe they make a smaller one.

Yes,yes,yes
HI, it's Nate and yes I do have a solution Davco 234. A filter That is Made for vegetable oil thats right just for us. Its around $ 325 but well worth it you can see how dirty your fitler is,it has a water seperator and is coolant heated with the option for 12v heat. I prefer the 12v heater because its faster. The only problem is nobody sells it yet. Check out enviofuel.com in about 2 weeks or call me Nate @ (541)754-7512 I should have some soon.

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Drive for free-Check out eviofuel.com

just a question what does IMHO mean?

how did you seal off your copper where it enters and exits the bowl?

greasel is selling an electric wrap for spin-on racor filters. one is on the way to me. i looked at rubber/silicone heaters on the web yesterday and they are fairly expensive. has anyone looked at flexible heaters for their fuel filters instead of coolant heat?

david

You probably were looking at the Davco 233 witch is avaliable through freightliner and the filters are readaly avaliable through baldwin or filtercare. The Davco 234 is new and has a 12v heater keeping the oil at 110 f. We put the davco 233 fuel processor by the oil tank It has a capacity to hold a lot of clean hot fuel waiting to by sucked through the fuel lines it works great I have over 3000 miles on my first filter and its 1/2 way used. If you pre filter your oil to 28 micron or so then you might not change your filter but once a year.

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Drive for free-Check out eviofuel.com

Quote:
Originally posted by: Nate@enviofuel
BE carefull with copper! It will react with veg oil after time we see it a lot. the whole system gets clogged with green slime and causes many problems with filters.

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Drive for free-Check out eviofuel.com
Is this true?

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I Completely built my own conversion kit.

Brass... I don't know we havent see the long term effects of brass. but if its just the fittings then I don't see how it could cause a major problem. If you plum your whole system in brass it might turn green to. The copper reacts after a coulple of years depending on the amount of air in your tank.

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Drive for free-Check out eviofuel.com

I have used stainless steel before for another heat transfer idea I had. however I found out that stainless doesn't conduct heat very well in comparison to copper. I have been wondering about using radiant floor tubing. It is flexable and great at transfering heat. I'll have to talk to some plumbers more about that.
mark

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I'm starting a non-profit to promote wvo and set up a large scale operation to run fleets of big trucks. Anyone interested? I like to dream big!

Greg:
I would also love to see photos of your heat exchanger. My email is backyardearth@planet-save.com

As far as the Racor Fuel Filters go, I have seen posts (can't remember where) that claim that oil is flowing at optimum temperature when it comes out of the Racor Filter (with 12v Heater option). Has anyone done tests on these models?

Why with all the talk of ruined filters are people (and Kit companies) using electric heat (jackets, blankets, even heating coils) on their OEM filters???? I thought that this was a BAD idea!? What OEM filters can take heating, which can not?

Nick

What about Aluminum tubing? Any reactions with Veggie? Good heat transfer qualities.

Anyone try making a PTC thermister fuels filter heater ?

Hey chris which heat exchanger are you using before the injector pump? and have you measured the temp you are getting?
cheers
chris

I am experimenting with a fuel heater made from common 1/4" pipe fittings. I found that a 1/4" pipe nipple has an interior diameter that is nearly exactly the same as the drill size for a 10MM - 1 tap. That is the thread size for a Champion part #184 glow plug (the one that fits my Ford 7.3). If you screw a short nipple into a "tee", run the metric tap through the nipple, you can then screw in the glow plug using thread sealant. The two open ports on the "tee" are the inlet and outlet for the fuel. I added a second "tee" and glow plug to my prototype. I tested this last night but realized that I didn't know the rate of flow when fuel is heading for the IJ. I throttled down the flow to simulate and at one point made smoke. Cgoodwin had earlier offered a warning about this method that makes good sense....glow plugs can flake off crud that will go straight to your IJ. I will have an inline fuel filter just after this device if I decide to use it. What I am wondering now is the electrical considerations using this device. I am NOT an electrician and have not desire to melt down all those wires under the hood!
Tom

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Grease is still the word!
1978 Mercedes 300CD
1981 Rabbit Pickup POS
1992 F-250 7.3
John Deere 410 Backhoe

That Davco234 sure is nice but way out of my budget . I am more along the lines of adapting a $20 Goldenrod from Northern Tool or ( an < $50 unheated Racor from ebay ) with coolant ( and mabye supplemented with gowplug , PTC thermistor , or pad heat) . Anyone know other sources for 12 volt pad or PTC thermister heaters ? -thanks

The issue of SVO/WVO reacting with copper has been covered at great length on this thread:

http://www.greasecar.com/forum_topicview.cfm?frmtopicID=1225

As for heat transfer rates of metals, you can't get much better/faster than aluminum, and in my experience I have never seen signs of WVO/SVO reacting with aluminum, whether hot or cold.

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Justin Soares
Grease Works!
www.greaseworks.org

Hey, thank you everyone for all the good information.

Just installed a kit from Greasel in my '82 GMC Suburban, 6.2L. Got it all warmed up and running fine on diesel, (50 degree day) but ran crappy when I switched it over to veggie (Some white smoke). Noticed that the big electric Racor filter was cold. No continuity across the element. Emailed Greasel and found out they only heat up if it is under 45 degrees. (Minor detail that must be somewhere in the literature?). It seems counter productive to heat the oil in the tank and the line and then dump it into a big cool filter just before it gets to the engine.

Anyway, I plan to buy one of their new wrap-on filter heaters when they get their web site squared away (I can't access their order page yet). My question is should I also install a wrap-on heater around the secondary filter?

The stock fuel route on the 6.2L seems to be; Tank - Primary Filter (Big one on the firewall) - Line along top of block to mechanical Lift Pump mounted on front of engine - Line back along top of block to Secondary Filter monted on back of engine - Line back along top of block to Injection Pump nestled down into front of engine.

Does anyone have experience with this engine?

Thank you in advance!

Thank you Black Wolf. Good points. I guess the thing that is really bothering me about my setup is that the secondary filter is shared by veggie and diesel. I'll check it, and like you said if it is getting hot during diesel warm up operation then of course it will stay hot during veggie.

It seems like the whole purging process will take too long with a filter in the mix. This was the first forum list I got to the other day and I did not realize how many other specific topic lists there are. I will look around and make sure I put my pluming question about this secondary filter in the right forum.

Thanks again.

I have a Greasel kit in my 97 Dodge and just pulled a 19 foot horse trailer with three horses down to Arkansas from Wisconsin. Starting out, my veggie tank was full of Voil, and I took an extra 10 gallons with.

The truck ran great and pulled better than I expected. At fuel-up, I dumped in more Voil, and topped off with diesel.

While in Arkansas, the coldest temp only got to about 35 degrees, but it seemed enough to cause problems with my Racor filter. Even with only diesel in the tank, the truck didn't want to run very well on the veggie side......which by that time only had diesel in the tank. It's possible some veggie oil was still in there or the filter and gelled.

When switching to the Voil, even after the tank was well warmed, I could drive for a couple miles before losing power. I could switch back to the diesel side, and eventually things would smooth out.

After doing this a few times, I must have heated the filter enough to allow flow through since it ran fine then all the way home.

It did make a difference in travel time since I could use the Voil tank as an auxillary diesel tank.

The 2 micron racor element I had installed possibly contributed to how long it took to run smooth on the Veggie side.

I did get the wrap-around filter from Greasel before the trip, but couldn't get it installed in time. I plan on doing so soon using a separate switch in the cab to turn it on. I want to try putting the heater on, then using some tin flashing around the heater to keep heat in (and to protect other things), then use a large hose clamp to secure the flashing to the filter element.

97Dodge, could you have a clogged fuel filter? The symptoms that you have power loss a little while after switching sound like what I experienced and what others described, too.

I only got about 50 miles out of my first fuel filter probably due to bad prefiltering on the first batch. I am now several hundred miles into the replacement filter without problems.
When my filter clogged I got air into the system, enough for the car not to run right after some delay. I have a purge switch that lets Diesel go through the VO filter and when I would do that the car would run better after maybe 1 mile of driving or 2 minutes of idle or so. I reason that this is due to the lower viscosity of the Diesel and its ability to flow through a filter that appears clogged for VO. It also gets better after running on Diesel for some time, maybe because the filter takes some time to be cleaned of VO completely.

After trying around with VO for another day this effect stopped and the filter was just clogged for both fuels and needed replacement.

Here's my setup: The VO and the Diesel filter are before the external lift pump. The lift pump has a lot of power on Mercedes and produces enough vacuum that you can suck in air through the rim seal if the fuel filter. If your filter is behind the lift pump this can't happen.

Also, somebody on another thread wrote that the black 6-port valve isn't particularly well built and might let air in if the vacuum is strong enough.

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84 Mercedes 300SD, Modified Greasecar Kit.

I should mention that my setup is different from the Greasecar manual that I got. I plumbed the 6-port valve differently than in the manual, put the fuel filters before the lift pump, which is different from both the Greasecar manual and the original Mercedes setup. I am also running a VO return line.

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84 Mercedes 300SD, Modified Greasecar Kit.

l'm runnin a 86 ford truck 6.9 l'm using a greasel tank and a grease car type of rap around water heater the truck runs fine on wvo, l have heard that the oil needs to be 170 when it goes into the pump l live in Tampa Florida, is the oil heating a northern issue, on cooler days the truck has a problem running at operaterating temp. l haven't had any problems with the oil being cooler than 170, truck temp. says it's at 160 at an idle and 140 running down the road but l'm here to tell you the truck is running better then ever will l have any problems later, cause of the oil temp. thank-you ...Nick

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nick