WVO no more-My Tragic Greaser Story

UFO said:

I believe the "ring sticking" is caused mostly from incompletely burned fuel getting trapped and cooking in the rings. This is far less likely with biodiesel, as the sticky stuff (glycerine) has been removed in the fuel-making process.

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Glycerine is not "removed" from VO when it is converted to biodiesel. There is actually no glycerine in VO. Just because it is a byproduct of the transesterification reaction does not mean it was "removed" from the feedstock VO.

I believe that the "ring sticking" is more related to the tendency for VO fuels to polymerize. Biodiesel also has a tendency to polymerize, though it does not appear to happn as rapidly as with VO. However, this depends greatly upon feedstocks and this is why Canola is noted as being superior to soy when used as fuel.

GeneralStark said:

Glycerine is not "removed" from VO when it is converted to biodiesel. There is actually no glycerine in VO. Just because it is a byproduct of the transesterification reaction does not mean it was "removed" from the feedstock VO.

I believe that the "ring sticking" is more related to the tendency for VO fuels to polymerize. Biodiesel also has a tendency to polymerize, though it does not appear to happn as rapidly as with VO. However, this depends greatly upon feedstocks and this is why Canola is noted as being superior to soy when used as fuel.

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Not sure what hair you are trying to split here. So glycerine is a byproduct, but is not part of the VO? Rubbish. Glycerine is the backbone of the oil molecule. And it does not burn cleanly, especially in a cold combustion chamber.

Thats one of the fundamentel laws of pysics , " you can not either create or distroy mater " .
Where do you think the gliscerin came from ? I've read this statement before , you have missed some very basic science , a by product is something that is seperated from at least 2 elements , and is considered to be unwanted or a waste product .

I think this engine blowing up is unrelated to Vegetable Oil. I think.. wait. I know it is related to an upgraded turbo overboosting on an untuned motor without properly monitoring EGTs on a dyno. I see this all the time. It sucks to see engines blow up.

rez311,

Interesting.
I've assumed so far that excess or poorly atomized fuel led to coking of the rings, ring sticking, then excess blow-by producing lots of EGR soot in the intake and then the head.

How could too much boost cause the failure seen here?
Broken rings?

rez311 said:

I think this engine blowing up is unrelated to Vegetable Oil. I think.. wait. I know it is related to an upgraded turbo overboosting on an untuned motor without properly monitoring EGTs on a dyno. I see this all the time. It sucks to see engines blow up.

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Keep thinking happy thoughts. Bad things will not happen if you ignore potential problems.

Phhhhhhrrrrtttttttt...

A UOA would have shown high wear metals if nothing else before it was too late in this case.

It is possible that shorter drain intervals may have extended the life of the engine until the IP rusted out on the inside. DuluthRooter said he had budgeted to replace the IP every so often as needed. With nearly free fuel costs he was willing to accept the IP becoming a consumable item.

All the gauges in the world would not have stopped the oil related failures. Only a UOA would have reveled something was amiss in time to take corrective measures.

Those corrective measures could have proven to be unworkable though... there is no way to know now. By unworkable I mean like drain intervals as short as say 50 miles would be insane and even every 500 miles would probably not be cost effective. But at say 2,000, 2,500 or maybe 3,000 mile drain intervals might have been enough to get another 10 years from the engine if tested in the very begining.

BioDiesel said:

rez311,

Interesting.
I've assumed so far that excess or poorly atomized fuel led to coking of the rings, ring sticking, then excess blow-by producing lots of EGR soot in the intake and then the head.

How could too much boost cause the failure seen here?
Broken rings?

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Overboosting with EGTs spiking super high could cause a ring to fail at high RPMS. Usually full throttle runs up a hill for long periods of time will destroy piston rings if EGTs get too high.

Let alone a clogged CAT and fully functioning EGR to aid in high intake temps and heat to stay in the manifold and cylinders to cause EGR spikes.

Heck, the Dodge Cummins motor is bullet proof. I knew a guy that ran excessive EGTs in that truck and blew his engine because of it. Don't do it!

rez311 said:
"Overboosting with EGTs spiking super high could cause a ring to fail at high RPMS."

I went back and looked at the original photos, especially the one showing the piston withthe two chips broken out. I'm not an expert, and haven't seen any coked SVO postons, but I would guess that a worn injector or excess fuel would lead to visible coking on the top of the piston too. The piston top is obviously clean. So my scenario must be wrong.

rez311 said:

I think this engine blowing up is unrelated to Vegetable Oil. I think.. wait. I know it is related to an upgraded turbo overboosting on an untuned motor without properly monitoring EGTs on a dyno. I see this all the time. It sucks to see engines blow up.

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You're not serious, are you? The OP doesn't abuse his car, and even as over-fueled as it was with PP764s and RC2 it would have taken some pretty long WOT running to get EGTs high enough to do significant damage. And I don't think high EGTs caused the deposits on the valves, do you?

People here run cars way over-fueled all the time. I've only seen one other TDI with a melted piston that wasn't running on WVO. And that car had a major issue with a leaking injector and mis-set timing.

The OP wasn't running an aggressive enough setup, IMO, to have the stock cat be a problem unless he was racing the car, which he wasn't.

Finally, out of curiosity, what have you done to your car to prevent this type of issue? I notice from your profile that your car has RC and bigger nozzles.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

You're not serious, are you? The OP doesn't abuse his car, and even as over-fueled as it was with PP764s and RC2 it would have taken some pretty long WOT running to get EGTs high enough to do significant damage. And I don't think high EGTs caused the deposits on the valves, do you?

People here run cars way over-fueled all the time. I've only seen one other TDI with a melted piston that wasn't running on WVO. And that car had a major issue with a leaking injector and mis-set timing.

The OP wasn't running an aggressive enough setup, IMO, to have the stock cat be a problem unless he was racing the car, which he wasn't.

Finally, out of curiosity, what have you done to your car to prevent this type of issue? I notice from your profile that your car has RC and bigger nozzles.

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Jeff from Rocketchip tuned my car with the setup I have. I also have an EGT gauge, a Boost gauge and a boost controller to prevent any type of overboosting. My car is not the issue here.

Who knows what happened with this engine. Maybe he beats on it when its cold. That's a HUGE flag with diesels. Maybe he stabs the throttle like a gas engine and constantly fluctuates it to make the turbo boost on and off repeatedly. Who knows?! I don't see how the WVO caused the damage, except for maybe coking an injector. Maybe us using WVO should clean our injectors every 40K with some strong cleaning solution.

I'm not trying to argue here. I just want to defend the Wasted Vegetable Oil and the success many other cars have running on it. There are risks involved here, no doubt about that.

I know your car is not the issue, but it seems that more than a few people on this thread and others that this thread started are blaming mods on his engine failure. If that were the case an awful lot of TDIs with mods that run on diesel would be failing. And they're not. There are many of us that are running similar boost and fueling levels as DR for much longer on diesel with no ill effects. And I have never see deposits on the valves and pistons that we see in DR's photos on a car that's run on dino diesel.

Could DR have done more to prevent this? Probably. More frequent oil changes and better WVO selection would have helped, it seems. But to say that it was solely mods or driver abuse that caused this problem is, IMHO, way off base.

WVO has risks, just as modding the engine does. And doing both may have more risks than doing just one. You have to be careful to mitigate those risks.

"But to say that it was solely mods .... that caused this problem is, IMHO, way off base."

You're getting confused I think.

I have said that this failure was primarily due to being a mod'd _WVO_ conversion. I have not said that mod'd diesel TDI's fail like this.
I don't think anyone else has either.

The key would be the condition of the ring lands.
FWIR, an SVO fuel problem would lead to unburned fuel being scraped up by the top ring and deposits forming in that ring's land. The deposits eventually build up and twist the ring so it can't clean the cylinder and the problem worsens till the ring breaks.

It would be nice to have a picture of the rings. All 4 pistons preferrably.
Also , it it was a fuel problem, I would expect coking deposits on all 4 pistons.

GeneralStark said:

Glycerine is not "removed" from VO when it is converted to biodiesel. There is actually no glycerine in VO. Just because it is a byproduct of the transesterification reaction does not mean it was "removed" from the feedstock VO.

I believe that the "ring sticking" is more related to the tendency for VO fuels to polymerize. Biodiesel also has a tendency to polymerize, though it does not appear to happn as rapidly as with VO. However, this depends greatly upon feedstocks and this is why Canola is noted as being superior to soy when used as fuel.

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An important factor in any potential damage a fuel does inside the cylinders is also how well "atomized" the fuel is upon injection (IMO atomized is a horrible term for this). In general, the higher the viscosity of the fuel, the poorer the atomization. If you're using SVO and not heating it up hot enough to decrease the viscosity sufficiently, you won't get good atomization, and will get an incomplete burn (resulting in deposits, etc.). That may or may not also affect ring sticking....

rez311 said:

Maybe us using WVO should clean our injectors every 40K with some strong cleaning solution.

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No way. Do it EVERY WVO filter change. If your WVO return T's in after the WVO filter (as it should IMHO), when you fill the new filter with something like Diesel Purge, you will mainline it for a good while before it gets diluted with WVO.

If your WVO return T's in before the WVO filter, you won't get as much pure DP mainlining, but still pretty good. Or, just do the juice bottle thing. But DEFINITLY do it every filter change.

The problem with greasing is that one little bit of laziness can result in bad things. The naysayers here like to just bash greasing in general, but if they were more interested in being accurate, they'd simply keep pointing out that greasing requires extraordinary discipline, patience, and hard dirty collection work. That would be enough to warn off most people, and rightfully so.

NH Mike said:
"you won't get good atomization, and will get an incomplete burn (resulting in deposits, etc.)."

I agree.
But do you see deposits on the piston in the picture of the piston with the chips missing, or the other piston in the 2nd or 3rd post of this thread?

[Update: I checked with Dana Linscott. A clean piston top is typical with coked rings. The high temperatures must burn off deposits. The cold cyl. wall can't do that. Only further inpsection to see if the rings were simply coked or broken ( due to overboost ) could determine the real cause of failure.]

BioDiesel said:

"But to say that it was solely mods .... that caused this problem is, IMHO, way off base."

You're getting confused I think.

I have said that this failure was primarily due to being a mod'd _WVO_ conversion. I have not said that mod'd diesel TDI's fail like this.
I don't think anyone else has either.

The key would be the condition of the ring lands.
FWIR, an SVO fuel problem would lead to unburned fuel being scraped up by the top ring and deposits forming in that ring's land. The deposits eventually build up and twist the ring so it can't clean the cylinder and the problem worsens till the ring breaks.

It would be nice to have a picture of the rings. All 4 pistons preferrably.
Also , it it was a fuel problem, I would expect coking deposits on all 4 pistons.

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I don't think I'm confused. rez311 wrote:

"I think this engine blowing up is unrelated to Vegetable Oil. I think.. wait. I know it is related to an upgraded turbo overboosting on an untuned motor without properly monitoring EGTs on a dyno. I see this all the time. It sucks to see engines blow up."

I don't read the WVO threads that avidly, but it's interesting from reading this thread how more an more maintenance stuff emerges as people describe how to preserve their engines running on WVO. It's interesting to me because when I talk to WVO TDIers they don't mention many of these items as routine maintenance, like more frequent oil changes or nozzle cleaning. They would have you believe that the TDI runs as reliably and maintenance free on WVO as on diesel. Clearly that's not true, at least the maintenance free part.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

I don't read the WVO threads that avidly, but it's interesting from reading this thread how more an more maintenance stuff emerges as people describe how to preserve their engines running on WVO. It's interesting to me because when I talk to WVO TDIers they don't mention many of these items as routine maintenance, like more frequent oil changes or nozzle cleaning. They would have you believe that the TDI runs as reliably and maintenance free on WVO as on diesel. Clearly that's not true, at least the maintenance free part.

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Hey, I can only speak for myself. I think I've been very much up front about all the maintenance issues (practices). I try to read all these WVO related threads and interject when I see problems or concerns. But so far I have not found anyone who's been saying "Hey, throw WVO in your car, it'll be fine, you'll never know the difference."

If you have, show me where, so I can politely set them straight. Last thing anyone needs are people saying greasing is as easy as D2.

When I have talked to TDI owners who run WVO they talk about collecting and filtering the oil, and perhaps about the importance of switching between WVO and diesel at the right times. They may also talk about fuel filter replacement frequency. But until reading this thread that's about all I had heard. Maybe I wasn't asking the right questions. And bear in mind that most WVO operators I've met have been when their car is in for repairs. So maybe they're not savvy about what to do to keep their car running well.

UFO said:

Not sure what hair you are trying to split here. So glycerine is a byproduct, but is not part of the VO? Rubbish. Glycerine is the backbone of the oil molecule. And it does not burn cleanly, especially in a cold combustion chamber.

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The hair I am trying to split here is related to the common misconception that you are continuing to perpetuate regarding glycerine and VO. Glycerine is not the backbone of the oil molecule as you say. In fact most of your statements regarding the characteristics of VO combustion in a diesel engine are the actual rubbish here. Especially when you say that the glycerine is what makes VO "sticky" and would cause valves to stick.

Organic fats and oils are triglycerides which are three hydrocarbon chains connected by glycerol. Where is the glycerine in the oil moecule?

GeneralStark said:

The hair I am trying to split here is related to the common misconception that you are continuing to perpetuate regarding glycerine and VO. Glycerine is not the backbone of the oil molecule as you say. In fact most of your statements regarding the characteristics of VO combustion in a diesel engine are the actual rubbish here. Especially when you say that the glycerine is what makes VO "sticky" and would cause valves to stick.

Organic fats and oils are triglycerides which are three hydrocarbon chains connected by glycerol. Where is the glycerine in the oil moecule?

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Obviously I'm not a chemist, but even I can tell the difference in behavior between biodiesel and WVO. The obvious difference is glycerine/glycerol present in WVO not present in bio. Ever smoke oil on your stove? That's what I'm talking about - thermal polymerization.

John T F said:

Thats one of the fundamentel laws of pysics , " you can not either create or distroy mater " .
Where do you think the gliscerin came from ? I've read this statement before , you have missed some very basic science , a by product is something that is seperated from at least 2 elements , and is considered to be unwanted or a waste product .

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Actually, you have missed some very basic science which is indicated by your statements. The glycerine is a byproduct of the transesterification process. Once again, organic fats and oils are triglycerides which are three hydrocarbon chains connected by glycerol. Glycerol is not glycerine. The cracking of the oil molecule and formation of methyl esters results in the production of glycerine, but that does not mean that glycerine per say was present in the original VO feedstock. Once again, there is no glycerine in Vegetable Oil. Any statements, like those made in this thread, relating the characteristics of VO combusting in a diesel to the presence of glycerine are misleading to say the least, and generally just plain wrong.

GeneralStark said:

Actually, you have missed some very basic science which is indicated by your statements. The glycerine is a byproduct of the transesterification process. Once again, organic fats and oils are triglycerides which are three hydrocarbon chains connected by glycerol. Glycerol is not glycerine. The cracking of the oil molecule and formation of methyl esters results in the production of glycerine, but that does not mean that glycerine per say was present in the original VO feedstock. Once again, there is no glycerine in Vegetable Oil. Any statements, like those made in this thread, relating the characteristics of VO combusting in a diesel to the presence of glycerine are misleading to say the least, and generally just plain wrong.

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Hows this: The stuff in WVO that makes it sticky that's not in biodiesel. Hard to trip up on semantics now.

UFO said:

Obviously I'm not a chemist, but even I can tell the difference in behavior between biodiesel and WVO. The obvious difference is glycerine/glycerol present in WVO not present in bio. Ever smoke oil on your stove? That's what I'm talking about - thermal polymerization.

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The primary difference between WVO and Biod as it relates to fuel systems designed for diesel is viscosity. WVO or VO is reacted to produce biod for the sake of reducing viscosity. WVO or VO is heated to an appropriate temp. with an SVO conversion to achieve the same results, a reduction in viscosity.

Thermal polymerization is indeed an important thing to consider with both VO and Biod. but I am not sure how this relates to glycerine not being present in VO.

Clearly VO combusts just fine in a diesel engine and this is indicated by many years of experience on many continents, as long as you take the proper precautions. DO you have any experience fueling a vehicle with VO or WVO?

UFO said:

Hows this: The stuff in WVO that makes it sticky that's not in biodiesel. Hard to trip up on semantics now.

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I think the word "sticky" is actually the main problem. Pretty tough to understand what you mean by sticky when I don't find WVO to be sticky at all. It is actually quite slippery in my experience as long as you don't allow it to polymerize on any surfaces.

Chasee said:

No way. Do it EVERY WVO filter change. If your WVO return T's in after the WVO filter (as it should IMHO), when you fill the new filter with something like Diesel Purge, you will mainline it for a good while before it gets diluted with WVO.

If your WVO return T's in before the WVO filter, you won't get as much pure DP mainlining, but still pretty good. Or, just do the juice bottle thing. But DEFINITLY do it every filter change.

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I never thought of that. That's an excellent idea!

GeneralStark said:

The primary difference between WVO and Biod as it relates to fuel systems designed for diesel is viscosity. WVO or VO is reacted to produce biod for the sake of reducing viscosity. WVO or VO is heated to an appropriate temp. with an SVO conversion to achieve the same results, a reduction in viscosity.

Thermal polymerization is indeed an important thing to consider with both VO and Biod. but I am not sure how this relates to glycerine not being present in VO.

Clearly VO combusts just fine in a diesel engine and this is indicated by many years of experience on many continents, as long as you take the proper precautions. DO you have any experience fueling a vehicle with VO or WVO?

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WVO has clear issues burning in a diesel engine. For one, the engine must be at operating temperature because a cold combustion chamber leads to unburned fuel that will thermally polymerize in the ring lands and injectors. And yes, you have to heat it so it's viscosity more closely matches that of the fuel the pump was designed for. There are two issues right there that do not always happen in a conversion. Vegetable oil gets mixed into your startup fuel, and heat exchangers don't always get the oil hot enough under varying conditions.

And yes I have used WVO to power a diesel before, and I will never do it again.

When diesel costs continue to rise past $4 a gallon, running on wasted veggie oil will still work for me.

FREE FUEL!

rez311 said:

When diesel costs continue to rise past $4 a gallon, running on wasted veggie oil will still work for me.

FREE FUEL!

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And at $4 a gallon your break even point for a new engine is only 40,000 miles!

darkscout said:

And at $4 a gallon your break even point for a new engine is only 40,000 miles!

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Haha. You guys are so ridiculous! Keep crying that this guy's engine failed with WVO. I'm just defending it because of other's ignorance.