New To VW Diesel and have some odd ideas. (long)

Hey every one. Im new around here and i actuly dont have my car yet but im been looking around and had a few questions.

So heres the back ground
Along with being new to the forum im new to VWs and Diesel cars in general, though im not new to turbo set ups and there systems.



I well soon no longer own a 97 Saab 9000. I drove it for 2 years and loved it (stage 3+ 300hp and 350 ft lbs torque) but it has now reached the point where im investing to much money in it and it has to go


I got into the idea of a diesel car after talking to a fellow saaber who has converted his benz to run on Veg oil and thought ... hmm that would be a great way to save money.
But a benz is out of the question... so my next option was a VW. Ive always like the look of the golf and passat and enjoy europen stylying and enginearing.
BUT While i know that a diesel car is ment to be economic... and a grease car even more so... 90hp just wont cut it. I love how the golf handles but i need a little push when i get on the petal.
So my questions are.
What is the best moddel TDI to convert to a grease car? Has any one here done it? Is it highly frowned apon?

That being said... has any one actuly modded a grease car to get some extra performance?

Ive read that the most common mods seem to be injectorsand some kind of ecu tune. Other then that u just have to get a bigger turbo.

Im really only looking for an extra 10-20 hp to compinsate for the loss of power from the veg oil and to round out those torque #s.

i know on a saab that could be done with somehing as simple as a down pipe and a MBC but no one seems to mention those any where... is the car psi maxed out on the stock ecu and the exhaust flows enough?
Sorry if these are real newbie questions... i just dont seem to be coming up with answers easily.
Thanks for your time.
--Brad

Welcome to the TDI Club Forum!!! This is the place where you will find the most informative and the least amount of misinformation (most of the time). The stickies at the top of this discussion area are a great place to start for information on what a good list for upgrades to these cars. With a minimum amount of money, you can really boost these cars performance to where it will give most of the VW 1.8T's a run for their money. Good luck!

Welcome to the forum.. Not to discourage you but please read this thread:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?p=1445366&highlight=veg#post1445366

Honestly, unless you have been in a TDI before, you may not relize just how much get up and go you really have out of 90 horses. I have converted my 2001 TDI Beetle and have noticed no power decline while on WVO. The greasecar forums would be the best place to look for how cars handle on grease.

Thanks for the info guys i appreciate it.

im not looking to drive this car much more the 50,000 miles... i just need it to get me threw the rest of school. (2 1/2 more years) and i do very little driving. (max 10,000 a year) so worrying what kinda condition the motor will be in at around 100,000 miles isnt really a problem.

Ive driven a friend of mines TDI and thats why im here lookin for a bit more power... having to down shift to pass some one on the high way or not shifting and getting the same pick up at WOT as half throttle is just plain scary to me!

But i do have to realise its an economical car not a race car... but thats another can of worms.

Ill check the other forums and section and pop back here every now and again to ask questions and let people know how its working out.

Thanks again.

--Brad

Hello,


I have my car chipped...but even before that the car had plenty of get up and go.....and no problems passing....perhaps your friends car had an issue.

Anyhow the chip (whoever you decide to use) will add just about the amount of power you're looking for. These cars come in very low state of tune from the factory to say the least. Add a chip....and its a new car....add chip and injectors....and its a new animal!

But dont expect things to come cheap...a chip and injector combo usually requires an upgraded clutch...and last but most importantly...diesels respond to modifications differently then gassers. So its not always an apples to apples comparison ( you probably knew that already).


Also....in regards to "doing very little driving" how little is little? Dont forget the grease has to be heated before it can be burned properly...so if very little means 5-10 minute jaunts....perhaps grease isnbt worth it...since you will never get to switch over to it. Not sure how much your saving would be with grease considering oil preparation etc....that all depends on you.

Nick

Well i live at school so i dont drive at all for about 4 or 5 days on end... but when i do drive is half an hour - hour long trips ... so id think that makes it worth it.... plus skiing trips.

Durring the summer i work literally a 20 second walk away from my house... so i dont have to worry about that.... but on the weekends i drive 2 and 3 hours to visit my friends in othere states so its deffinatly worth it then.

So yea maybe its not worth it for town driving and what not... but for alot of my trips it would deffinatly help.

I was hoping that the upgrade of nozzels would help the power and the injection of the VO at the same time.

I have come to grips that this is going to be quite and experimant and is going to take quite a bit of montering but im quite interested so well see how it works out.

Thanks for all the great input guys! Ill keep you posted on what i find for sure.

--Brad

There's a member out of Ontario, Canada who runs VO and has fairly substantially modded his ride. Maybe he will see this thread and chime in. Maybe a more appropriate title might catch more pertinent attention; I can change it or move the thread to another more appropriate forum if you wish.

regaring your test drive in a friends' TDI, two things.
1) it sounds like someting was wrong with his setup most likely a MAF, refer him to here and it'll be cured quickly
2) the power and torque curves for a diesel are completely diffrent than a gasser, we peak our torque out early and dwindle from there so the shift points that seemed odd to you while passing might have been pretty standard considering the different power range of the motor

finally congrats on seeing the light and switching over the diesels, you'll never want to go back to the dark side of gassers again!

Fret

You can get the 1.9 tdi in various power.

I have a 130bhp 6 speed manual passat.

If you can get same I would look for that.

Good start to build on for performance mods.

Beats a gasser any day.

a properly maintained TDI will have NO problem passing unless youre driving at like 100 and passing cars going just that fast. i drive a 8% grade every few days, and i never have issues with downshifting. in 5th all day.

And lest you think that everyone at TDIClub rants and raves about the stupidity of running veggie oil... Look here.

My 2000 jetta tdi 5 speed has no problem passing people in 5th gear, i only downshift to 4 if i want to put them in there place as this tiny lil 4 banger diesel blows by them..

Heres my .02. Im a fairly new member, and have only had my TDI for about 5 months now. From what your saying, it doesnt sound worth your while to make it a greaser. Your going to spend ~$1500.00 to do the conversion. At the $3.25 a gallon I pay for B100 (which is at least .50 a gallon more than D2 right now), you can buy a little more than 460 gallons of fuel. That equates to at least 20,000 miles of driving. Not to mention that it is going to be somewhat of a pain to do the whole tank switch thing.

The one question I have is whether your friends TDI is an automatic. The stick shift setup is far superior. I can pass people with ease in mine, and mine is still stock. (with several mods planned in the near future).

I would buy the TDI, and then do the Injector/Chip combo. If you do that, you will have a Autobahn racecar that still gets at least 40 mpg.

Another thing to think about as far as power is concerned, I saw an episode of "Megastructures" that talked about the Autobahn. During the segment they showed the cop cars that chase down speeders (yes alot of the Autobahn is regulated). They run the Audi TDI (and some BMW's).

I love my car. I feel very fortunate to have ran across one at a dealer when I was looking to buy a car. I didnt even know about them before. I went home (without purchasing it) and found these forums. Within a day or so, I was convinced that it was a good decision. I havent yet been disapointed.

B.L.T said:

My 2000 jetta tdi 5 speed has no problem passing people in 5th gear, i only downshift to 4 if i want to put them in there place as this tiny lil 4 banger diesel blows by them..

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Word!!

fretrunner9k said:

But i do have to realise its an economical car not a race car... but thats another can of worms.

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It's a race car too, a race car that gets 36mpg racing!!

http://www.rallyvw.com/

Okay, I am fairly new to all of this but I thought that the VW TDI did not need any conversions (a la Greasecar) to run WVO and that it was possible to make your own B100 from WVO with a fair amount of effort but at a cost of less than $3.25 gallon. I thought that the conversion was just for SVO and was strongly discouraged. Please affirm or disconfirm any of my understandings, please....and, interestingly, I find a fifty-cent/gallon difference in diesel prices on any given day....lowest today in south Orange County is about $2.87 Thanks!!

jcmft said:

Okay, I am fairly new to all of this but I thought that the VW TDI did not need any conversions (a la Greasecar) to run WVO and that it was possible to make your own B100 from WVO with a fair amount of effort but at a cost of less than $3.25 gallon. I thought that the conversion was just for SVO and was strongly discouraged. Please affirm or disconfirm any of my understandings, please....and, interestingly, I find a fifty-cent/gallon difference in diesel prices on any given day....lowest today in south Orange County is about $2.87 Thanks!!

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WVO= Waste Vegatable Oil
SVO= Straight Vegetable OIL

TDIs require modification to run both !

That being said, Biodiesel (requires no engine conversion) can be produced from both SVO and WVO and run in a TDI with no modification.

Hope that helps clear up any confusion.

Nick

SoCal_John said:

From what your saying, it doesnt sound worth your while to make it a greaser. Your going to spend ~$1500.00 to do the conversion. At the $3.25 a gallon I pay for B100 (which is at least .50 a gallon more than D2 right now), you can buy a little more than 460 gallons of fuel. That equates to at least 20,000 miles of driving. Not to mention that it is going to be somewhat of a pain to do the whole tank switch thing.

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fretrunner9k wrote: "im not looking to drive this car much more the 50,000 miles... i just need it to get me threw the rest of school."

The cost of the conversion would take much longer than 50k miles to recoup.

And while I haven't seen any data on the resale values of TDIs with a WVO conversion, it's my guess that most folks would prefer a totally stock fuel system -- whether justified or not, they might be concerned about injection pump longevity.

I've seen some very impressive-looking WVO conversions -- everything under the hood appeared very clean and professionally installed.

But I've also seen a few that didn't look so good, didn't sound so good, and didn't run so good. If I saw one of the latter being offered for sale, I'd walk away fast.... I wouldn't consider the WVO system as a positive feature, I'd consider it as something to fixed or removed at my expense.

Got it! I think. SVO and WVO, untouched for the most part, require engine modifications. Biodiesel would be the VO that has had various components/molecules removed, e.g. the glycerin....I think that is it....simply put. I did a bit of reading yesterday. Thanks.

jcmft said:

Got it! I think. SVO and WVO, untouched for the most part, require engine modifications. Biodiesel would be the VO that has had various components/molecules removed, e.g. the glycerin....I think that is it....simply put. I did a bit of reading yesterday. Thanks.

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Right. Biodiesel is to veggie oil as cake is to flour. Or as beer is to water.

VO is just one of the ingredients (albeit the biggest one) of biodiesel. Think of it that way, and it makes more sense.

As an aside, one of my pet peeves is when some sloppy car magazine writer calls biodiesel "filtered vegetable oil"...it is NOT filtered. The oil's an ingredient.

Mike

VO makes Bio-D.
Bio-D doesn't need modification at all.
TDI engine doesnt need modification for VO .. the fuel system does.

jcmft said:

Okay, I am fairly new to all of this but I thought that the VW TDI did not need any conversions (a la Greasecar) to run WVO and that it was possible to make your own B100 from WVO with a fair amount of effort but at a cost of less than $3.25 gallon. I thought that the conversion was just for SVO and was strongly discouraged. Please affirm or disconfirm any of my understandings, please....and, interestingly, I find a fifty-cent/gallon difference in diesel prices on any given day....lowest today in south Orange County is about $2.87 Thanks!!

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I guess what I was going for here is that I pay the extra .50c a gallon to run Bio over D2. It makes me happy that I can run really the best fuel available and Im not putting money in the Talibans pocket. Instead Im giving Californians work.

Im not trying to flame you, Im just expanding on what I was saying. Most people go to WVO or SVO so they can save the enviornment. Im paying a premium so I can run a daily driver and save the enviornment at the same time. The bonus is that my injectors are all cleaned up, and my car runs fantastic.

jcmft said:

interestingly, I find a fifty-cent/gallon difference in diesel prices on any given day....lowest today in south Orange County is about $2.87 Thanks!!

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I filled up for $2.479 the other day. And I've driven past two stations that are trying to sell diesel for $3.499. So that's a $1.02 spread from low to high, about 15 miles apart.

A couple weeks ago I drove past a station and, out of the corner of my eye, spotted what I thought was a very attractive price.

But alas, there was a "3" before the decimal point, and not a "2". This was in a lower-class neighborhood. And their (Shell) gasoline wasn't very cheap either.

fretrunner9k said:

90hp just wont cut it.

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I am a firm believer that your butt dyno is more responsive to torque numbers than HP numbers. Notice that gassers have similar HP and torque numbers, but diesels have much higher torque than HP.