A few further thoughts,
Firstly what's with the 30 mile thing? A proper conversion has you on oil as soon as the temp is up to norm, that should unless something is up with your car be a trip around the block. In city traffic here (rush hour) a 10 mile journey can take 30 mins, for 25 of that you could be on oil as the fast purge facility of a decent kit will flush out the pump in 25 seconds and a further couple of minutes driving is all that's needed to clear the IP lines. So even urban trips can be done mostly on oil. Also you can shut down for up to an hour no problem, so long as the engine is still warm there won't be any issues.
Secondly yes you could risk your engine if something goes wrong. I'd further add to that, don't buy a CAR you can't afford to replace the engine on. There are many threads on failures round the net - who knows what might happen? I have never, in hundreds of thousands of miles of driving, had a failure in any car - most can be avoided by looking after your motor, but you never KNOW. A friend of mind had the car maintained but the cambelt tensioner failed, scrapping his engine, not his fault. Another guy I visited last week ran on diesel, not wvo, yet had two Bosch (same sort as on tdi) pumps go. Yet he ran a Lucas/CAV (totally unsuitable, they seize eventually on oil) on another car on half veg and never had a problem.
For me, there is no 'absolutes'. If I know something I do could cause a problem, I won't do it. I will do everything (maintainence to mods - I just flushed the fluid twice, changed it and did the line mod on my 1.8T auto box, even though VW say it's sealed for life) I can that could make the car better. On the basis of the above, and given I live in an environment where we run these cars on oil routinely and PD conversions are nothing new and no problems, I'm happy to run on oil (I do) WITH a proper conversion.
If you REALLY want to be safe, do what I did when I was a kid - I used to buy 2 cars the same, so I had one for spares - with a good engine/running gear. I also trained to be a mechanic as I couldn't afford for anyone else to fix it.
But I think most people can be fairly safe picking a good car after a good inspection, maintaining it well at a decent specialist and making informed choices.
This is bordering on philosophy...
Greg
Chasee said:
Heh...
Let's put it this way: if WVO was easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?
Do I drive more than 20-30 miles at one time (without shut down), the vast majority of the time? (credit to member 40x40 for this one)
Do I fully understand that even if I do everything perfectly, my engine could still explode, making this a huge financial and environmental losing proposition?