The Cummins in the Dodge is a direct injection engine and therefore may not a good candidate for SVO.
I say may not, because I don't think that anyone has yet demonstrated one way or the other that the technique of using only 70 deg. C+ SVO, and probably a biodiesel startup and shutdown fuel will NOT cause injector coking, ring sticking, carbon buildup, excessive wear in the ring belt and etc. as was documented in SVO tests on direct injection tractors by Peterson et al a number of years ago. In that study and others it seems (nothing is presented that suggests otherwise, in what is in every other respect a very thorough report) that unheated SVO was used without a diesel or biodiesel startup and shutdown, and it led to problems (like engine failure). It has been noted a number of times by various researchers that indirect injection engines are much more tolerant of SVO than are direct injection engines. There are no good longer term studies that I know of (and I really do hope someone on the list can offer some) to suggest that SVO, dewatered, filtered, heated and with a biodiesel startup/shutdown routine, will not cause problems in time in a DIRECT injection engine. Therefore most people, including ourselves, recommend against it until evidence to the contrary exists, and tend to stick to older, indirect injection engines for SVO conversions. Probably someone will say there are many folks using SVO in Germany in TDI's, etc. and "it works". I know this is true, but I myself have not seen any longer term results on these engines (say a teardown at few years and 100,000 km) to show that problems will not arise in time. So, that being said, the people who are now starting into running their Cummins or other expensive newer direct injection engines on SVO, even with proper heat/start/stop techniques, fall into the "brave pioneer with deep pockets" category, and only a few years from now, on a teardown or failure, will we know the extent to which the "not on direct injection" advice holds true in the "heated and purged" SVO case. As a further note, computer controlled fuel injection, on newer engines poses additional problems since the computer is very sensitve to viscosity changes and even heated SVO is not as light a fuel as petrodiesel. I read a while ago that the Cummins wears internally at 1/10th the rate of the VW engine! That means that it could literally last many decades, and should be treated as something that is capable of being passed down to the next generation (the engine if not the rest of the Dodge - as Steve suggested, "Cogen units in the shed" for eventual use). In other words, you should not be setting it up for premature failure. So that's the first thing, and believe me I don't want to throw cold water on your conversion, esp. since it almost done - but on the other hand... ------------ Next: the Racor is an expensive filter. The screen idea is nice and I almost started using them despite the high price until I talked to a regional dealer who said they were impossible to get clean (of lube oil) even at 28 micron. They were a professional filter shop, worked with Racor on trying to develop a technique for cleaning the screens - and eventually gave up. Maybe they never tried biodiesel as a solvent, but they sure tried everything else. If anyone has had good luck with the LFS, including being able to clean the screen, again please pass along the information. Ed B. www.biofuels.ca ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Small business owners... Tell us what you think! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vO1FAB/txzCAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
