Has anyone had any experience recently running their fabia sdi on veg oil?

I am thinking of trying it on mine should I notify my car insurers?

I would advise against it unless it's thoroughly filtered and mixed with mineral diesel, particularly once the weather gets colder. You'll clog the injectors otherwise.

I think it depends on the fuel pump fitted.

 

I used to run a Peugeit 306 1.9d on it years ago.

 

But it had the strong Bosch pump (there was a version with a weaker Lucas pump).

 

I ran it on new veg oil since it was only costing about 40p a litre at the time. But I didn't a 70/30 oil/diesel mix in the summer and a 50/50 winter mix. Still saves a big chunk of money each fill up.

 

I'd even once driven to a ski resort in the mountains in Germany and still had the 50/50 mix in. Car still started and ran fine on a morning even with -18c night temperatures.

The old Peugeot lump didn't use electronically controlled unit injectors though and unless you're doing a lot of miles it's just not worth the aggro.

2 hours ago, sepulchrave said:

The old Peugeot lump didn't use electronically controlled unit injectors though and unless you're doing a lot of miles it's just not worth the aggro.

Did you have to tell your insurers that you were running on oil?

2 hours ago, Phil-E said:

I think it depends on the fuel pump fitted.

 

I used to run a Peugeit 306 1.9d on it years ago.

 

But it had the strong Bosch pump (there was a version with a weaker Lucas pump).

 

I ran it on new veg oil since it was only costing about 40p a litre at the time. But I didn't a 70/30 oil/diesel mix in the summer and a 50/50 winter mix. Still saves a big chunk of money each fill up.

 

I'd even once driven to a ski resort in the mountains in Germany and still had the 50/50 mix in. Car still started and ran fine on a morning even with -18c night temperatures.

I will check which pump I have. Isn't the pump on the sdi driven from a belt rather than a motor?

You should tell your insurers of ANY modification from the original specification, otherwise they may take issue at any point of claim. 

1 hour ago, JoeF said:

Did you have to tell your insurers that you were running on oil?

 

Absolutely not, what brand of fuel you choose to use is irrelevant.

13 minutes ago, sepulchrave said:

 

Absolutely not, what brand of fuel you choose to use is irrelevant.

You will find that all insurers have in their T&C’s words almost exactly as I’ve written. It’s not about the fuel, it’s the permanent change from how it was made they wanna know about. 

I take it back..... for some reason I haD LPG conversion in my head 

There's absolutely no need to tell your insurer. It's oerfectly legal too and you're allowed to use up to 2,500 litres tax free a year.

 

And yes the fuel pump is mechanical driven off the belt.

 

That's why the modern stuff can't run on it as they have an electric lift pump in the tank and then a high (very high) pressure common rail pump on the engine.

1 hour ago, Phil-E said:

There's absolutely no need to tell your insurer. It's oerfectly legal too and you're allowed to use up to 2,500 litres tax free a year.

 

And yes the fuel pump is mechanical driven off the belt.

 

That's why the modern stuff can't run on it as they have an electric lift pump in the tank and then a high (very high) pressure common rail pump on the engine.

 

There is an electric lift pump in the tank on an SDI, also a mechanical pump, also there are electronic unit injectors.

I wouldn't bother risking clogging the injection for a few measley quid saved every tankful.

I know a chap I that used to work with about 15 yrs.ago,used to run an old Ford Escort diesel on old chip/veg.oil that he used to collect from 3/4 local chippies.He built a pump and large Cummins fuel filter to clean it,and then blend clean white diesel with it to sweeten it up a little.Mechanical lift pump and mechanical injector pump,no problems for the five years that he worked for us.

I run my sdi on vegetable oil fine no problems all tho I may of been lucky,  my old landy 90 run on 100% oil in summer bloke down our road used to complain about the takeaway been smelly but it was the 90 ha 

9 minutes ago, Vfr400boy said:

I run my sdi on vegetable oil fine no problems all tho I may of been lucky,  my old landy 90 run on 100% oil in summer bloke down our road used to complain about the takeaway been smelly but it was the 90 ha 

Do you run  the SDI on purely veg oil or do you mix something else in when it gets cold?

50 50 in winter it was old oil from the pub I cold filterd it thro a cloth , 

 

1 hour ago, Vfr400boy said:

I run my sdi on vegetable oil fine no problems all tho I may of been lucky,  my old landy 90 run on 100% oil in summer bloke down our road used to complain about the takeaway been smelly but it was the 90 ha 

 

Old tech diesels are fine on veg, you're very lucky you haven't clogged the SDI injection system yet, it's in the post though.

 

1 hour ago, Vfr400boy said:

50 50 in winter it was old oil from the pub I cold filterd it thro a cloth , 

 

I have no words to effectively describe how inadequate this method of filtration is for used vegetable oil.

On 19/09/2020 at 19:49, sepulchrave said:

also there are electronic unit injectors

Are you sure?

These look decidedly non-electronic to me: 

https://skoda.7zap.com/en/cz/fabia/fab/2001-225/1/130-130070/

18 minutes ago, Wino said:

Are you sure?

These look decidedly non-electronic to me: 

https://skoda.7zap.com/en/cz/fabia/fab/2001-225/1/130-130070/

 

You're right, I was thinking of the later SDI engine which is basically a N/A PD engine.

 

Still, erring on the side of caution is no bad thing when it comes to advice, there's a wildman in this thread already!

Ha ha I no longer have the sdi as the gear box gave up for a second time so she was scraped,  I never had any issues at all using oil I changed the diesel filter regularly and every now and then put a full tank of diesel in , maybe I was just lucky but it saved me a fortune 

hello. i'm running an old fabia sdi on veg oil recovered from restaurants (after some rigurous filtering and decantation) since a year now. 

i'm mixing 50/50 in the winter and during summer 30/70. 

i havent noticed any issues except a little brown oily gunk accumulated in the injection pump since first few tries i didnt filter properly. 

now using a twin filter (4 microns + 2 microns) recovered from boats to prefilter before use.

 

Any optimization i could do to the engine regarding timing or any other idea ?!

Thx.

new experiment: last week i started experimenting with mixing ethanol E85 fuel with veg oil after reading some academic papers about it.

helps with filtering too, i use 20% at first to do a cleanup thinking fuel system must be gummed up. 

until now no issues. runs great. 

plannig a fuel/ oil filter change soon since i noticed at high rpm seems starved .. need to do more testing. 

Please share your experience.

1 hour ago, yo8aiv said:

plannig a fuel/ oil filter change soon since i noticed at high rpm seems starved .. need to do more testing

Use VCDS (or similar) to investigate your injector duty cycle; This wants to be under 90% between full power revs (probably 4_000, but you've not bothered to state which engine) and the start of the orange band.

thanks for the quick answer. ill do that ,.. engine is ASY 1.9 sdi

I've started filling up with veg oil from Sainsbury's again given the ridiculous cost of diesel at the moment.

Seems to run pretty happily on 100% undiluted rapeseed oil which costs about £1.05 a ltr but has reduced my average mpg by about 10%.

On 11/03/2022 at 21:11, yo8aiv said:

new experiment: last week i started experimenting with mixing ethanol E85 fuel with veg oil after reading some academic papers about it.

helps with filtering too, i use 20% at first to do a cleanup thinking fuel system must be gummed up. 

until now no issues. runs great. 

plannig a fuel/ oil filter change soon since i noticed at high rpm seems starved .. need to do more testing. 

Please share your experience.

ok. after oil and fuel filter change engine behaves normally again. 

seems E85 can drag all dirt, glycerin and grease that might be inthe oil, out in the fuel filter.

hopefully most of the gunk is out .. planning next is a fuel pump inspection.

 

while fuel filter was clogged up also engine comsuption went up by 10% , now its back to normal geting 4.3L/100 or less.

Sharing for everyone. Cheers.