Anybody making their own fuel?

Just wondering if anyone is making their own bio diesel? Several articles in Farm Show recently about setups to make your own, just wondered if anyone was doing it and how you are getting along with it? Chris

I was, got tired of fighting the theives to get my oil.

Did about 1 year research on it, then made test batches. Designed a SAFE and nearly automatic processor and gathered all the equipment I needed. Then found that finding oil is like finding gold. Everyone's staked their claim already in these parts. So I parked my truck and bought a motorcycle to commute.

It's not a complicated process. Just be careful with the chemicals and heat.

I don't know if anyone has found a good way of keeping the fuel from gelling in the cold months.

The fuel also eats rubber and plastic in no time flat. Need viton seals and lines.

My son is making his own from deep-fryer oil. He's got my old 87 Chevy diesel Suburban. The 6.2 engine blew to pieces at 520,000 miles. I had a spare engine - and he came up from Colorado here to New York did an engine swap, and drove it back to his home. His first problem was - he couldn't pass the Colorado smoke-inspection. A diesel without a turbo at a 5000 foot-plus elevation gets pretty sick. So, he added a Banks turbo along with a tank full of certified biofuel and then passed fine. The biofuel at the pump got him interested in making his own from waste oil - and that's what he's doing now. He has a good WVO source nearby. Says he's making his fuel for 80 cents a gallon. He's using a dual-tank system. Starts on road-diesel, then when warm - switches over to a preheated waste-oil tank. He took it elk hunting in the Wyoming mountains last year in some pretty cold weather and did fine with it.
So far, so good, but I warned him that the life of the Stanadyne injection pump is going to be a lot shorter. So, he's kept an eye open and now has half a dozen used pumps as back-ups - some he got for free and some for $50 each. Seems he's all set.
A diesel with an inline pump is a much better setup for homemade fuel - but they are scarce on U.S. cars and trucks. Only ones I can think of are a few Mercedes, Peugots, and Dodge-Cummins trucks built before 1993.
One side-note. I worked nights at a bakery during mid 60s. My German boss had a Mercedes diesel. Every day, he poured waste-oil through a cheese cloth, and then dumped it directly into his fuel tank - mixed with the regular diesel. He did fine as far as I ever saw - but this was summer only. We thought he was nuts (and maybe he was) - since diesel was only around 25-30 cents a gallon. But, other than my wife, he was the cheapest person I've ever met.

I don"t know what max ratio"s you can get by with, but I knew a man who for years, dumped all of his used motor oil right in his diesel bulk tank and burned it. No filtering...nothing. He said that why the machine had a fuel filter on it! He never had the slightest problem in his Ford backhoes, dump trucks, etc. That isn"t making oil.....but a cheap way to stretch it.....as used oil is generally free when you can find it.

I just went to a seminar on diesel fuel put on by BG Products. It seems that bio diesel when used above 5% tends to attack the rubber fuel system parts. The engine will run fine on 100%, except you won't have as much power as petro diesel. They gave me a table of figures for specific gravity for fuel and how much percentage of power loss you can expect. The guy dumping motor oil in with the diesel is kind of like adding 104+ to gas. In order to make diesel cleaner, they've had to remove aeromatic hydrocarbons from it. Same with sulfur. In fact, they "wash" the fuel with water to remove sulfur. Then when they ship fuel through a pipeline, they send gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc all through 1 pipeline. They use water to separate each product. It's no wonder diesel has entrained water in it that settles out in your fuel barrell over time.
The guy adding oil to his diesel was adding power to it because oil is more dense meaning it has more btu's in it. Anybody remember marine #3 diesel? I'd never heard of it, but there were a few old Navy vets that did. That was good dense fuel that made good power.

I've been doing it for years. But . . . just a gallon of waste motor-oil will turn an entire 300 gallon tank of diesel a dark color. I'm not sure what highway inspectors would ever make of that color if on a highway vehicle.

Years ago it was standard practice for truck stops to put all the waste engine oil into the fuel tanks. Not legal anymore.

When Chevy and GMC first came out with the Oldsmobile 350 diesel back late 70s, the owner's manual warned new truck owners NOT to buy diesel at big truck stops since it might have waste oil in it.

In regard to filtering, I agree with you. The oil I drain has already been filtered ad nauseum. Then, once I dump it into my bulk tank, it gets filtered again when I pump it out. And finally, once in a tractor or truck, it goes through several more filters.

Oooooh..."cheap"...that hurt...
Among us semi-german types we prefer "frugal"... (LOL).

Hmmmm,

So.......if motor oil is more dense, therefore containing more BTU"s, then what would be a maximum ratio one could mix it with diesel and get more power and retain reliability? 100/1, 50/1, 25/1?

Is it possible to run a modern diesel on straight motor oil, the EPA notwithstanding?