a thank you.

[13 window deluxe]

[ruby bay]

well, ive bought one! a 97 velle long nose with the 2.4 lump(autotrader £1850 fsh). it is a LOT slower than my old ruby (when she had the lawn mower lump)on acceleration tbh, but feels comfy and sorted too, which is nice. on the flat once on the go shes great and pulls good. i am now intrigued about the whole chip fat thing, morrisons are selling 3 ltrs at 88.4 pence per ltr. how do you seperate the oil and diesel ie switching and returning, i would be really interested to see some pics or links too. cheers.

[jp]

I did this to my passat a year and a half ago and no regrets.

Rich did conversion to his vito some time before me see HERE


There are a lot of kits out there - SmartVeg, Dieselveg, etc etc and all are a variation on a theme. Obviously its up to you to offset which each kit offers you - but for me it was quality parts, good reviews, good tech help and having an auto switch over that sold me on the DieselVeg ATG kit.

The kit is as below:


the main components = switchover valves, tanks, pipes and clips, wiring loom, dash mounted switching unit, tank, and heat exchanger, instructions.

Heat Exchanger


Dash Mount Switching Unit


Switchover Valves



This kit cost me £550 - if you want to save a bit on this you can for example provide your own tank etc. As I say there a a lot of much cheaper kits on the market so do your research - smartveg and dieselveg ATG are generally considered to be the top end. If you have more time then you can put together your own kit - its fairly simple and will prob cost you £150-200 - but for me the priority was to get on the road for free ASAP and with minimal teething problems.

WVO - waste veg oil
I will be using waste veg oil - sourced from take aways etc for free. There is a lot of info on the net and if filtering/ settling isn't for you then you can buy this pre-filtered at approx 45p a litre. initially I used 20L of clean oil for £13 from cash and carry to get the system running. A week down the line and I'm now running on WVO which I have been given from local pubs.

It seems there are lots of options for filtering kits but I sourced mine from http://www.oilybits.com for £145 - it includes a pump, inline filters, pertol station type nozle, pipes etc (again cheaper options available if you have time to figure something out)- i am filtering to 1 micron via a 10 micron filter. Firstly I have left the oil to settle for a minimum of 2 weeks by which time the good stuff rises to the top. I then remove the good stuff from the top by puncturing holes in the clear barrels just above the line of the fatty rubbish oil this then flows into a large container which is then tapped into old jeans legs (yes the ones you wear) with knots tied in the end. This get rid of the worst of the cr&p from the WVO then when I pump the WVO into the car it is further filtered through the inline 10 and then 1 micron filters.

The most common question I get asked is what happens when you run out of veg oil in eg france. Well there are a few options 1) if you have space carry some spare filtered barrels with you. 2) Go to any supermarket and pour in veg oil - still cheaper than diesel 3) last resort - override the system and run on diesel.

This is the fat from the chippy in the background - its good stuff - after two weeks it has not seperated out or gone creamy suggesting low animal fat content. In the foreground is my home made waste veg oil filtering set up



Fitting

The diesel veg kit is 'suitable for a competent home mechanic and can be fitted in two days'. It took me 1 evening on my own and 2 further evenings with help of a friend.

First I read the instructions several times during tea breaks at work where the kit got delivered, to get my head around what needed to be done.

First job was to identify diesel pump feed and return. I then identified the heater matrix feed and return by running the engine (heater on) and seeing which pipe got hot first. It's important that the heat exchanger fuel and water flow in opposite directions. I then mounted the heat exchanger in a convenient place where it could easily receive all pipes on the bulkhead



Note I mounted this on some rubber bobbins I had kicking around



I cut the fuel supply line from the original tank, put the inline filter in and connected to the H-exchanger.

Then i cut into the heater pipes and inserted the t-pieces. It's important that the Heat exchanger is fitted across the circuit (i.e you cut into both pipes) you can just make out the blue t-pieces on the bulkhead. The gold thing is the inline temp sender which actuates the switchover relay once 60 degrees is reached



Next you need to find a suitable location for the supply/return valves...this switches between Veg oil and diesel. I mounted these on the right side of the engine where there is a nice big gap and a bracket to mount them on. It is also near the fuel supplies and the heat exchanger this means minimal heat is lost when the veg oil is pumped into the engine.

Bracket attached minus the valves


With Valves and Pipes connected


Although there are a lot of pipes it is fairly straight forward to workout which pipe goes where and how to plumb it into the orig set up. One strange thing is the return on the passat goes through the diesel filter ! this is not required on this set up so I have just looped the return on the filter, I will probably use a different filter that has a basic 1 in 1 out set up when I change filters in 6k.

The auxiliary diesel tank can be mounted anywhere and can be any size - too small and you'll be filling up forever - too big - you loose space - Mine 22L and I fitted it in the left storage place in the boot.

First I removed all these plastic shelves




Then Cut out the bottom section (didn't want to but need must)



Fit Some Straps


Slot in Tank


Conveniently VW left an extra space to run the pipe down to the engine which made things simple and neat.



Next I found a suitable location to mount the control module


Then removed the cover from beneath the steering wheel and threaded the loom from the controller up through the ECU (thanks for this tip from some guys on this forum).

Under Steering Wheel


Ecu Box under bonnet (top left) opened up


Once loom is passed in through the ECU box (under ECU) then ran along the top of the bulk head and through a convenient hole in the bulkhead where I mounted the relays and rest of the loom which links it all together.



OK so it's all in and running I have noticed no difference in performance the switch over between diesel and chip fat is seamless, MPG is the same, engine sounds a bit smoother and slightly quieter on chip fat.

One question I get asked a lot is does it SMELL !!! answer... when inside driving not at all... when you get out the car having turned off the engine there is a slight wiff and a stronger wiff when you stand behind/downwind of the exhaust... personally I find the smell quite nice it's kinda like when you drive past the chippy it's not good if you're hungry though !

Well this has turned into a mighty post hope you found it interesting if you are thinking of doing it I highly recommend using the dieselveg kit and the support on the phone is excellent... I think if I was doing it again I would easily achieve this in a couple of nights most time is spent pondering where to mount stuff.
_________________
1971 Devon Bay with 1800 Ford Turbo Diesel Engine (wip)
1983 VW Golf GTI Campaign
1979 Mini 1275 GT
2013 Scirocco TDI GT

[ruby bay]

WOW! top post jp. thats about as much info as anyone could ever ask on the subject. thanks for taking the time and trouble. its defo on my to do list now! cheers, mike.

[richbaker78]

I have just racked up 50000 miles on chipfat on the very same kit JP used above with no probs. I must have saved £1000s i reckon!

Only thing I would add is make sure you change your fuel and engine oil and oil filters every 5000 miles or so as it does contaminate the engine oil and can lead to big end failure if ignored.

Also regarding oil supply before you go this route defo try and sort out your supply before you start so you know what your getting into - worst case is you bulk buy it from makro/ costco etc

I started on cleaning oil and stuff like JP has done but found it getting harder to get free from people plus it can be time consuming - it can also be a bit mucky so I ended up buying in bulk 1000 litre containers which work out about 55-60p a litre. Im on my second one now and its defo easier and more convenient but obviously costs more.

Was in costco today and new oil was 13.99 for a 20l which is 70p a litre but then you have to drive there which isnt convenient for me anymore.