The Lucas (nee CAV) pumps are generally very reliable long
lasting units, fitted to a whole range of commerial vehicles,
agricultural vehicles, marine engines and industrial plant.
However, as with any injector pump, messing about with them
done by people who don't fully know what they are doing, and
without the proper calibration equipment will inevitably
lead to disaster. Bosch units are essentially the same things,
there being a technology "share", or agreement or whatever it
should be called, for many years.

Having worked at Lucas Diesels, now part of Delphi Diesel Systems,
I can report that some testing was done on various "biodiesel"
fuels and engines. The results were not made public for commercial
reasons, but some anecdotal evidence is that:

"Proper" biodiesel is fine, but there seems to be a loss of
power (that may be acceptable to some users, e.g. buses),
and more importantly there are lubrication problems in injector
pumps, which again may be acceptable where fuel costs are
significantly lower to justify higher maintainance costs.

"Chip Shop" diesel suffers similar problems, but far more
importantly, it leaves a "varnish" (not unlike shellac),
which destroys the injector spray pattern quite quickly
leading to engine damage (holed pistons being the favourite).

The tests were carried out over thousands of hours on testbeds,
not just "doing a few thousand miles" with an optomistic outlook.

Richard