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Car Forum / Mercedes-Benz Cars / March 2006Biodiesel in my 300DT
A few months I totaled our 300DT. Like any good Mercedes guy, I take the joke of a settlement the insurance gave me for my car and get another 123 (this time a wagon). Since the price per galloon at the time was pretty close, I started running it on biodiesel. Now, I checked here and the opinions on the biodiesel seemed pretty varied. The car idles better, starts easier, and certainly smells better with the biodiesel. However, when the temp dipped below 25, it turned to soy jelly in my tank. I put in a few gallons of dino-diesel and got it started and has been fine ever since. Replaced the fuel filters and removed the fuel tank sensor and cleaned it (talk about a well designed way to access this thing!), then it's all back to normal. Dino-diesel's price dropped so I started running it on that again. The car smokes more, idles rougher and louder, and takes a few more turns to fire up. I've read and been told bio-fuel is supposed to be lower octane, so why is it running better? I'm back on B100 full time, now. On a slightly different note, one of the best things about the biodiesel is telling hybrid drivers I'm using less petroleum than them. Sure fuel costs more but I paid $18,000 less than they did for the car, so I got a long way to go before I'm paying more than them to drive. >A few months I totaled our 300DT. Like any good Mercedes guy, I take >the joke of a settlement the insurance gave me for my car and get [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >lower octane, so why is it running better? I'm back on B100 full time, >now. Get two can's of Diesel Purge (or any source of octal nitrate) and run the car on ths stuff soley for 15 mins per the directions. That usualy cures the rough/smokies by cleaning crudd off the injectors, injection pump ets. The stuff is magic. Doesn't do much whe put it he fuel tank.  SignatureNeed Mercedes parts ? - http://parts.mbz.org Richard Sexton | Mercedes stuff: http://mbz.org 1970 280SE, 72 280SE | Home page: http://rs79.vrx.net 633CSi 250SE/C 300SD | http://aquaria.net http://killi.net >A few months I totaled our 300DT. Like any good Mercedes guy, I take > the joke of a settlement the insurance gave me for my car and get [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > the car, so I got a long way to go before I'm paying more than them > to drive. I am not a truck driver by trade, but I have heard of truckers who drive in extremely cold weather adding a bit of kerosene to a tank of diesel. Just enough to thin it a bit, but I wouldn't know how much that would be or if it is even a good idea. Just something I thought I'd pass along. > I am not a truck driver by trade, but I have heard of truckers who drive in extremely cold weather adding a bit of kerosene to a > tank of diesel. Just enough to thin it a bit, but I wouldn't know how much that would be or if it is even a good idea. Just > something I thought I'd pass along. Or up to 25% regular gas. cp Do you know if there is any chance of damaging anything by doing this (running 25% reg gas or a bit of kerosene) ? > Do you know if there is any chance of damaging anything by doing this > (running 25% reg gas or a bit of kerosene) ? Donno, mine's gas, and I'm sure 25% diesel won't do any good in mine. ;-) http://biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/Performance.PDF Biodiesel in cold weather. Cold weather can cloud and even gel any diesel fuel, including biodiesel. Users of a 20 percent biodiesel blend with #2 diesel will usually experience an increase of the cold flow properties (cold filter plugging point, cloud point, pour point) approximately 2 to 10° Fahrenheit. Precautions employed for petroleum diesel are needed for fueling with 20 percent blends. Neat (100 percent) biodiesel will gel faster than petrodiesel in cold weather operations. Solutions for winter operability with neat biodiesel are much the same as that for low-sulfur #2 diesel (i.e., blending with #1 diesel, utilization of fuel heaters, and storage of the vehicle in or near a building). These same solutions work well with biodiesel blends, as do the use of cold flow improvement additives. Cheers, WS > Do you know if there is any chance of damaging anything by doing this > (running 25% reg gas or a bit of kerosene) ? Hi, I shouldn't really say anything because I don't have conclusive evidence, you'll have to look it up. One of the guys here on the group had his wife fill up his w123 300D with gas to the brim and she drove 300 miles at almost 100% GAS with no problem, other than the engine making funny noises. He said that the car still ran fine (I'm not sure how long this was after the fact). I guess the fuel pump was not lubricated by diesel fuel... My dad would drive 20%-30% gas in very cold weather, it lowered the combustion temperature (so started easier in winter) because gas combusts at lower compression than diesel. Probably best to try with premium gas which would detonate at higher compression than regular. But check with experts, who would probably call it dumb...but the car still drives well. cp > > Do you know if there is any chance of damaging anything by doing this > > (running 25% reg gas or a bit of kerosene) ? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > cp The MB owners manual for my 80 300SD talks about mixing in kerosene or gasoline based on temp. It says winter diesel is good down to 3F. Below that or if only summer is available, then mixing in is recommended. Summer diesel plus 30% kerosene is good to 14F, 50% is good to 5F. Says gasoline, if used should be regular and not exceed 30% Of course all this is for a 26 year old car, newer diesels may have different reqts. > The MB owners manual for my 80 300SD talks about mixing in kerosene or > gasoline based on temp. It says winter diesel is good down to 3F. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > Of course all this is for a 26 year old car, newer diesels may have > different reqts. Ahhhhhh! So it isn't an old wives' tale! Gas in cold weather in a diesel made sense to me though I was wondering about certain detail, like fuel pump lubrication. Well, I've got a nice 300SD (w126) again, my brother couldn't let this one beautiful w123 go and so I took his w126, whoooo! cp Out here in Philadelphia, the only people I know running B100 are doing so by having two tanks. One with Dino juice and one with the B100. They start the car on dino and run it until warm on that then flip a selector switch to run the B100. They then shut the car down by selecting dino and waiting for a light to tell them that the B100 has been run out of the system before shut down. This is to prevent the fuel ever gelling in the injectors and rails and to keep the car running in even the coldest weather. There are kits that can be bought to make this conversion. |
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