Fuel problem ... please help ... urgent

This site contains affiliate links for which LandyZone may be compensated if you make a purchase.

skires

New Member
Posts
179
Location
Kidsgrove near Stoke on Trent
Ok first up ...

A local recycle place started selling recycled cooking oil which is filtered to 5 micron. So for about 2 months now I have been using that at a 50/50 mix with diesel. After about 2 weeks the car went a little sluggish so I changed the fuel filter and it was back to 100%. Apparently this is to be expected as the veg oil drags crud from the lining of the tank. It's ran superb since then.

Today I am going to Warrington ( about 40 mins away up the M6 ). We drive there no probs and the landy drives lovely with the usual 50/50 mix. We are then at our friend's house at Warrington for about 2 hours. We set back at 2pm. We get about 5 mins from their house and are on the M62 heading for the M6 and it starts lacking power. I'm thinking it may be time to swap the fuel filter. So we limp off the M6 and I pull over on a quiet lane.

I swap the fuel filter. I then try to prime the fuel filter by unlocking the pin at the top and I start pumping the lift pump lever. Usually after a minute or so pumping there is fuel pouring out of the top pin ... but I'm pumping for ages and no fuel at the top. I unscrew the filter and look inside and there's about 1/4 fuel in. More pumping. No difference. I try cranking the car. The car starts but will only tick over and won't rev. I unscrew filter again and still 1/4 full. My friend comes to me and we go and get a can of diesel.

We take off fuel filter and fill to the top with diesel. With the filter off we try the manual pump lever. Fuel is squirting out of the inlet pipe to the filter ( not sure whether it is as strong as it normally would be ). We refit full filter. We undo top pin and try pump lever and after a couple of pumps fuel is now coming out of top pin. So top pin tightened. I start car. Car starts fine and will now rev. I rev car for half a minute or so and all seems well ... and then it goes back to just tickover.

It now goes dark and it's getting colder. Friends car said 5 degrees.

I then decide to check sediment filter. I undo the screw underneath and just a trickle of water runs out then nothing. Should fuel be flooding out here?

We try start car again and it starts but just ticks over. Then it finally starts to splutter and then dies. There's still 20 litres of 50/50 diesel veg oil in tank. Now won't start until battery dies.

At this point we abandoned ship as it was pitch black and cold. My friend drives us back to Stoke. So the Landy is now stuck just off the M6 near Warrington. I'm in Stoke.

So tomorrow I have to try and get there and try and get it going and get it home.

So ...

What do you think? ~Is it likely to be anything to do with the veggie oil? Or is it a lift pump problem? Or sedimentor blocked? Or what?

With fuel filled in the filter it started and ran perfectly for a while so I'm thinking everything from the fuel filter onwards is ok ( injector pump etc ).
 
So just go back tomorrow and try and get as much normal diesel in as poss? I may have to hire a car to go up and take my tools and some diesel cans. I wondered if I should take a lift pump in case it's that? I'll have to jump it anyway as battery dead.

Don't suppose there are any friendly Landy men in Warrington.:D
 
I had the same problem a couple of weeks back and I run on mainly wvo, it could be the system is getting gunged up with glycerine (byproduct of burning veg) I had to remove & clean the fuel sender, clean the pipes on top of the sender, clean the sedimenter and change the fuel filter and this sorted it.

One thing I will say is that I filter my oil to 1 micron and this still happened to me, personally I wouldn't trust anyone selling "filtered" wvo as you don't know how careful they've been with it.
 
I had the same problem a couple of weeks back and I run on mainly wvo, it could be the system is getting gunged up with glycerine (byproduct of burning veg) I had to remove & clean the fuel sender, clean the pipes on top of the sender, clean the sedimenter and change the fuel filter and this sorted it.

One thing I will say is that I filter my oil to 1 micron and this still happened to me, personally I wouldn't trust anyone selling "filtered" wvo as you don't know how careful they've been with it.

Many thanks

Any details of remove and clean fuel sender, pipes, sedimentor please?
 
Many thanks

Any details of remove and clean fuel sender, pipes, sedimentor please?

Sedimenter.........11mm ring spanner on top of bowl, remove and clean. Easy as it sounds.

this is about all you'll want to do at the side of the road, do this, chuck in some diesel and some redex if you've got any and get home before doing owt else.
 
Filtered WVO could be anything from rapeseed oil which stays quite liquid in cold temperatures to palm oil and animal fats from whatever was cooked in it so in these temperatures even with a mix of 50/50 with diesel you could have lumps of fat clogging up your fuel system. I believe the lift pump is also quite week and could be killed by thick fuel so would check there to.

Glycerine is not a by-product of burning WVO it is the by-product produced when making bio-diesel and should not be in WVO unless your supplier also makes bio and dumped his glycerine in the wrong tank.

if you are running on WVO or Biodiesel it is a good idea to have a sample of your fuel in a jar left outside so you can see what the cold is doing to the fuel in your tank. As it is a small sample it will cool down much quicker than the large quantity of fuel in your tank and give you a bit of early warning if your fuel is going to start getting a bit thick and cause you problems.
 
Its not clear from your post whether you're using any heating for the fuel system - my guess would be that the sudden drop in temp over recent days may have caused your wvo to gel or solidify.
 
Thanks guys.

Just been to landranger in fenton. Guy there said that he doubted it was the lift pump as the lift pump was pumping on manual lever even if not enough. He said it's fuel starvation to lift pump.

Lift pumps were 60 quid from there so didn't want to buy one of those if it's not the problem.

I'll go a run to the car in a min. I'll put a line of fuel pipe from the input of the lift pump to a can of fresh diesel. If it starts and runs it's obviously not the lift pump and I'll look further back.
 
Back
Top