Cheap Diesel

I am lucky enough [?] to drive  a diesel-powered car in the UK. It is not powerful, nor is it a recent model, but it gets me from where I am to where I want to be and back again in comfort.

But it drinks diesel like a fish drinks water, mainly because it is fitted with much smaller tyres than it was originally designed for.

So, last Spring, I decided to supplement pump diesel with the contents of my deep-fat fryer. This gives me about 3 litres of clean fuel every two to three weeks. After I have processed it, I mix it with diesel, depending on the ambient air temperature. In the height of the UK Summer, I got away with a 50/50 mix, but in Spring and Autumn, I drop ot back to 25% bio to 75% pump diesel, and in Winter, I use 100% pump diesel.

This is because bio emulsifies at a relatively high temperature and will clog up the works in a typical UK Winter.

However, this would not be a problem in warmer climes, such as Kenya. So when KCIS eventually gets itself organised enough to actually own a vehicle, we will be getting a diesel, and we will run it on a bio-diesel mix.

If we can find a major source of used cooking oil (just how many fast food outlets are there in Nairobi?), we may be able to produce enough to pass on our excess to the likes of KWS, Rhino Ark, the UN (but not for their petrol-guzzling Hummers) and any other organisations running fuel-hungry diesel 4×4s.

It will be a lot cheaper than pump diesel and performance is not compromised.

Turbo? What Turbo?

2.3 litre, turbo-diesel Surf

I have had another play with my sick Toyota Surf. The symptoms are simple, drive along with a light foot (so the turbo does not kick in) and it goes like a dream. Put your foot down so that the turbo does kick in – and it doesn’t. The car coughs and splutters as it copes with being drowned in its own go-go juice.

I have ascertained before that the turbo and the bypass work correctly, so I stripped off all the pipework between the turbo outlet and plenum chamber. There is a lot of air coming out of the turbo, at very high pressure, so that works.

I stripped off all the pipework from the air filter to the turbo – big suction (whoops! where’s my hand gone!).

Put it all back together and – no turbo.

So, is there a restriction in the air intake at the filter lever or from open air? That is the next question to be answered – when it warms up enough to work on a tonne and a bit of cold metal again.

The car runs well, as long as the driver is very light-footed. And having a non-working turbo is not a case for MoT failure, so I may just get it on the road before the end of the month when the VEL is due on the other old bus.