Yet Another L400 Conversion

[northriver]

Third trip out on vegetable oil ... took the van to Sun Peaks for a day of cross country skiing!
Wanted to see how the diesel engine started after being left cold in the parking lot for a couple of hours.
No problems starting ... barely cranked the starter motor and it fired right up (it was only -3C though). I noticed that if the battery is not fully charged the van does not start well in cold weather, so I have been careful to make sure I do not run the battery down with the engine off.

Installed the hitch that the company Maximum Overdrive sells for the L400. Only problem installing it was working around the WVO fuel tank. Would have been much better off installing the hitch first and the tank second. The fuel filler fitting on my tank (centred on the side of the tank) interferes with the support tab of the hitch that rests on the frame under the van. I had to grind the bushing going into the tank to get everything to fit ... there is enough clearance now but it was a real squeaker. I would offset the filler fitting towards the front of the tank to avoid any problems if I were doing this again.

Have now finished my first tank of WVO ... will need to filter another batch!

[nxski]

Glad to hear it's working out well for you! Those look like Fisher SCS classic ski's would I be correct? How are the snow conditions there?

[northriver]

Glad to hear it's working out well for you! Those look like Fisher SCS classic ski's would I be correct? How are the snow conditions there?

Close ... except they are skate! For this time of year conditions are good ... could use a little more snow on the trails.

[nxski]

Glad to hear it's working out well for you! Those look like Fisher SCS classic ski's would I be correct? How are the snow conditions there?

Close ... except they are skate! For this time of year conditions are good ... could use a little more snow on the trails.

Damn, 10cm above the head...perfect skate length, I should have known! Hopefully the snowfall is like it was last year, I'm going to head up to Cypress tomorrow to do some skate skiing, finally night skiing is open.

[northriver]

I did some initial testing of the WVO ECU today and it worked ... on a breadboard!

The next step will be to move it to the car and try it out in the actual environment. I am going to try and track down a pressure and temperature sender in Kamloops tomorrow.

Details of this project at http://www.darfieldearthship.com/2011/1 ... board.html.

Have done more miles on WVO. The only thing I have noticed is rough idling when on WVO ... is this common?

Chris

[northriver]

Finally, got around to posting pictures and a description of my conversion ...

http://www.darfieldearthship.com/2011/1 ... i-did.html
http://www.darfieldearthship.com/2011/1 ... asics.html

I am still having idling issues on WVO ... it has gotten worse ... the van will stall on WVO while idling now.

I tightened all of the connections thinking there might be an air leak ... that did not seem to do anything although I think it was good to do.

My guess is this has to do with my return; I decided not to loop the return and see if everything would work. It worked fine initially but now the idle issue ... my guess is that as the filter plugs up it is getting too hard for the pump to pull oil (I am at about a 1000 km's now). I am going to loop the return and see if this problem disappears ... I guess my other option would be to replace the filter but I am hoping I can get more life out of a filter.

[Kuan]

That looks great.

If you didn't loop the return, where did you have the return go??
Back to the veg. Tank or the diesel tank?

I'm just going to pick up some fuel line at princess auto. What size fuel line did you use for wvo and diesel?
I was going to buy the 3/8" hose but was wondering what size the send and return diesel lines are out of the IP.

Let us know how it goes with the stalling.

[northriver]

That looks great.

If you didn't loop the return, where did you have the return go??
Back to the veg. Tank or the diesel tank?

I'm just going to pick up some fuel line at princess auto. What size fuel line did you use for wvo and diesel?
I was going to buy the 3/8" hose but was wondering what size the send and return diesel lines are out of the IP.

Let us know how it goes with the stalling.

I originally returned the WVO to the WVO tank. Everything worked fine for about 800 km but then it started idling roughly and then stalling at about 1000 km. I am assuming that as the WVO filter performance lowered due to clogging, the injection pump was not able to keep up. I looped the return today and it is idling fine ... I guess the other solution would have been to install a lift pump at the WVO tank.

I used 3/8" line everywhere except from the WVO tank to the WVO filter ... I ran 1/2" line there. The 1/2" line was to help with moving the oil to the filter without a looped return ... not completely successful!

I believe the line from the diesel tank to the injection pump is all 5/16" and the return line is 1/4". I used a ratchet to slowly tighten my connections and was satisfied with the 3/8" fuel line being clamped to the 1/4" return line. The return line is not a suction line so air in the lines is not as much of an issue here ... you definitely do not want it to leak.

[Kuan]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the info. I bought a roll of 3/8" fuel line and was wondering whether to get adapters for the 1/4" and 5/16" lines but sounds like you made it work with the 3/8" so I may try that too.

Kuan

[northriver]

I wondered about using an adapter on the 1/4" line but the connection seemed good without one.

Chris

[rezdiver]

go to lordco in their brass fitting section, i just did the same thing for my VW fuel lines, they have a male thread with a barbed end 1/4 inch, and a female thread with a barbed end 5/16 inch that just screw together and you have yourself a nice reducer, cost me like 2 or 3 dollars.

[PlantDrive]

Hi all....been a while since I have been on here, nice to see some familiar names still here.
We include plastic reducers in our kits for this purpose...Chris, *if* you are going to go to a looped return instead of return to tank, I would change that fitting, I would not clamp 3/8" down to a smaller 1/4" , it has caused me grief in the past and is a location of an air leak, potentially, even if it looks ok. The hose goes out of round enough it will leak under vacuum in a looped return setup, that air will get trapped in the loop and you could have worse problems, or no better.

Shutdown in winter....should have been good for a restart without a purge after up to half an hour without a problem at around 0 C, so if it was a hard start it may have been a sign that there is an air leak and you had some "drainback" (the fuel drains back toward the tank, because the system is not airtight, and so has to be pulled up to the injection pump again at restart, hence takes longer for engine to fire up)

Incidentally, it should not be a filter issue, typical is we get 5000-8000 km per filter element (Donaldson on VM2, with oil filtered to at least 10 micron ahead of time)
With the new bag filter housing and Pipeline 2.0 pump setup, I am currently at 7000 km on Jetta, and it's running fine, the element showing no signs of getting plugged up at all, full power up long steep grades, etc.

[northriver]

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the input! As you can see ... I'm converted!

... *if* you are going to go to a looped return instead of return to tank, I would change that fitting, I would not clamp 3/8" down to a smaller 1/4" , it has caused me grief in the past and is a location of an air leak, potentially, even if it looks ok. The hose goes out of round enough it will leak under vacuum in a looped return setup, that air will get trapped in the loop and you could have worse problems, or no better.

Originally I did not loop the return and decided to skip the reducers ...without a looped return I think it was fine as the return lines were not linked to the lines feeding the injection pump. I was trying to avoid all of those parts ... I have now inserted the reducing fittings ... it is definitely a much nicer clamp job. I am not reducing the 3/8" line from the valve to the 5/16" fitting where the fuel enters the pump as I am assuming this is close enough in size to effectively clamp together. Does this sound right to you?

Shutdown in winter....

I am not too sure what happened when I tried to re-start on WVO after a short stop ... I only tried it the one time and was not too comfortable trying again after the first experience ... I suspect I will play more with this over time.

[northriver]

We have been on the road now since the 16th of December and we are estimating we have clocked about 6500km on WVO in all sorts of weather from -10 C to about +25 C.

Some more thoughts on the L400 conversion ...

We continue to have a stalling issue at low speeds when on WVO ... typically it happens when we rapidly slow down from highway speed to a stop. This was much more of an issue at colder temperatures (below O C) and not so much at warmer temperatures. I have not had a huge opportunity to look at this on the road but I am getting a better feel for what is happening.

I have noticed that if we go very fast for a long period of time the engine will sometimes splutter on WVO (posted speed on many highways in the States is 70mph and that is the low end of the traffic speed). Switching to oil and then back to WO corrects this.

My feeling is that the above two issues are related to the oil not being moved from the tank to the WVO filter fast enough due to viscosity. I imagine it could also be an air leak in the system ... I am not seeing any issues while on diesel. I am thinking one good change to the system would be the addition of a hotfox heater in the WVO tank and see if this helps.

We got our latest batch of oil from an organic cafe in Key West ... pickup along the way has worked well but finding oil that has already settled is a bit of work!

Generally, the WVO system has worked really well ... I am very happy with how well it has gone so far.

Will add more as I think about it ...

[rezdiver]

I had the same issue on my conversion on my volkswagen (uses the same style injection pump) and noticed that the WVO needs slightly more timing advance to work properly and not stall at idle. I wonder if bumping up the idle screw slightly will get you by.
also adding a larger diameter fuel line all the way from the tank to the filter helped take some stress off the pump sucking the thicker oil. i am using 5/8th fuel line tank to filter and 5/16th from filter to pump.