Lack of grunt with Biodiesel.

[Thod]

Hi Everyone,

I'm fairly new on these pages and have spent quite a long time reading up all the veggie oil posts.
After deciding that i really wasn't sure what I was doing at the moment and what I would need to do to my surf to use veggie oil straight from Aldi, i decided to start using Biodeisel that one of my local garages sell for 89p a litre from the pump.

I've been using it now for about 2 weeks and love the chip smell that I make and the eco friendly fumes. Within the first week of using it I started to notice a drop in power which i attributed to my fuel filter starting to get clogged up due the biodiesel cleaning out my fuel system. I've replaced my fuel filter and did notice an improvement.

The thing is this, last night I got caught short running out of fuel and had to put some dino diesel in from a shell garage. The power and grunt that I had experienced when I first got my surf had returned and was by far more powerful than it was when I was running on the biodiesel.

Anyone have any idea why this is?
Is it a simple case of the biodiesel that I'm buying from this garage is just $$$$?

[Morr]

You can generally expect a slight drop in power when running on either biodiesel or svo, but it should be very slight (max of around 5%) and goes unnoticed by most users.
If you seem to be experiencing a greater drop than this, it may well point towards a low quality fuel.
Be aware that in the UK there are a number of suppliers who sell biodiesel made by proprietary processes, and not by the tried and tested transesterification methods. In such cases they will usually not reveal what their alternative (and no doubt cheaper) methods are, and so you have no idea of the content or quality of the fuel thus supplied.

[Thod]

Cheers Morr,

I kinda guessed that the fuel might not be up to scratch but just wanted bounce the idea off someone. I can see my wifes eyes glaze over when i bring the subject up.

Would adding something like redex help this rubbish biodiesel work better?
Or am i best just giving this fuel a wide birth?

[Morr]

Redex will help clean your fuel system, which will certainly do no harm, but it's not going to help improve the quality of any fuel.
It may just be a bad batch of fuel from the supplier and not necessarily indicative of their normal supply. Have a talk with them to see how its made, maybe another fill-up may be OK, but if it continues to offer noticeable poorer performance I would personally avoid it, especially as you may find it works out just as cheap to tun a svo/diesel mix without any noticeable drop in power.
I know you've mentioned already having read up on using svo, but in case you've missed it the main post is here, and you can also find the details on my site here.