Buying a surf and running on veg oil

[Ludford]

I'm looking at getting a 3.0 surf as it was recommended to me by a veg oil conversion company as a car that takes well to running on veg oil.

I currently have a Subaru Impreza that is bleeding me dry because I have to put £45 a week in it to drive to work so it's costing me £2340 in fuel a year.

I was thinking about getting an offroader anyway for offroading and that's when I came up with this idea to get an offroader and cheap commuter car at the same time.

When doing my economic feasibility calculations I got the following:

Assume to be safe a Surf gets 16mpg (14.1l per 100km).
I drive 7098km a year.
And lets assume diesel is £1.45 a litre

((7098/100)*14.1)*1.45 = £1351.18 fuel bill per year running a surf on diesel.

Now I've been told that fresh oil when bulk bought from a cash and carry is around 50p a litre. So the fuel bill would be around £500.40 a year.

Used oil is 20p a litre which would be £200.16 a year. With a £200 initial start up cost for the rig to filter the used oil and dewater it.

Cost of cooking oil conversion is £1300. So it looks on paper that I'd get back the money in almost 1 year. Although in practice the price of the Surf and conversion will be covered by the selling of the Impreza.

Does this maths look right?

And anyone have any experience running on veg oil? If I have to keep replacing parts because the oil wrecks the engine, it's gonna be a false economy.

[Koi]

This should you going for a while and a quick use of the search button will keep you in reading material for a few days


http://www.hiluxsurf.co.uk/showthread.php?t=55767

[Wolfracer]

If you can get fresh veg oil for 50p a litre then you are a better man than most.... try £1.00 for your calcs.... veg oil prices aint what they used to be.

[JD_975]

I'd have a third, forth and fifth gear fitted to the impreza, take off that stupid thing that makes you constantly accelerate and back off so it goes tsssshhhh and fix the fuel leaks.

That should easily see it average better mpg than a Surf

[animal]

as wolfracer said .... wholesale veg oil is about £1 a litre now ,
and we have a subaru too which is about as economical as both surfs so tbh your not going to be much better off even if running on vege oil

[slobodan]

On the plus side.

You will attract more wimmins in a Surf.

[animal]

plus your calculations are all wrong...
if your surf was doing 16mpg , and you did 7098km (4437 miles(1.6kms in a mile)) and diesel is £1.45 per litre it will actually cost you £1807 per year.

so if you run on vege oil at £1 per litre it will cost you £1246.50p to do 7098km

going by your calculations it works out that if its costing you £2340 in your subaru to do 7098km , your subaru is doing less than 10mpg. so you either have a verrry verry heavy right foot, a verry verry highly fuelled tuned subaru, or your subaru needs a service desperately (our subaru does 25mpg and its not standard)

hope that helps

[Ludford]

plus your calculations are all wrong...
if your surf was doing 16mpg , and you did 7098km (4437 miles(1.6kms in a mile)) and diesel is £1.45 per litre it will actually cost you £1807 per year.

so if you run on vege oil at £1 per litre it will cost you £1246.50p to do 7098km

going by your calculations it works out that if its costing you £2340 in your subaru to do 7098km , your subaru is doing less than 10mpg. so you either have a verrry verry heavy right foot, a verry verry highly fuelled tuned subaru, or your subaru needs a service desperately (our subaru does 25mpg and its not standard)

hope that helps

Turned to 320hp and I redline it all day every day so mystery solved

[animal]

heres how to work it out
16mpg is 25.6kmpg
7098kms will therefore take 277gallons
thers 4.5 litres in a gallon so multiply the 277 by 4.5 = 1246.5 litres to travel 7098kms @16mpg

so if diesel is £1.45 per litre you multiply the 1246.5 by 1.45
if vege oil is £1 per litre you multiply the 1246.5 by 1

and you get £1807 in diesel or £1246.50p in vege oil

[animal]

Turned to 320hp and I redline it all day every day so mystery solved

lol, yeah that wont help

but also my 3.0l manual surf when driven sensibly is doing 27.3 mpg and the jacked up 3.0l auto i own is somewhere over 20mpg

[stevehulluk]

Turned to 320hp and I redline it all day every day so mystery solved

Glad you don't live near my house, my kids on the street mmmmmm it wouldn't be fuel bills you'd be worrying about, It would be funeral costs! Heavy foot driving a 2 ton truck, go Eco mate and buy a push bike or take the bus. At least our kids will be safer, just a thought

[BUSHWHACKER]

Turned to 320hp and I redline it all day every day........

[HONEST AL]

glad you don't live near my house, my kids on the street mmmmmm it wouldn't be fuel bills you'd be worrying about, it would be funeral costs! Heavy foot driving a 2 ton truck, go eco mate and buy a push bike or take the bus. At least our kids will be safer, just a thought

ditto

[HONEST AL]

On the plus side.

You will attract more wimmins in a Surf.

Have you got wimmins in Serbia John ?????

Often wondered what them things in lumpy jumpers are?

[terratology]

[QUOTE=


Cost of cooking oil conversion is £1300. So it looks on paper that I'd get back the money in almost 1 year. Although in practice the price of the Surf and conversion will be covered by the selling of the Impreza.

Does this maths look right?

And anyone have any experience running on veg oil? If I have to keep replacing parts because the oil wrecks the engine, it's gonna be a false economy.[/QUOTE]

Who's going to convert it for £1300? Surfs don't need converting, whack 100% veg oil in the summer and in winter add 10% petrol to thin it out a bit. Running on wvo is ok if you can find a supply of good clean stuff. But even then you'll loose about 2-3l due to gunk and whites in the bottom, for more info on it check out http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/forum/index.php