[Vwdiesel] Alcohol in Diesell

[James Hansen]

Well, if you are stuck, your trackhoe sinking in rapidly freezing muck at
-20, the engine sputtering and not having enough power to pull itself out of
the cut because of gelling or freezing fuel lines, alcohol is just fine if
you have an idea that it is water freezing in the tank bottom that is
causing the fuel starvation problem. Alcohol has been long used as a last
ditch thing to save your butt in the cold, but use isopropal alcohol if you
can find it.    I've used it a couple times, no adverse effects, once when I
got a snort of water from a gas station at -40, once a week ago when the
track hoe was freezing and sinking into the cut.  Diesel melt down did
nothing, so it had to be straight water that was the issue.   The hoe is new
so, I have no history of fuel issues or not, and alcohol was really the only
thing to do. Further inspection shows a faulty fuel cap vent, so that most
likely is the culprit.
A friend that has a big truck repair shop in town tells me that back in the
day, in a winter stalled on the road emergency call for a big truck was to
dump in a quart of alcohol in each saddle tank, 5 gal of kerosene into the
tank the pump sucked from, and dump out the primary filter, and top it off
with kerosene.  That was all they had back then.  Now they use a couple
quarts of diesel melt, but take along alcohol just in case, but bear in
mind, the dilution factor- saddle tanks are around 100gal or so.
I don't know what is going on, but this year, fuel is gelling in everything
for everyone.  Last week when it went to -20, there wasn't hardly any diesel
melt left in town.  I know I have some questions for my fuel supplier, b/c
everything I touched last week would not run b/c of fuel gelling issues.
-james

-----Original Message-----
From: vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com [mailto:vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com] On
Behalf Of toensing at wildblue.net
Sent: November-25-10 4:05 AM
To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
Subject: [Vwdiesel] Alcohol in Diesell

Loren, thanks for the warning although I wasn't planning to use. However, I
have read of suggestions of spiking diesel fuel with gasoline in extremely
cold climates to prevent gelling. Since gas now has ethanol added to it in
many states I Would think it advisable to not add gas to diesel. I am also
wondering about using home brew biodiesel since you mix the WVO with
methanol & a small amount of lye to make it. I am wondering if it would be
safer to mix well filtered WVO with diesel on a 50/50 basis in the summer.
What would be a safe mix of WVO & diesel for winter use along with some
Amsoil "Diesel Fuel Modifier" spiked with  Biobar JH (both winter & summer)?

Bill Toensing, Nevada City, CA
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