[Vwdiesel] Veggie oil

[Dave Cook]

I've mentioned it before, but several years ago, I ran veggie oil in my old 1.6 NA-powered cabriolet.  I got oil from the local Chipotle restaurant.  They only fry tortillas for chips, so it was always pretty clean.  I simply filtered the oil to remove the particles, and mixed it 50/50 in the tank.  I would guesstimate the required amount of fuel to fill the tank, add half that value in oil, and drive straight to the filling station to top off with diesel.  (Only live 3 or 4 blocks away, so no big deal.)  I pretty much did this Spring - Fall when the weather was warm enough to not worry about the oil solidifying.


This setup seemed to work just fine, and I put many miles on that car with no problems other than having to replace a couple fuel filters before I normally would have (which i solved by installing a cheapo sacrificial filter before the main filter).

At the time, I always told people that I felt OK with the setup in the old-fashioned diesel engine, but would "never" do it in a TDI with it's closer tolerances and (I assumed, anyway) more expensive parts.


I eventually sold the car and stopped picking up the oil from Chipotle.


Fast forward to now.

I currently drive an '02 Golf TDI.  I was in the restaurant recently and the manager asked about the diesel cars and mentioned that nobody is taking their oil, so it is available.

That in mind, I'm starting to wonder about doing the same thing I did before-just mixing some percentage of oil with the diesel fuel in the warmer months.  I am not interested in all the work of doing a full dual fuel system and collecting the amount of oil necessary to make that worthwhile.  The amount I'd get from Chipotle is pretty manageable and as a percentage would work out about right.

 
So, if it worked in the old car, is it safe to assume it would work in the newer car?  Am I being too paranoid about damaging something?  

Thoughts?


Dave Cook