Biodiesel

[weeman_mtb]

I went past a garage this evening that sells biodiesel and I noticed the price was £0.999 a litre. Not bad I thought, then continued on to Morrisons where it was £1.379 a litre, so a bigger difference than I thought. This would save me £19 on a fill up of roughly 50 litres, not to be sniffed at IMO.

Does anyone have any experience of using bio, any problems, etc. If this is going to damage my car in any way then it's obviously a false economy and I'll steer clear.

I drive a 2000 VW Golf 1.9 SDI and as far as I can tell from web searches this should be ok on bio.

TIA for any replies .

 

[rosstheboss]

It's shite, avoid like the plague!

Well, it's not thaaaat bad, but you can't use biodiesel neat - in winter something like 80% diesel 20% bio, vice versa in summer.

Most mechanics I know have a horror story to tell about it - blocked fuel filters being the main one. There's a reason it hasn't taken off! There's a company near our yard who specialise in lpg conversions and alternative fuels, they can't shift the biodiesel they've got in stock for love or money!

 

[weeman_mtb]

Cheers for the reply. I've read that biodiesel has very high solvent properties and hence will clean out all the gunk from the tank, dumping it in the filter. The way to avoid problems is to change the filter after the first couple of tanks of bio. Easy job, but more expense to offset against the saving I suppose and with switching back to regular diesel in the Winter it would have to be done annually.

I'm talking myself out of using the stuff already :? .