Used Fryer Oil in Tractors for fuel

Don't let anyone tell you to use used fryer oil in your diesel tractor at a ratio of 1:1 or any other ratio for that matter. Big mistake. We got some and put it in everything on the farm. BTW, not my idea. It was FREE, ha ha. We were told that if you mix it with regular deisel there was no problem. That was in early May, and everything seemed ok except for the smell. Things began to go south in July. One fuel pump had to be replaced, all the fuel filters have had to be replaced, fuel tanks drained and cleaned. When we drained the tanks what looked like leaches came out! One tractor was smoking so badly it looked like a steam engine was baling the hay. I know some people use this stuff but before you do, find out everything there is to know about it and after that be very cautious. It can get very expensive very fast.

I've heard of a conversion kit where you keep separate tanks and switch from diesel to used fryer oil after the motor warms up. haven't heard of mixing before. Thanks for the warning!

I know a Houston firefighter who has been processing used cooking oil since 2005 and using it in his 2002 Chevy Duramax. He uses a process to make it like diesel and filters it. It is all he has used in it for 4 years with no ill effects.

haymaker421, that's their own fault for not doing the homework before dumping bad cooking oil into an expensive engine.

You can't just dump it straight out of the fryer into the fuel tank. At the very least, the oil needs to be filtered MULTIPLE times before it should be put anywhere near an engine. It's got all kinds of hard-cooked food particles in it that are like sand, and will tear up fuel pumps.

If you want to dump it straight into the tank you need to process it into bioidiesel by mixing it with a solution of methanol and lye. The methanol and lye cause the glycerine, the goopy stuff that clogged your fuel filter along with the larger fuel particles.

If you don't want to make it into biodiesel, you need a second waste vegetable oil fuel system on the tractor. It's a separate tank that uses engine heat to warm the oil and make it thinner so it will pump, plus several filters that remove the sludge and food particles.

Don't badmouth biodiesel and waste vegetable oil power because your family/employer/whoever COMPLETELY IGNORED all the information on how to do it correctly, and just dumped the dirtiest crap they could find in the fuel tank. The original diesel engine ran on vegetable oil, and modern diesels will too as long as it's clean and done correctly.

One point of clarification, if the oil is not processed into biodesiel, it is still chemically attached to the fatty acid chains. Running it through a filter does not separate the glycerin and leave it behind. The filters are probably still being clogged by other componets of poorly filter old cooking oil.

I forgot to add:

You can't just use any old cooking oil either. If it's been in the fryer too long (burned), or is too dirty, it can't be used no matter what.

When I was at the vocational school, a fellow by the name of Marty Hanka came by and showed us his VW TDI that he ran on veg oil. First thing, he had a separate tank for the veg oil. Second, the oil was filtered six ways from Sunday to get all the cooking residue out of the oil before being put in the separate tank. Third, the veg oil was HEATED with engine coolant via a coil in the tank, and the veg oil was not switched into the engine before the coolant [and the veg oil] was up to operating temperature. And fourth, the system was always switched back to diesel before shutdown.

I'd suggest that any of the four points I listed might have contributed to the failures of your veg oil setup.

Anyone who wants to use the cooking oil should go back and read the reply from mkirsch above. PROCESS IT INTO BIODIESEL FIRST!!! It will work fine, but only if processed first and it is not difficult or expensive to do so.

One advantage that he has is that he lives in Houston, where it is warm a good majority of the year. In colder areas, that stuff turns into the consistency of lard.

There is an entirely different reason to not use this. Cooking oils and anything with animal flat has ammino acids that can break down rubber compounds and do all sorts of bad things. Filtering won't do it. This isn't a theory or second hand info from my neighbor "Billy-Bob" the ex-mechanic. I work for the largest fluid power manufacturing company in the world and deal with issues like this all the time. Anytime we deal with food grade applications it changes the rubber compounds we use.

Oh I take as much blame for this mess as the guy who put it in there in the first place. All I'm saying is don't let anyone talk you into doing something like this before you do thew research.