3 tank system

[canolafunola]

Anyone running WVO with a 3 tank system? I'm thinking of doing this in my conversion.

The diesel tank is left alone. There will be 2 VO tanks, A 1 to 2 gal (max) coolant heated tank in the engine bay, fed from a main unheated (by coolant) VO storage tank in the car's interior or trunk..

The idea is to eliminate the long runs of HIH from engine bay to the trunk (which is the hardest part of any conversion, achieve faster startup both summer and winter. The main VO storage tank will be electricly or ambient heated just enough to thin the VO enough for transfer to the VO tank in the engine bay, either by a facet pump or by pressurizing the main storage tank. There will be a fuel level limit switch/ auto shutoff in the engine bay VO tank to make overfilling it not possible.

Of course a 3 tank system is possible only if you have room in the engine bay for a 3rd tank.

Any comments appreciated.

[DieselBurps]

I think the introduction of a 3rd tank would officially qualify it as a Rube Goldberg device! With that said, it sounds like that is what Chris is attempting to eliminate the need with the heated fuel pickup in the tank - putting heat directly where it is desired and not trying to warm up the entire tank.

Get your car up on a lift - that makes running coolant lines much simpler.

[canolafunola]

I'm sorry to say but IMO any DIY conversion or any conversion kits on the market currently is a Rube Goldberg contraption. Just look at the parts used. fittings borrowed from the plumbing industry that are big and bulky, weighs a ton and cost a fortune. Big and bulky HIH and HOH bundles that cannot be easily inspected for leaks. Big and bulky heat exchangers. And when you system is finally installed you are then faced with the uncertainty of the quality of your WVO and whether you have it properly dewatered, how long your IP or engine will last etc etc.

What better example of a Rube Goldberg contraption can you name?

Getting back to the 3 tank system. I know there are people out there who've done it. I'd like to hear of your experiences.

I can see many advantages.

1. You can kiss the HIH and it's complicated fittings bye-bye.

2. You are heating only 1 to 2 gallons so your intank heat exchanger can be small and your coolant lines are short since it will be within the engine bay. You won't need the heated pickup or baffles as you'd need in a big heated tank.

3. If the running VO tank is plumbed to sit higher than the heated filter, you can gravity feed from the VO tank. No more problems with drainback or air bubbles.

4. You have a lot of flexibility with your main VO tank. You'll just need one small 1/4" i.d. feed line to keep the heated tank topped up.

[DieselBurps]

What better example of a Rube Goldberg contraption can you name?

All of the above - plus another tank, more lines, more hoses, more connectors, an additional pump - or gravity feed...

I understand what you are attempting to accomplish. I think if you made that 3rd tank a compartment inside the main WVO tank, with conductive metal - so you could heat what you needed and allow the "waste heat" to permeate through the remaining WVO, you'd be getting what you are after. I went with HIH on my Golf and had to deal with some leakage - but the Dodge is running the lower tech (and lower problem) HOH - just to keep some temperature to the lines.

You haven't mentioned what your target vehicle is - that would affect the situation greatly. After setting up my Golf, I now think a better route to have taken would have been to relocate the battery to the rear of the car and mount a tank in its place. I suggested to Chris the idea of embedding his heat exchanger (or maybe a flat plate exchanger) into/onto a tank mounted in place of the airbox/battery in a TDI. Squeezing a filter onto the side of it should be easy enough. He mentioned something about the weight and balance - but by relocating the battery, much of that argument is moot. A small 5-6 gallon capacity would be plenty - and the plumbing would be about as easy as you are hoping for.

Tank capacity wouldn't be the greatest - but 5 gallons on a TDI should be good for ~200 miles or more. My 8 gallon tank is a little bigger, but I still often carry extra 5 gallon gas cans for refilling - that wouldn't change.

Consider a possible variation on your idea - with a small underhood tank and a feed line to the trunk where a 5 gallon gas can and an electric pump sit. You'd still have to make sure the gas can wasn't frozen solid - but it would be a simplistic version of what you are discussing and probably pretty functional on a smaller application. You could swap out the 5 gallon cans easily enough, and load them into the car on cold days after storing them in a heated room. The same battery relocation idea could work for a number of vehicles. I'm not sure a large diesel would make for a worthwhile installation - but a Benz or a VW would be practical. Hell - you are starting to talk me into it...

[cgoodwin]

1. You can kiss the HIH and it's complicated fittings bye-bye.

If a simple compression fitting is complicated, then changing a lightbulb is beyond the scope of your skill.

2. You are heating only 1 to 2 gallons so your intank heat exchanger can be small and your coolant lines are short since it will be within the engine bay. You won't need the heated pickup or baffles as you'd need in a big heated tank.

Tanks need baffels to prevent fuel from sloshing away from the pickup and to prevent 60lbs of fuel from shifting position. You loose the heat exchange in the fuel lines and you still need a heat exchanger in the tank or the fuel will be too thick to be drawn at all or at least without loading the IP.

3. If the running VO tank is plumbed to sit higher than the heated filter, you can gravity feed from the VO tank. No more problems with drainback or air bubbles.

Now you have a tank on the roof? Heating that in winter will be fun, how about a hopper filled with cubes of butter and a meat grinder and conveyor belt assembly to get it to the engine compartment? Air leaks are not due to having to pull the fuel in they are due to the nature of the fuel system, most mercedes will pour most of the fuel from the tank if you disconnect the line in the engine compartment, so they are already "Gravity feed" the problem is that the fuel is drawn in pulses and no matter what the fluid is the flux in vacuum will leak air if you ahve an air leak.

4. You have a lot of flexibility with your main VO tank. You'll just need one small 1/4" i.d. feed line to keep the heated tank topped up.

And an additional pump to fill it with unheated VO the consistency of butter, maybe a screwdrive system to get it from the cold tank. A level indicator which will shut off the transfer pump when the main tank is full, fuses on these systems additional wiring and any other method you can dream up to go around three sides of a box.

You eliminate a single tank with a heat exchanger and heated lines and repalce it with two tanks, smaller heat exchanger, transfer pump, level switch, plumbing between the tanks, no heated lines and want to fit all this into the engine compartment but have it higher than the engine....I hope you wll be using he smaller, better, cheaper, stainless valves.

[thtguy]

Come on Chris..

All that has to be easier than slipping a fuel line into a heater hose and then making sure your compression fittings are tight.

but all jokes aside... I don't understand why people always talk about problems with HIH and leaks and all that... I have had one leak where coolant was dripping out of a compression fitting. I don't understand how anyone can have a fuel leak and blame it on the HIH. are people trying to connect shorter lengths of fuel line together inside the HIH? just use continuous length of fuel line and continuous lengths of coolant line and the only leaks should be minor.

[dana linscott]

I suppose I have a 3 tank system.

One tank for diesel.

One tank for cold vo.

And one tank for hot VO inside the cold vo tank. :D
I call it a heated VO pickup and it holds about 1/2 oz of vo which is constantly replaced as it is used by the engine.

The excess heat from the "third tank" escapes to the cold (sometimes solid) vo surrounding it and liquifies it.

This means that I can simply use HOH lines to get my warmed vo to the filter.
Wait..that is a fourth tank. :eek:

It is all in how you look at it I suppose.

--------------------------
I have found that whenever I have a "good idea" I think about it more.
It either goes away or gets better.

[vegipete]

You could argue that a carbureted engine is a two-tank system. The float chamber is a (small) tank under the hood that is fed from the second (large) tank elsewhere in the vehicle, with a valving system to prevent over-filling.

No reason you couldn't do the same with the VO delivery, EXCEPT for the issue of actually being able to move cold, potentially stiff oil through the plumbing. In really cold conditions, a conveyor, such as railway steam engines used for feeding coal, might be required to get the blocks of fat to the melting pot.

[canolafunola]

"If a simple compression fitting is complicated, then changing a lightbulb is beyond the scope of your skill."

Chris, pesonal insults not necessary. You must still be bitter that I bought the GC valves. There are quite a few owners of greasecar kits who installed it themeselve sometime ago and cannot figure out what parts they need to make a HIH setup. Take someone who is not familiar with pipe thread conventions and all the different fittings, a HIH setup can be very complicated. It took me sometime to figure out without seeing the parts first hand. In case you are not aware, there are always questions from newbies on how to make a HIH setup on these forums.


"Tanks need baffels to prevent fuel from sloshing away from the pickup and to prevent 60lbs of fuel from shifting position. You loose the heat exchange in the fuel lines and you still need a heat exchanger in the tank or the fuel will be too thick to be drawn at all or at least without loading the IP."

Baffles are needed in a big tank, not in a small one gallon 3rd tank. The main feed tank will need light duty heating only, not coolant heating for sure which makes life much easier. My car gets 30 mpg. i.e fuel consumption is 2 gal per hour at 60 mph. I will need to replenish the 3rd tank at the rate of not more than 2 gal per hour at 60 mph. At such a slow flow rate, I can use a small elec heated pickup (less than 50w) to melt just enough VO to 70 F so it will flow. The feedline is so small in diameter I can run it through the interior where is is ambiently heated. Running wires and a small elec heater to the feed tank and a single 1/4" i.d feed line is easy compared to running a HIH VO line, an in-tank heat exchanger, a heated pickup, and a VO return to tank line. With a 3 tank system, all I need to do is keep the 3 rd tank topped up slowly. All VO heating is done in the engine compartment, where the source of the heat is.


"And an additional pump to fill it with unheated VO the consistency of butter, maybe a screwdrive system to get it from the cold tank. A level indicator which will shut off the transfer pump when the main tank is full, fuses on these systems additional wiring and any other method you can dream up to go around three sides of a box."

See above

"You eliminate a single tank with a heat exchanger and heated lines and repalce it with two tanks, smaller heat exchanger, transfer pump, level switch, plumbing between the tanks, no heated lines and want to fit all this into the engine compartment but have it higher than the engine....I hope you wll be using he smaller, better, cheaper, stainless valves.[/QUOTE]"

Yes, yes and yes. I am going to do it. Will post results. How did you guess I will be using the be the smaller, better, cheaper, stainless valves? :)

[cgoodwin]

Yawn...

"If a simple compression fitting is complicated, then changing a lightbulb is beyond the scope of your skill."

Chris, pesonal insults not necessary. You must still be bitter that I bought the GC valves. There are quite a few owners of greasecar kits who installed it themeselve sometime ago and cannot figure out what parts they need to make a HIH setup. Take someone who is not familiar with pipe thread conventions and all the different fittings, a HIH setup can be very complicated. It took me sometime to figure out without seeing the parts first hand. In case you are not aware, there are always questions from newbies on how to make a HIH setup on these forums.

I did not make a personal insult, I said that if the "use", not "complete understanding of all available parts", of a compression fitting.....
Thank you for telling me about forums on this subject...perhaps that is why I have taken hundreds of hours to diagram even the simplest systems and post them including the HIH set-up when no one else had bothered to do so.
As for a personal insult: You are a git. You drivel on and on about things you have not tried as though it is something you have actually researched and done, you overcomplicate things to seem original yet bring nothing new to the table and waste my time with rants like this. As for you buying other components, please buy all your components from someone else, mine come in packaging sealed with tape and I simply do not have the time to explain to you how to open the packages.


Baffles are needed in a big tank, not in a small one gallon 3rd tank. The main feed tank will need light duty heating only, not coolant heating for sure which makes life much easier. My car gets 30 mpg. i.e fuel consumption is 2 gal per hour at 60 mph. I will need to replenish the 3rd tank at the rate of not more than 2 gal per hour at 60 mph. At such a slow flow rate, I can use a small elec heated pickup (less than 50w) to melt just enough VO to 70 F so it will flow. The feedline is so small in diameter I can run it through the interior where is is ambiently heated. Running wires and a small elec heater to the feed tank and a single 1/4" i.d feed line is easy compared to running a HIH VO line, an in-tank heat exchanger, a heated pickup, and a VO return to tank line. With a 3 tank system, all I need to do is keep the 3 rd tank topped up slowly. All VO heating is done in the engine compartment, where the source of the heat is.

You may only use 2 gallons per hour but the system flows many times this volume. How are you going to build the 50W electric heated pickup? Now you need to wire it up and deal with the switching and drain on your system, and all this to warm the VO to "70F so it will flow" through a "1/4" ID fuel line" pushed by an additional pump which will need to be switched and level monitored, through the interior.... Well I hope all this small unheated line running throught all these unheated components are in a vehicle in the tropics, otherwise you are going to have some issues when it is cold out. And as for "All VO heating is done in the engine compartment, where the source of the heat is" I assume you are reffering to the heating other than the 50W heated pickup and the ambient heat you will have in the tropical cruiser?


Yes, yes and yes. I am going to do it. Will post results. How did you guess I will be using the be the smaller, better, cheaper, stainless valves? :)

Here you sound exactly like my two year-old "Yes, yes and yes. I am going to do it." Well Canola-drivels-on-and-on the check is still waiting for those valves you said should not be much trouble to come up with. Again you are a wealth of babble with no substance. All talk, no pants. Big hat, no cattle. An empty cannon. Blah, blah. blah. Waste of time.

chris

[Grease Lightning]

Thats gotta hurt

[farmboyhull]

christ.

enough already.

david

[DieselBurps]

Nah - someone woke up cranky and then had too much coffee. Hopefully some sleep, a healthy BM and a little Midol and all will be ok again.

Going back to the 3 tank idea again - after hearing about an installation horror story that I anticipate being posted here in the next few days, this makes even more sense from a vendor standpoint. For any vendor to succeed selling WVO burning kits, their kit needs to be reliable AND installable by a monkey with a wrench and a hammer in a reasonable amount of time. Most available conversions have a lot of plumbing and custom work on the installation that works out to a lot of shop time. To the average customer, this is a very bad feature. To the vendor - it sucks as well - the installer ends up making more profit per kit than the vendor. I'm not going to ask any of the vendors what their margins are, but the better the components are, the more they cost - and the less the margin. They all know that already. Some package up as little as they have to and charge as much as they can. Others try for the best setup they can - but have to keep the price competitive. Labor for the install is a much sweeter deal - unless you can crank out a lot of kits quickly. The hard part is to make kits that fit a variety of vehicles and are easy to install.

I've read a lot about people using electricity to heat the VO prior to the IP - but it could be used instead for a heated pickup for a large, rear mounted tank. You end up with a small package under the hood that replaces the battery. It's nice and "generic" and fits into the area that most cars place batteries. Fuel lines, coolant lines - all under the hood, fitting in with only the fuel and coolant connections needed. The "package" could even contain a plate heat exchanger to heat the VO in line as well as supply residual heat to the "2cd tank". The filter would be the only remaining thing to place. Many of the vehicles that need the largest amount of filtration have two batteries - both of which could be remote-mounted and free up more space for a large filter - or tandem smaller filters. The "3rd tank"(s) would fit in the custom location (truck, MB, VW, whatever - all could use different setups here). Plug in the electrically heated fuel pickup, run a single, insulated fuel line through the fuel pump to the front tank (or float bowl - whatever you want to call it) and have it controlled by a float system in the 2cd tank, and you have a decent range on a system that is relatively easy to install. The expensive and hard to install parts are all generic and fit any car. The "custom" work is a secondary setup - and MUCH easier to install than any of the current kits on the market. Even if the capacity of the underhood system only gives a range of 100 miles, it's still useful as is for many daily commutes. The cheap supplement would be a few 5 gallon cans of WVO stored in the vehicle for refills - the better solution would be the full sized, remote mounted, self-pumping tank.

After listening to this last horror story (the one to be posted soon) as well as seeing postings from other people that have had their various kits professionally installed by non-vendor shops - I'm more convinced than ever that the top of the line kit will be more of a pre-packaged box with fittings for fuel, coolant and a wiring harness that plugs in to gauges that mount on (or in) the dash. The wrench-monkey can then move a few things around under the hood (mostly just the battery) and have a working grease system quickly. Additional capacity can be ordered up with the 3rd tank and custom made for the vehicle type.

Don't anyone be offended by the term wrench-monkey - I am referring to low-skilled mechanical labor such as myself or most others on this forum. This has no relationship at all to the $90+/hour skillsets that some places charge! And "wrench-monkey" is a vast improvement over anyone that cannot do their own install, or design their own WVO system.

Any feedback from vendors, current WVO burners and WVO-wannabees? Shoot the idea full of holes if you can, but be realistic as well - the concept has a lot of advantages over all other systems that are commercially available. This system doesn't exist - but it would seem that something like it could be a better approach to a vendor building a quality system that allows them to make a profit - and possibly more of a margin than the installers! From the numbers I've heard, the installers are making a minimum of $1k per kit (all from labor), while the vendors probably clear about 1/2 the cost of the kit after parts costs - minus all additional overhead. Much less if they fabricate a lot of their own parts.