Biodiesel - Will it hurt my engine?

[Music] all right [Music] [Music] morning grandpa Ron here and today we're going to talk about diesel fuel both the petrol diesel and the biodiesel and some things you want to know about it especially if you're new to having diesels it's definitely not the same as gasoline this is regular diesel it's not biodiesel anything and you can see it's almost a yellowish color by Aldi so is a slightly more honey colored or a little bit darker so anyway yeah diesel smells not only does it smell but it doesn't evaporate so if you get this stuff on your hands yeah you got to wash it off cuz it's not gonna go away by itself now I got my gloves on now we can handle this one of the things you may have heard about diesels is in the winter and they have troubles with the fuel turning into a gel or a solid and they won't run well let's make a test put some diesel refrigerator in the freezer and see what happens [Music] still looks good and the freezer for a few hours now yeah summer blend oh yeah you know some stuff in there isn't there yeah I can see it swirling around that's the wax that plugs up a fuel filter okay so it gets cloudy when it is cold what does that mean in most states they blend the diesel fuel to work under the expected low temperatures what that cloudiness is is some of the paraffin wax in it is starting to stick together and it can plug up your fuel filter but otherwise when it warms up it goes back into a liquid because the wax is actually good for your engine it has a little bit of Lube Rissa T to it and has a high energy content so it's fine just don't get it cold now the question you may have is is diesel actually safe safe to transport is it hazardous well no it's actually pretty safe stuff diesel has a lot lower vapor pressure than gasoline and the flashpoint is like 125 degrees so anyway if you spill some on the ground a match doesn't really light it up so it's not flammable in that case it has to get pretty hot for diesel to burn of course when it does burn it burns very hot you can actually put a match to it and it will extinguish the match had the biodiesel what is biodiesel often made from vegetable oils sometimes from restaurants to use cooking oil I also can be made from animal fat but that's not too common about essentially they processed that to convert it into a type of diesel that you can burn in your RV you can tell if you have biodiesel at the pump because they use a B rating B for biodiesel it's either B 2 which is 2% B 5 is 5 percent B xx up to 20% and you're never gonna see it be 100 that's a pure biodiesel but you don't really use that in vehicles or trucks or anything biodiesel is a little bit different than to rig the petrol diesel it's a little heavier a little thicker some of the benefits of biodiesel is it has better lubricity for the injector systems and anything where the fuel passes through so anyway it's a little bit like a much better lubricant type stuff it has no sulfur in it at all so all the diesels not have to be low sulfur so sometimes the refiners will blend in a little biodiesel to help reduce the sulfur content biodiesel also has a higher flashpoint meaning it won't ignite so easily so it makes it a little bit safer frankly I never really saw much difference in fuel economy with the b20 or the Dino fuel as far as the bad characteristics of the biofuel one thing is it can absorb a little more water than the regular petrol diesel and that water can cause a little bit of corrosion and that kind of stuff it's pretty minor but it can happen the other thing is that it'll gel quicker it gets thicker and then it can't get through the fuel filter as well so biodiesel was really not used or sold in the winter in cold climates of like Minnesota November 1st they're gonna switch over to the pure petrol diesel overall biodiesel has pluses and minuses it might be better for the environment if you're into that the main thing to remember about biodiesel is it's not as good in cold weather so you're gonna want to burn up any summer blend that you have before you store it for the winter the other negative things as far as the Mercedes goes is you should change your fuel filter more often because the biodiesel has a tendency to loosen up some of the residue and the fuel lines and you tank from there regular petrol diesel so that might loosen up and get into the fuel filter so Mercedes recommends that you change your fuel filter like twice as often Sadie's rep doesn't recommend idling your engine more than five minutes if you're burning than biodiesel the diesel particulate filter will not regenerate and it could get plugged up a little sooner don't idle don't use it in really cold weather like you know below freezing type stuff otherwise seems to work fine it's not really that big a deal to me yeah this lens has been around for a long time so it's really nothing to worry about you have any questions put in the comments [Music]

Channel: On the Road with Ron

Views: 129,821

Keywords: Diesel fuel, Biodiesel, Winnebago view diesel, Mercedes Biodiesel, Diesel RV, Diesel motorhome, Diesel gelling

Id: 73OJBqLjMNs

Length: 6min 54sec (414 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018