Finally got a chance to try Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) in Louie.
I've been waiting until the fuel level was very very low- which is risky here because fuel stations aren't on every corner and running out of fuel with clients in the car is a pretty poor way to impress them. So anyhow, finally got the needle down below E and decided to give the veggie oil a try. It just so happens that we got a bad gallon of olive oil (sat in the sun too long, tasted rancid) so I poured that into the tank and drove off to Santa Cruz, which is 33Km away (about a 30-45 minute drive).
My estimate is that there may have been as much as 3 gallons of diesel left in the tank, so the 1 gal of SVO should have made for around a 25% SVO/Diesel mixture.
I couldn't tell any difference at all in power, but it did seem to smooth out the motor just a little... not sure if that was a placebo effect of just really wanting it to be better in some way.
Regardless, the experiment seems to have worked reasonably well and I'm now looking at doing a 50/50 mix. Just have to get ahold of some more oil- one of the local restaurants has promised to get me 5 or 10 gallons, but so far they keep forgetting to keep it apart.

Labels: landcruiser