Friday, August 26, 2011

Look for simple solution first

My 2003 Jetta had a new injection pump installed and a new timing belt. My friend who did the work took apart the old injection pump and it was rebuilt prior to my buying the car and was rebuilt incorrectly causing it to eventually fail. I got the car running again and then began to have decrease power driving on grease and black smoke from the tailpipe. We looked at all the complicated things like the timing, fuel temp and fuel flow and couldn't discover the problem. Eventually it dawned on me that the car was acting like it was vapor locked and I did install check valves in the system as the valves that control the system leak small amounts of fuel and I was worried about cross contamination. I removed the check valve on the supply line and checked my connections and the car runs great! It is easy to assume a problem is due to something complicated like timing or a bad pump, when in reality it was a $30 part that wasn't critical for the operation of the car.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Transfer Pump

The last piece of the puzzle was to get a good gear pump that I could use to pump my oil form the clean barrel to cars and storage containers. I searched everywhere on the internet and decided on the OP2000F WASTE OIL FILTRATION PUMP from Plant Drive as it was the best value for what I wanted. This pump will work in cold weather and has a filter to protect the pump and give my one last bit of filtration before I add it to my car.
http://www.plantdrive.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=18&products_id=75

My centrifuge project


I now have three cars running on grease, my 2006 Golf, my 2003 Jetta and a 1992 Jetta that I purchased from a friend that had 150,000 miles and was converted to run on grease with a grease car system. I did one modification and added a Vegtherm electric heater from Plantdrive as the grease car system does not have that. So, I need lots of oil! I purchased a centrifuge from Simple Centrifuge and thought that wold do the trick. No more filters and mess. We set it up and it worked great, except we had no way to control the flow of oil to the centrifuge. We tried to set a bucket above the centrifuge with a ball valve, but as the oil fed the centrifuge the pressure decreased and we had to constantly adjust the flow rate. The folks at simple Centrifuge suggested we try a peristaltic pump and sent me one to try out. It worked great and the only problem is you get about 7-8 day run on the tubing before it splits and spills oil all over the floor. To avoid that I set it above my heating barrel and when it splits the oil simply flows into the barrel it came from. I ran it 8 days and produced 150 gallons of clean oil. Pan tested it and no water. Great! So I needed to get a pump. I contacted the distributer of the Mity Flex 913 that I was using provided by Simple Centrifuge and called them. I called Comeau Technique and spoke to Richard Weber. We talked on the phone for 2 hours, he answered all my questions and had a wealth of knowledge about the Mity flex and the proper hose to use in the pump. I post a picture of my set up with centrifuge and the Mity Flex.
http://www.mityflexpump.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=862_864_944&products_id=3148