using cooking oil in a deisel engine

[demi]

i have this really old car thats had its engine changed to a deisel engine from an old renault traffic 89 van. i know this is probably not legal in the uk but im in the republic of macedonia so anything goes here! anyway, we currently dont use the car because the fule is so expencive. iv heard about using old cooking oil from restarunts and iv been having a look on the internet about it. thing is that all the information i can find says you have to convert your engine to 2 tanks, 1 for deisel and one for oil, because in cold weather the oil can solidify so you need to start the engine on deisel first and run it for a while till the engine heats up the oil then you swap over.
this is way to complicated for me, theres no way im doing anything mechanical to the car.

also, for preparing the used oil for use most people seem to have high tech filtering/refining devices built consisting of lots of tanks and tubes and theres heat involved somhow and this, to me, also seems too complicated.

so what i want to know is is there not a simple way of filtering the oil? like by just pouring it through a filter? is it nessesery to heat it up?
we dont use the car that much, it will just be used to take trailer loads of fruit from our orchard to the market which is about a 6 mile round trip, once a week and to get to and from the orchard ( same distance) if its raining or if the kids are comming too. so it will probably do arround 12 miles a week in the summer, and 6 miles a week at the most in the winter.

also iv heard somthing about mixing the oil with deisel, im guessing this stops it solidifying to some extent. but what ratio should the oil be mixed with the deisel?
i just want something that i can pour streight into the normal tank, without having to convert anything. and because we dont use the car that much we'll only be using like 1 liter at a time of fule. is it ok to just fill the tank up by 1 or 2 liters? and can i convert back and forth from oil to deisel, im guessing just by running the tank down till its nearly empty then filling it with deisel/oil? can i run on 100% oil in the summer when the weathers hot and change back to deisel in the winter, or a mix of deisel & oil? if its colder should there be a higher concentration on deisel to oil in the mix?
any advice is much appriciated

[southeast-isher]

Sounds like a great idea - this sounds like something they may be able to help you with over at the Navitron forum.

http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/

[solarwind]

Adding a little petrol will lower the temperature at which the cooking oil will start to wax.

[Silver Ether]

We were using it from a guy who cleans it up in my Ford Scorpio first lot was fine mixed with a little reg derv and the n it went wild second lot was not cleaned properly and we had so much trouble .. would have cots us a fortune if it hadn't been for the old fella being able to deal with it ... not a path I would go down again ....

[niknik]

Never (yet) tried it myself.

You can use clean, unused veg cooking oil, obviously not as cheap as using old oil, but less fraught with problems. I know severl people who have hapily used a 50/50 mix until veg oil became more expensive than diesel!

I understand, that th older the engine/ car ( and therefore simpler) the less chance of problems.

For the short distances you are talking about, it obviously isnt worth investing in any specialisedequipment ( there are "kits" avilable to convert old oil into biodiesel) but quite expensive, and homemade ones can be dangerous due to the various chemicals involved. It could be worth speaking to friends and neighbours though to see if between you, the expense of these kits could be worth while, but there aresome taximplications in some countries.

Might justbe worth using a mix with unused veg cooking oil to see how the car performs., but probably of no use in winter due to the shortdistances, and the carnot having an portunity to warm up!

[Nomada]

I'm pretty sure a car running on it went past me the other day, the vehicle was emitting a lovely chip smell.

No help I'm afraid other than to say that there are lots of people who've tried it on intructables.com;

http://www.instructables.com/