can a td5 reliably run off a certain mix of vege oil or some other sort of oil in with diesel? ive seen a geezer on tiktok named scotty farino and wondered if my disco 2 would take kindly towards it as well, cheers.

 

There is an Expedition that runs off bio diesel, the conversion is pretty common. The last I heard was that getting used oil was not worth the headache. I have seen videos of people using random oils to run diesels and they seemed to run well. make sure you filter it well, but its pretty common.

 

Ok. Story time with grandpa sqlbullet. I didn't post on this before cause I thought someone with more knowledge than me might chime in, but they have had a week, so you get my response.

If you were to plot me on the knowledge chart for this topic, I am in the trough where I know enough to know there is a lot more I would need to know to give great advice. 20 years ago I had just purchased an '87 300TD mercedes wagon with the intention of running it on veggie oil in the summer and DIY biodiesel blended with pump diesel in the winter. I learned how to make small batch bio-diesel (in fact I can still see a pint jar of it over in the corner from where I am sitting right now). I was planning my larger scale production and in the interim I was burning locally sourced commercial B20.

Several things derailed me. First, I was young-ish with a family to take care of and that cut into my hobby time. Second, the biodiesel did a number on the organic rubber o-rings in my fuel system and before I knew it my fuel pump leaked rather badly, and other leaks were starting. And third, the local government started cracking down on veg-oil scavengers that were not licensed due to three or four big spills on the freeway that were expensive to clean up. I ended up selling that car, though I do miss it.

I give you that background to get to this point: If you aren't invested enough to answer your own question via a google search, then veg oil powered vehicles aren't for you. I don't mean any ill-will to you or to those that say it's easy on social media. You don't know what you don't know. And it's easy to overlook how hard something actually is to learn about once you learn about it, which is where the guys on social media are - it's easy to them, but they spent a lot of time learning to make it easy to them.

Based on my limited googling of your question, it appears to me that you probably could run a 50/50 mix of veg and diesel on your TD5. But, it was not designed for that mix, and you might have issues at any concentration - issues that could be expensive to fix. Also, components that may have worked fine with veg oil when they were new are now 20 years old in your truck, and may not deal well with veg oil today.

If you wanna gamble with your truck, that is on you. But if it was beyond your reach to answer this basic question for yourself, I would bet it is far beyond your reach to fix your car yourself if it goes south, and it will not be a cheap fix to pay someone for.

If you wanna learn, then start lurking in the biodiesel and veggie oil fuel corners of the internet. Before you know it you will be that guy that says it's easy. And when you get there, let us know what you learned!