Cars running on cooking oil

[Ice-Maiden]

If you used cooking oil instead of petrol, wouldn't it eventually damage the vehicle? I was watching a guy do this on Gourmet Cooks in the wild last night, and never really thought of it as an alternative fuel!

[Teddio]

A petrol engine won't run on vegetable oil as it isn't volatile enough and won't vaporise in the cylinders. A diesel engine will run on clean vegetable oil but its use will invalidate the warranty on newer vehicles. People blend vegetable oil with diesel and it doesn't seem to do the engine any damage. It's illegal of course because no duty is paid on the vegetable oil.

[pianoman81]

ive personally seen it used in a diesel car - worked fine on that occasion , never heard of it used in petrol though.

this was 2 or 3 years ago now though, and at the time police were able to check and test the fuel in large lorries, vans etc ,basically their side of looking at it is that people dont pay tax on vegetable oil so its illegal- dont know the situation with it now though...

lol, at empty petrol stations and everyone in tescos buying all the veg oil...

[tali1]

veg oil is now allowed with mileage restrictions- and it isn;t as good as it seems as it will clog up the filters

[zig_zag]

dont it stink?
like following a gypos barbie lmao

[JonD]

As stated a spark ignition (petrol) engine will not run on vegetable oil but SOME compression ignition (diesel or should that be "diesel"!) engines will. The SOME statement is that vegetable oil cannot be used on direct injection diesel engines, so over time the usage of vegetable oil will become less so.

The usage of vegetable oil without paying duty is a grey area. The law states that up to 2500 litres a year can be produced without the need to - the implication being that it can also be used without paying duty.

Many of my colleagues run their diesel vehicles on brand-new vegetable oil but most blend with diesel - mainly for cold-starts. They recommend up to 50% mix in winter down to 20% in Summer.

The Channel 5 television programme "Fifth gear" have run an old Merc quite successfully on filtered used vegetable-oil from fast-food outlets also.

[Ice-Maiden]

Thank you everyone!