Does Synthetic oil burn as well as regular used motor oil? has anyone tried this? And what kind of mix ratio? Does regular WMO burn as well as straight diesel with no side effects? no power losses?
My engine took about 600 hrs to break in. There is no more drooling black slobber our of the tail pipe and muffler seams and threads on the exhaust manifold. Also the coolant level is finnally starting to stabilize. No more adding water/ glycol. I was thinking of running synthetic SAE 30 for longer oil change durations but if I can't burn it after it's lube duty, I will stick to standard SAE 30. Also what kind of fuel preheat temps should a person have for WMO mixes? Does it gum up the injector pump or injector at all?
Thanks for your reply,
I've been running a 75% WMO / 25% #2 fuel oil mix in a 495 diesel with an ST-20 head. I've got about 1000 hours on it with good results. I'm putting together a listeroid now to run on the same mix. I can't tell you how well it's going to work on the listeroid, but I can tell you that it works great on the 495 engine.
I personally haven't run synthetic, but a friend of mine services waste oil burners and he tells me that the stuff just won't burn right in the waste oil burners. It's probably best just to avoid synthetic alltogether. If you get a little bit in a batch of regular WMO, don't worry about it, but don't go pump out a whole tank of synthetic and bring it home for fuel or you'll be dissapointed with the results.
WMO mix really likes to be heated. It seems the hotter you preheat the WMO, the better it works. I use a stainless steel plate type heat exchanger to preheat the mix with engine coolant before it enters my prefilters. I use a general oil filter (felt type oil burner filter) as a first stage. Then I use a 10 micron Garber spin on oil burner filter as a second stage. I put a restriction indicator guage on the Garber filter so it monitors restriction in the first and second stages.
Once it leaves the prefilters, the mix passes through the stock fuel filters on the 495 engine. I added a Carlin nozzle line preheater to each of the injector lines to reheat the mix just before it enters the injectors.
When the fuel comes out of the tank, it goes through a 3 way solenoid valve so I can select straight #2 or WMO mix. This is right before the plate type heat exchanger. I start the engine on straight #2 fuel oil, place a load on the generator, and run it until the coolant temp reaches 70C. Once it reaches temp in about 10 or 15 minutes, I switch to WMO mix. A half hour before shutdown, I'll switch it back to #2 fuel oil and let it flush the system so it starts easily the next time.
When WMO mix is burning properly and the engine is up to temp, there should be no visible smoke. If you get smoke, you're going to crap up an injector. It's not the end of the world to have to pull and clean an injector, but the best way to deal with it is to adjust your setup so that you're not making smoke in the first place. Direct injection engines are more prone to problems crapping things up than are indirect injection engines.
My 495 is indirect injection. I tried this on a Changfa 1115 with a direct injection setup. It wasn't happy. It would run good for a few days and then start smoking very lightly. Within the next day or two the smoke would increase. I'd pull the injector, clean it, and run again. I always had to keep cleaning the injector. I tried different mixes, water injection, additives, nothing improved it. With the 495 and it's indirect injection, I don't have that problem.
This genset has a microcontroller on it that monitors oil pressure, temps, current, voltage, frequency, etc. If anything runs out of it's operating window, it opens the main contactor and shuts down the engine. I've had it shut down unexpectedly and leave the fuel system full of WMO mix. I came home 8 hours later and found it this way. I've found that even in cold temps (+15F), that a little spritz of ether while cranking it will get it started cold on the WMO mix. It'll smoke pretty heavily until it warms back up and I leave it on #2 fuel oil for at least an hour when this happens to clean out the fuel system, but I've not had to purge the fuel system, ever.
I've had no problems gumming up the injector pump. I did have to pull and clean my injectors once a couple of days into testing it with straight WMO (no mix). That's not a big deal. It takes about an hour and a half to pull, clean, and reinstall them.