Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by ksbrandon, Mar 25, 2008.

  1. ksbrandon

    ksbrandon Junior Member

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    Does anyone have experience with a Lister Diesel engie using biodiesel or vegetable oil? Please post a reply or email me if you have had success!

    https://www.lifeunplugged.net
     
  2. Woz

    Woz Junior Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    No direct experience myself, don't got one yet, but I was interested in the same idea some time ago and ended up reading through the forums at https://www.listerengine.com/ There is a wealth of information over there. If I remember correctly, when using alternative oils a certain amount of mineral oil is occasionally required to keep the engine in tip top shape. I am no expert though so take my comments with a pound of salt.

    Woz
     
  3. MonteGoulding

    MonteGoulding Junior Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    Hi

    We have a petteroid which is the same sort of concept but a little smaller and higher rpm engine. It's not up and running as our backup genny yet but we are close. I just got the bracket for my two alternators back from the engineers the other day. They are 70A each so 140 max. I've got to go and buy some heavy cable and lugs then mount the lot and we are all go. Mine's water cooled so I've got a 44 gallon drum and made up some pipes for the hot and cold ends. Anyway, Scotty in Wynyard Tasmania is the go to guy in Aus for these. That's where I got mine. He's an old engine nut and has been importing batches of listeroids and petteroids from india. https://www.historicengine.com.au is his website.

    Cheers

    Monte
     
  4. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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  5. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    https://www.utterpower.com/ is another great site for information about Lister slow speed diesel engines and running them on alternate fuels.
     
  6. ColinJEly

    ColinJEly Junior Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    G'day
    Don't know about Lister's, but a friend of mine told me years ago when they lived on a farm, they had a Ronaldson Tippet.
    When times were tight, which they often were, they would go to the dairy and get some butter fat :?

    Cheers

    Col.
     
  7. ksbrandon

    ksbrandon Junior Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    Thanks for all of the suggestions, this will definitely assist me in my research. Hopefully I'll get to putter around with a simple diesel and alternative fuels pretty soon.

    Regards
     
  8. Darren

    Darren New Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    I saw a VW Passat with a "Greasecar" bumper sticker. i stopped and asked about the conversion. There were no modifications to the engine itself. The car was started on diesel and then switched over to a tank of used cooking oil in the trunk once the engine was up to operating temperature. He always got his oil from Chinese restaurants. He used a coffee filter to remove the solids as he poured the oil into the tank. The oil also ran through a heated oil filter before it went to the injection pump.

    A Lister Petter should be OK to go on straight vegetable oil. In cold weather you'll need some way of heating the oil to keep it from congealing. A vegetable fueled Lister would be a great addition.

    During one of the previous oil crunches, I read a master's thesis from sometime in the 1940's. The three students ran a diesel on regular diesel and two different vegetable oils. I was surprised to see that the vegetable oils produced more power than the diesel fuel.
     
  9. tranquil

    tranquil Junior Member

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    Re: Need information about lister diesels and biodiesel

    Careful, if the used veg oil doesn't go through some kind of heated filtering process and settling period to separate out any water, it can hydrolock an engine. There's lots of different ways to do this, here's a vid showing one setup:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hGT6VAF ... re=related

    There are many sites out there and many more opinions, a good place for general info I think is https://www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/voconversionbasics
     

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