Citroen XM Forum

A word of warning here.
In the UK the law permits personal use of around 2,400 ltrs per year of veg oil exempt of duty.
You are required to keep records to prove your compliance with the limit.
Exceed the limit and you will be charged the duty on the whole years usage.
For his use CaptainH needs to check the law in EIRE as it will be different.

Not sure that our engines are quite as simple as the original diesels.
Seem to remember Dieselman mentioning the risk of compression loss from piston ring gumming.

John

Very true John. Do you know how they would find out though?. Is it the police that can question you. Ie smelling chippy fumes ect.

I have always been curious as to know how the tax office would know you were using it in the first place.

back on topic ... - Bob has just let me know that we have a deal and so the XM will be coming my way & so live again.
Just got to sort out details like getting it home. Thanks to Matt for enabling all this to happen. Steve

You could be one of the unlucky few to be stopped and directed to drive into the adjacent check point.
The tank dipped, the fuel analysed and the injection system examined for evidence of use of untaxed (red) diesel.
If the results show red expect to be prosecuted and fined.
If they find veg oil expect questions about your records and mileage checks against MOT records.

Pleased the car has found a new home.

John

russ92xmsed wrote:I'm going to be very interested in how the ES9 compares to the PRV. My experience from the PRV was the noise. It sounds great, but it is loud if you plant it...which I did many times!

Russ, noise-wise you'll be disappointed with the ES9. In the XM it's very heavily silenced in keeping with the refined nature of the car so it's very quiet and muted..

The ES9 sounds much better in a V6 Xantia...

One danger of running veg. in quite an old engine and Bosch pump is that the veg can attack the seals as they were originally not made for veg. and this can cause them to go hard and leak... New seals are made of viton usually and are OK for veg.

It's not a trivial job to reseal a pump...

Also, first use of veg will scour your tank and fuel lines and result in several plugged filters until things settle down again.

2500 litres is some 20000+ miles of driving at 40mpg. As they will be able to tell the mix ratio in a tank at 50/50 you can do 40k miles. I am part self employed and can reclaim the fuel back so have to keep records. In any case it has taken three months with two cars to go through 300 litres. That's 1200 litres a year. Even going ott I'd never manage much more than 1500 litres.

Excellent sruff steve.. i look forward to hoping seeing you at an xm rally with her..

As for the veg thing. I was talking mixing with derv and NOT useing 100% veg.. reducing the veg ratio with derv must have some good effect...

Excellent Steve.... another car saved. Look forward to seeing it in the future. Sorry for going way off topic above!!


On the veg subject, that is loads then. I certainly don't do 20k a year. So I'm fine in that respect. So it's a pull over job then that might get you. Hmmmmm.
If I were to use veg, absolutely I would be mixing it with derv. Never 100% even if some do and get away with it.

I know about the cleaning effect on the tank and fuel system, so something to watch when I take the plunge.

xmexclusive wrote:A word of warning here.
In the UK the law permits personal use of around 2,400 ltrs per year of veg oil exempt of duty.
You are required to keep records to prove your compliance with the limit.
Exceed the limit and you will be charged the duty on the whole years usage.
For his use CaptainH needs to check the law in EIRE as it will be different.

Not sure that our engines are quite as simple as the original diesels.
Seem to remember Dieselman mentioning the risk of compression loss from piston ring gumming.

John

I have actually seen an engine struggle after running on veg for only a few weeks of short journeys and have heard of a number of "bomb proof" Merc engines going South due to ring gumming due to being run on veg.

Without proper pre-heating and injectors, I would expect trouble eventually. Don't forget the reduced MPG due to lower calorific value. I used to run on Bio then SVO and had issues on both and definitely saw a reduction in MPG on my spreadsheet.

My cars are on decent runs. The daily run is 25 miles each way and at the weekends, well last weekend it was London, the week before it was Paignton, the week before that Bristol, this weekend is reading, for example. I find any more than 50% veg is too much for the system. I find only one or two mpg difference between pure diesel and the mix. That balances out the extra savings a little. A reasonable amount of time I do fuel up with diesel only for a tank of two.