Driving On Veg Oil...

5110 Days - Real or Not?

So you've seen the claim that I've been driving my Diesel car on ordinary vegetable oil for 5110 days without any mechanical failure and you're probably thinking that's too good to be true...

Well it IS true... or rather it was .

The number of days shown was absolutely correct. However, almost 14 years to the day after having my vehicle converted to run on ordinary vegetable oil, I had the system disconnected.

What Changed? Why the disconnection?

When I first converted to vegetable oil on 18th June 2008, I was fourteen years younger and a lot fitter (and remember, carrying 20 litre cans of veg oil is not a lightweight task), but more importantly I did a reasonable amount of mileage. I didn't do a great mileage, maybe between 10 and 15 thousand miles per year, but for me that was sufficient to justify the cost of conversion - and it certainly paid off for me.

Over the past few years I've done very little mileage, and most of that was short journeys. That meant the opportunities to warm my engine thoroughly and switch over to veg oil became fewer and fewer.

Last year I purchased another dog, a male Rotty, making me a two-dog family and both of them being above average size for their breed. This meant even with the capacious space within the rear of a DC4 Land Cruiser, it was often a squeeze on doggy days out. This left me with a choice... get rid of one of the dogs or get rid of the 90 litre fuel tank that occupied far too much doggy space. And so, reluctantly, on 16th June 2022, I had everything related to veg oil motoring purged from my diesel engine.

Trouble-Free Motoring... Honestly?

Well I've had the car since 2008, so I would have to be exceptionally lucky to claim in that time that I'd had no mechanical issues. It's a car... it's subject to wear and tear... mechanical failures are expected. And they have occurred (though thankfully very few), but importantly for the context of this website, none of these mechanical failures have been caused by veg oil. Let me just make that last sentence clearer - I have had mechanical troubles, but I would have had these if I'd been driving on diesel. The point I'm really trying to make is that driving on veg oil has not been detrimental to my engine. So in that regard, yes I can honestly say my 14 years veg oil driving experiences were trouble free.

How About Mileage?

I need to confess also that I've never been a high-mileage driver. At most I may have done 15000 miles in a year. Because of this I've never bothered recording mileage. Whilst it's worth pointing out that anecdotal evidence shared with me by other veg oil motoring enthusiasts suggests that high-mileage driving is where veg oil really shines, I can't cannot personally speak from experience there. But I can say my car did well, very well. I don't regret one day of driving on veg oil and am grateful for being able to do something, no matter how small, to reduce my carbon footprint.