As the cold weather sets in, my Jetta Horace is having issues starting up — eek. I don’t have a heated garage. I don’t have money to get an extra fuel tank installed. The other conventional methods of (bio)diesel in-vehicle heating won’t make that much difference, because a fuel tank heater or a coolant-operated fuel heater, for example, only warm the fuel when the car is RUNNING — which it obviously won’t be as it sits on my freezing hillside driveway all night long in southwestern Oregon. AAAAAHHHHHHHH
I am told that the remedy is using a 50/50 mix with regular diesel #2 in the winter. SO HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO HELP? Doesn’t diesel #2 react to low temp. much like biodiesel?
I am in a bind. Would an engine block heater work? (But then I am plugging into the grid for a solid 10 hours of nocturnal electricity suck, blech…) Is one winterizing agent better than another? If anyone has a suggestion, leave me a message here, PLEASE. I am haunted by horror stories of bio-fueled cars having to be towed to a local garage and kept overnight to get things warm and liquefied…please, don’t let it happen to my Horace, my dear dear Horace. I’ll keep reading up in the meantime.
–Refined gOil

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Refined gOil. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.