Adding used motor oil to your fuel

[GDouglas]

Well, if you filter the used oil before you put it in with the fuel in your tank, it would seem wise to run the old oil through a filter of the same or better micron rating as the fuel filters on our engines.



Anyone know what the micron rating is on our stock fuel filters?

 

[monkfarm]

burn soybean oil

I've been occasionally buying gallons of the cheapest soybean oil i can find. (the cheapest is the most refined. ), and adding it 1 qt /tank (at fill up).

But only in the last spring, summer and early fall. It would gel up easily in colder weather, and possibly cause problems. It adds lubricity, and causes the whole fuel to pollute less.

I have been spraying used oil on my tools, farm machinery, and the bottom of my cars and trucks. I add "pennetrol", and use an air sprayer with a compressor. The finns have done that for years for their cars in the winter.

 

[eGarwood]

A freind of mine has a VERY large yacht with twin Caterpillar Diesels in it . I don't know if it's called the Sentinal system or not , but he told me the same basic principal is at work on his Cats... a small amount of engine oil is taken from the crankcase, filtered, then injected into the fuel system and burnt. He said he only has to change his filters at the end of the season... once a year. Other wise he just tops off the engine oil resevoir at each fueling. I thought it was a pretty neat idea... . but I wouldn't add old oil to my fuel tank... I just don't trust myself to be able to filter it properly. But I wouldn't hesitate to buy an add-on system designed to do this or for that matter an engine built by Cummins with this sytem already engineered in.

JMHO Ed3

 

[radar doctor]

I'VE done it too..IT works

I,ve owned 4 Mercedes Diesels and i have a 1999 Dodge Diesel. Now, all the OIL that was poured in the fuel tanks , was filtered or new oil. I have a 1982 300 SD and it has 239,300 miles and doesn't use any oil yet, There are 18 wheelers out there that have those filtering systems right on the trucks. I dont have them on my stuff but the fellow who developed a system here in this town and who tried to get CAT and Cumins to buy his system told me to Filter the oil using a Cat filter and burn about 5 Percent oil in a tank of fuel. . I think this is a good idea cause somebody up in iowa a few years ago designed a way to burn MC Donald's oil used in cooking. I heard that on Paul Harvey... This is my opinion . Can you imagine BOMBING with BIG MC GREASE???ha. .

 

[JohnE]

The best way to burn used engine oil..

is in my good friend's waste oil stove in his shop. I really appreciate having a warm place to work on vehicles in the winter time. Unlike the Cummins, the stove will burn hydraulic fluid (trany fluid), gear oil, and solvents. Used cooking oil will work, too.

 

[Archive]

A Paradigm Shift...

I have first hand experience with the portable Cummins blender for reclaiming used crankcase drain oil. The machine has three hoses. One suction hose for the drain bucket, one suction hose into the the very bottom of the fuel tank, and then the machine's discharge hose. The oil is siphoned from the drain bucket, ran thru a spin-on disposabile fuel filter within the machine, and then blended into the fuel tank. The siphon hose that is lowered into the bottom of the vehicle's fuel tank is to absolutely insure that the fuel and oil are 100% completely blended.



I have also maintained the Webb brand version similar to Cummins Centinel oil change (while you drive) system. A timer releases 1. 5 ounces of used oil into the fuel RETURN line to insure it is well blended into the fuel before making the return trip back to the engine. The timer is set using a combination of factors such as crankcase capacity, engine rating (power), loads, terrain, ect. The oil filters are still dropped at a set mileage and fresh makeup oil is added.



I am unaware of any damage to equipment as a consequence of utilizing either process. (The driver's however hate the thought of burning motor oil. )



The fuel systems on the Cummins powered class 8 trucks are completely different than the 5. 9B engines. Our "B" engines are NOT scaled down little M-11's or N-14's. We do not own a small scale version of a Cummins 18 wheeler engine. (as many owners would like to believe) I have no experience with burning used crankcase oil in the 24 valve engines. I'm not exactly sure what percentage of blend the the (weak IMO) VP-44 would tolerate.

 

[Mad Max]

Here's a link if you're interested.



I don't think they had our applications in mind when they designed this... the clean oil resovoir holds GALLONS and it nearly 3 feet tall.



http://www.valvolinehd.com/onroad/cent.html



MaX



Ps. Speed, you still have to change the oil using Centinel



"Cummins CENTINEL Advanced Engine Oil Management System allows users to extend engine oil drain intervals up to 525,000 miles (844,906 km) in heavy-duty on-highway applications and 4,000 hours in high-horsepower off-road applications. "

 

[LarryG]

... ... ..... one of these days we'll all be burning corn oil when the world runs out of petroleum - or we irritate all the Arabs enough so they won't sell to us (that'll probably be the day we nuke Iraq). As far as I know, some diesel engine mfr's have approved the use of a certain percent of biodiesel - it seems one of the problems is storage - it picks up moisture and can you spell algae?

 

[Archive]

If you're a fuel and lube kinda guy...

there's a ton of this stuff posted over on the VW diesel website. They have some very intelligent, well educated articulate folks over there. A couple of hours invested there is time well spent. They even talk about us TDR members every now and then. (They like us. )

 

[me4osu]

We do a similar thing in our gas compressor engines. However, we don't burn it, we send it down the line by using filtered engine oil to feed the forced lubricators on the compressors. We replentish the supply with a day-tank and Kenco LCE-9 level controller.



We can't burn it, because it will mask the crap out of a catalyst and skew emissions readings on lean-burns. If you have a 12V that still has the catalyst, the same thing is likely to happen.



Our engines are +$250,000. 00 Waukesha VHP & AT series; Cat 300, 3400, 3500 & 3600 series; and a few 825 series Superiors (RustyJC). These engines continuously run 97% of the time. We have been able to run without SCHEDULED oil changes, just filters as mentioned in a previous post. We run Mobil Pegasus exclusively and pull monthly samples. The samples are analyzed for free, by Mobil, and we change the oil only when certain parameters are exceeded, a few of which are Oxidation, Nitration, Viscosity, Metals & Potassium / Sicicates (coolant).



The main thing I wanted to say, that pertains to our trucks is: if you are thinking about doing this, I would strongly recommend some sort of periodic oil testing and a list of minumum oil properties & maximum contamination levels from Cummins. Even though we replentish the supply with new oil, we still have to watch the properties, and they WILL degrade. We still change oil, just not nearly as often.



We don't even think about overhauls until 36,000 hours run-time (~4 years).

 

[roadranger]

Small fleet I drove for in the 80's had the Cummins system for putting drain oil into the fuel tanks. Cost less doing it this way, than paying for an EPA company to haul it away.



We had assigned tractors, and we were told the day before the truck was due into the shop for servicing, NOT to top off the fuel tanks that night.



The shop would do their thing, and filter then add the entire crankcase contents of the NTC 350 to the twin 75 gal fuel tanks, then top them off.



The next day's haul, we'd be one gear slower going up the hills, and real sluggish acceleration with that load of crankcase oil in the fuel.

Guess there wasn't any cetane in it!

 

[DHenry]

Cummins Centinel design

For the computer/electronics inclined, the July 2001 issue of Embedded Systems Programming magazine had an article about the design of the Cummins Centinel:



http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010618S0078