British engineers create petrol from air and water

[Mitsuru]

I think he means he has tried it in an off road capacity

[JPB]

Why do you need to pay duty on Paraffin when you can run a Diesel on veggie oil and not need to unless you use more than a certain volume of the stuff, 25,000 Litres rings a bell?
I know that using cherry is illegal on the road but can't see the sense in that either, also for the above reason.

As for the lubrication issues, a drop of turpentine substitute takes care of that.

[Richard Moss]

It also runs on kerosine but feels down on power

Tut, tut, I wouldn't admit to that in a public forum, it's illegal if you don't pay duty on it. Besides, I wouldn't run any diesel on kerosene, it causes accelerated wear of the injection components, and probably the bores, as it doesn't have the lubricating properties of diesel.

Indeed - Jet fuel (AVTUR) is basically kerosene and the diesel powered aircraft that we operate at the place I work have specially upgraded fuel pumps etc. to allow for the lack of lubrication compared to DERV

[Richard Moss]

Why do you need to pay duty on Paraffin when you can run a Diesel on veggie oil and not need to unless you use more than a certain volume of the stuff, 25,000 Litres rings a bell?

It's either 2,250 or 2,500 (can't remember which - don't care, don't own diesels!).

[JPB]

....It's either 2,250 or 2,500 (can't remember which - don't care, don't own diesels!).

Irrelevant. Why is the duty not payable on the veggie oil when it is on Cherry or paraffin?

[mr rusty]

Because veggie is classed for revenue purposes as a foodstuff, not a fuel, the fact that it can be used as a fuel is immaterial. The primary function of parrafin, diesel, petrol, whatever is as a fuel and most definately not a foodstuff, and it's taxed as such.

[suffolkpete]

I think it's more to do with encouraging environmentally sound practices. You can bet your life that if a lot of people did it they would tax it.

[TerryG]

The TD5 in question spends it's life lugging bales and assorted farm stuff about off-road. It certainly wouldn't pass an MOT. Amazingly it runs like a swiss watch even though it looks like it should be in the scrap pile.
Normally it runs on red but when you get given stuff for free it would be rude not to try (veg oil in this case having been paid to remove 6000 gallons of the stuff!). Kerosene was when we removed the heating system from one of the farm houses to have it repalced with calour so there was about 500l of it sitting about. I managed to nab most of it for my heating but some went in to the landy and the other farm hacks.

btw, if you want to get an old lorry through an emissions test running 60/40 diesel/veg oil seems to do the trick.

[Martin Evans]

The question of suitable fuel, for classic cars long term, is a real one Bearing in mind that the aviation sector use avgas, I think this could be a way forward. Afterall it's basically leaded fuel and if we could use it, it wouldn't necessitate a niche product just for us. In my hillclimbing days, quite a lot of competitors, in the racing car classes used it.

Of course, in the passage of time, classic cars will include newer stuff, that will not accept leaded fuel but this whole process will have to evolve. I suppose a lot will depend on how far back E10 (Or more) tollerance goes

[Richard Moss]

Have you checked the price of AVGAS? It's eye watering. At the last flying school I worked at we were looking into using Premium Unleaded petrol (MOGAS as it's known in the aviation world) because it was significantly cheaper than AVGAS (30-40p/litre cheaper I think). However, at present there are a limited number of aviation engines that can run on it and ours were not compatible.