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Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
Posted on 12/23/2008 11:04:11 AM PST by Red Badger
When a manufacturer expressly tells you that using certain types of fuel in a vehicle will cause damage and using said fuel will void the warranty, it's probably a good idea not to use the fuel in question. The city of Portland, Oregon certainly deserves credit for its aggressive use of biodiesel in its municipal truck fleet. However, if Portland or any other city is going to pursue such a program, they really should make sure the diesel engines in its vehicles are compatible with the fuel. Six of the 50 2008 Ford Super-Duty trucks purchased by Portland have suffered major engine damage after being fueled with high concentration biodiesel blends ranging from B50 to B99. Where have we heard something like this before?
Portland's older trucks have not experienced any problems to date. The problem lies in the fact the 2008 Fords use a diesel particulate filter while the older trucks do not. The filters need to be regenerated periodically. This is done by adding extra injection pulses to raise the exhaust gas temperature. The process must be carefully controlled to avoid damage to the filter. Conventional petroleum diesel has specific properties and manufacturers calibrate engines to function properly on standardized fuels. Biodiesel is not a standardized fuel.
Continue reading after the jump.
[Sources: Portland Tribune, Ford]
The problem is that biodiesels are made from many different sources and have different properties. Until recently, the only certified standard commercial biodiesel blend was B5 (five percent bio). A B20 standard was ratified earlier this year but no manufacturer has yet certified engines for B20. Because Ford's engines (along with just about every other diesel manufacturer) have only be tested and verified to work properly with blends up to B5, use of any other fuel is expressly forbidden in the warranty. It's no different if you put nitro-methane in a gas engine; the warranty will not cover engine damage.
ABG contacted Wes Sherwood at Ford and got the following explanation of exactly why the higher blends do not work with the company's latest engines.
Ford is the world's truck leader and constantly innovates with new pickups, including being the first to introduce a clean diesel engine to achieve emissions comparable to gas engines as required by new federal regulations.
The new F-Series Super Duty's advanced Ford diesel emissions system, like other trucks in the class, injects precise levels of fuel late inthe combustion cycle to provide heat and fuel to the diesel particulate filter (DPF) to burn off trapped particulates in the DPF during regeneration. A small amount of this fuel, under certain operating conditions, may migrate past the piston rings and into the crankcase. For normal diesel fuel, and regular oil changes, this is not an issue as much of the fuel in the oil will evaporate between regenerations.
However, biodiesel has a much higher evaporation temperature and does not evaporate appreciably. This cumulative effect can lead to significant amounts of fuel in the crankcase oil.
Ford, like other manufacturers, does not warrant that the engine will perform correctly with use of more than 5 percent biodiesel, which is clearly stated in the warranty.
Additionally, many fleet vehicles spend large amounts of time idling. Ford classifies this usage as severe duty with a corresponding oil change interval of 5,000 miles or 200 engine hours, whichever occursfirst. Every Ford Super Duty diesel engine is equipped with an odometer and an hour meter to aid in proper maintenance.
Portland City Commisioner Randy Leonard seems to think that actions directly contravening the manufacturers operating instructions somehow constitute a defect on the part of the product. So far, it looks more like a defect on the part of whoever in the city of Portland purchased these trucks and either did not read the specifications or chose to ignore them. Unless these engines had only ever been run on B5 or less and still had a problem, the city does not appear to have any grounds for a lawsuit or even demanding that Ford honor the warranty.
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
Stupid is as stupid gets elected............
Not in Portland, apparently......
Very interesting story from a “do-it-yourself” biodiesel perspective. Apparently, older diesel vehicles will run fine on home-brewed biodiesel, but the most recent models will not, resulting in engine damage, based upon the required chemistry.
Squantos can tell you a very sad tale of Biodiesel in a new vehicle............
Chalk up another one for the enviroterrorists who run the Peoples Republic of Portland. Shouldn’t they just switch to bicycles?
PRay for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Six out of 50 have suffered major engine damage?
You would think that, if you were going to run an experimental, unregulated and untested fuel in a fleet of vehicles, you might want to pay careful attention to the state of the engines.
If it takes six of these brand new vehicles to have “major engine damage” before you realize what’s going on, maybe you’re the wrong people to do this sort of experimentation.
Of course, when you’re purchasing with “other people’s money”, then you probably don’t feel the need to be very careful...
DO NOT use Ethanol in a small engine (lawn mower, weed whip, chain saw, etc.). Ethanol is good for the small engine repair business!
You do realize that is because the enviro-whacko's (such as the Portland City Council) required Diesel engines to be clean burning.
It’s not really the engine, its the requirements for the DPF unit. I have to deal with one of these things. Add $5000 to the cost of the vehicle (Mitsi FM) and, in hot humid weather, you get up to half an hour of random downtime when the DPF wants to purge(every other day or so in these weather conditions). Now that its colder, it hasn’t gone off in monthes. Oh, and don’t stand outside the vehicle while the purge is underway. I read a British MOT document a while back that said that these things produce more particulates than not having them at all.
.......You would think that......
She didn’t think. She felt in her extremely tight sphincter that it was the way to go and then issued the directive to use the biofuel.
Why does anyone keep doing business with these people? If I’d owned a business, I’d never do anything with the Northwest idiots. How can the profit be worth it if you’re going to get sued anyway for trivial stuff that isn’t your fault? And you know you can’t win with an OR judge and court. So why bother?
Here in OR we got a 10% ethanol mandate last year and the problems that people had were numerous. Lot's of old vehicles still running the roads here and it played 'ell with them. (Mine included, wasted an electric fuel pump a month after the switch.) The outboard motors and 2 strokes had the dealers and owners in a an uproar too. (Not that it did any good.) I can only imagine what 20% will do.
Not to defend these idiots, but any modern diesel engine should be able to deal with B99. It actually has better lubricity than ULSD.
The lubricity and aromaticity issues of low sulfur diesel were solved after the first wave of new fuel regs in 1993.
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