Diesel fuel, School me!

[ISX]

I'd run biodiesel all winter if you lived in Texas or something.  Up north where you have to run basically kerosene in the truck to keep from gelling, you lose all your lube.  2 stroke oil gets it back but eh, its still kerosene.  Biodiesel is nothing but lube.  Obviously there is the gelling issues with it.  However, I ran B20 a few times one winter just fine and my truck absolutely loved it.  Because of the high cetane, it starts much easier/sooner in cold temps than regular diesel.  I mean it flat out just lights off in 1 crank.  I didn't notice hardly any MPG differences.  It was well worth it from my perspective.  If it got under 10F, I think I would be uneasy and start running regular diesel again.  So I wouldn't say it is something I would do in the dakotas where it might be 30 when you fill up but -20 by 6am.  Missouri sticks to around 30-40 as a high and 10-20 as a low so it worked pretty well.  It does get to -10 to -15 here sometimes so I had to keep an eye on the forecast to burn off all the biodiesel.  But the truck was very happy.  My lift pump starts ticking sometimes, even with 2 stroke.  When I load it up with biodiesel every tick goes away and it purrs. 

 

I would NOT run biodiesel in a common rail....  VP44 trucks aren't much different than a 12V, they use almost the same injectors.  You don't see VP44/P7100 trucks having injector issues because they are just too "loose" so stuff can pass through them.  Whereas a CR you end up with stuck injectors that wreak havoc and money.  I don't trust biodiesel to be that clean.  It might be, but until I had a way to do some tests on how clean it is, I wouldn't trust it in a CR.