So, after i finished my thesis, i got to work putting together my diesel engine with the parts i had bought earlier.
I carefully cleaned the bottom end of the engine, removing the old bearing journals and replacing with new, standard sized ones. I checked the clearances with some plastigauge, and it measured well. The new crankshaft from a 1.6l petrol engine (the bottom crankshaft in the photo below- remarkably exactly the same as the diesel one.) slotted in nicely, with plenty of oil splashed around for good measure, and strict adherance (within environmental limts) to the "cleanliness is next to godliness" rule.
The oil pump (checked and cleaned), slotted in nicely, and the flywheel and sump went back on.

The engine was timed, the timing belt installed and tensioned, and everything checked over thoroughly, ready for the installation.

This is a photo of the engine bay with the petrol engine installed.
The fuel lines required changing to larger ones (in order to allow good flow of the more viscous diesel fuel). This required the soldering in of a larger pickup line in the fuel tank, and changing the fuel lines to diesel spec ones (8mm).


And then, 8 hours of this (show below)


And she was a diesel!
Note the larger starting battery
And a new sticker on the top of the window!

This is a pic of my diesel golf on a rally with some other guys from the forum. My car was 5 years older than any of the cars present, and 20 years senior of most! This was the first real long run. It was a hard run (up the blue mountains and back via the bells line), but the engine still managed to do an excellent 5.3l/100km (including fuel leaks). Better than the souped up Mk4 GTIs which were doing only 400km on a 50l tank (15l/100?)

Methane: success

So the "methane plant" was recharged with the good stuff, and left for a few weeks, the tank has risen!!. Getting a sniff of that sweet success, Warwick decided to try to burn some of our fuel. WARWICK - edit this post and carry on from here!!

Methane : oh dear.

Methane: The rush comes back to bite us

So we finished it then we had to put a hole near the bottom to put in a out pipe so of cause it would only take a chisel and hammer.... but no, we moved up to a drill to weaken it and slowly very, very slowly we started getting somewhere. The conditions were terrible dust, noise & vibrations and all this in a hole less than a cubic metre quite a tight fit, at this stage i was really pissed off, we thought we were never going to get there.

methane: concreting

Quite proud of our hole - "Look Dad, we dug a hole" - ("well done son")

We now needed to form our methane vessel. After considering bricks, and realising we didn't have any PLUS, we are probably lousy brickies, we decided on concrete.

Concrete is the best stuff, it starts wet, and goes hard like rock! amazing stuff.

In the time between finishing the hole and getting an opportunity to do concreting there was time to think and prepare a few things. Not satisafied with a 44 gallon (205L) drum, Dad had exceeded himself, aquiring a stainless steel tank larger than a drum and with the benefit that it won't rust. A small tap was also sucessfully added the top (for the gas)

Concreting needed to be done to form a water and shit-proof vessle to hold the,.. shit..
Innovations included using a combination of carboard and glad-wrap to form an annulus around the tank to allow the tank to move up and down. - vertical strips of carboard rather than large panels were used to make removal of this "annulus" easier -

Mark and Dad being busy on the wheat harvest, and running out of time, we rushed a bit because of Adrian's wedding in 2 days, But his fiance being very understanding allowed us to get it done - the rush came back to bite us.

We all headed off to the wedding happy to have made progress.

Methane: In the beggining

My brothers and i decided we wanted a renewable, burnable fuel source. After looking at hydrogen and ethanol that either ended up a total stuff ups or decided it was not worth the effort to make we turned to methane a by product and does it burn.

I started by digging a hole.
When the dirt is hard and you're digging with a crow bar and shovel this takes a while, like a year with a few accidents along the way.

Utensils were invented to asist in the shaping of this hole for our use. finally we ended up with a hole 1400 deep and 1000 in diametre. And that was the easy bit.

Biodiesel: Finding a diesel engine.

Here is a picture of my beautiful 1976 VW Golf LS, taken in late 2006.


I found a web forum specialising in all watercooled volkswagens. On the forum, i found a guy who wrecks all sorts of watercooled volkswagens. I put the word out, and he found me a 1.5l diesel engine out of a 1979 Golf GLD, which he was willing to get rid of for $350 with transmission.
The engine had apparently had the head rebuilt very recently, with new rings, and a reconditioned injector pump. The bottom end had not been reconditioned, and after running for only a couple of hours after the rebuild, it had grabbed a main bearing on the crankshaft, meaning that the crankshaft would require either grinding or replacing, and the main bearings replaced.

This is where i came in. I took the word of the guy who sold it to me that it was a good engine, and set about getting it in running order. Not quite as simple as it could have been, because for a start, i couldn't afford $350 at that point in time, so i had to go grovelling to Adrian, who lent me the cash for the sake of science. :) (much to the grizzling of his wife ;))I firstly stripped the engine, and cleaned it all up.Then i pulled out the crankshaft, where i found some serious marking on the no 2 main bearing, and some scuffing of a couple of the bearing journals on the crankshaft.
I decided i would need to either grind the crankshaft, or get a new one.
Luckily, i have a spare golf LS petrol engine at home (in central NSW), and the crankshaft out of the 1.6l engine is exactly the same as the diesel engine. That's a perfect example of efficient engineering by Volkswagen. They don't design a new component, if a suitable component already exists in their inventory.

Well, i recognised that it made sense to replace the crankshaft, main, and big end bearings, and all bottom end seals. It would cost me about $200 to get all these parts. I finally saved up enough cash to buy them, and at that stage, i was starting writing my thesis for my Mechanical engineering degree, so there was a lull in proceedings of about 12 months.....

Biodiesel: beginnings

Us three brothers have been interested in biofuels for quite a while now. I think it's the thought of getting free stuff that compelled us to be keen about biofuels. I remember discussing biodiesel with Adrian when we first found out about it- "Wow, how good would that be?- you could run your car for FREE!"
We initially looked into it, and saw that you needed methanol to complete the biodiesel reaction, and for some stupid reason, decided that since Methanol costs about $1 a litre, it would not be economically viable..(I think the price of diesel was around 90c back then).

We revisited it a couple of years later, and realised that in fact you only require 20% methanol in the biodiesel reaction, and having seen the diesel price rise to more than $1.30 a litre.. A methanol source was found, and it was realised that methanol can be bought for around $1 a litre.

This basically means that if we could get free waste oil from fish and chip shops, we could make a litre of biodiesel for 20c a litre!

So the first problem was: If we go and make a million litres of biodiesel, what are we going to test it in? We don't have a vehicle with a diesel engine that we would be willing to put possibly dodgy home made diesel fuel.
Our current cars at the time were : Adrian had a nice new diesel navara, and i had a 1.6l petrol 1976 golf...
A quick look on the web found that MK1 golfs actually came out with diesel engines.. They were a 1.5l Naturally aspirated engine, putting out 37kW ( a reduction in power compared to the petrol engine)..
I figured that if i could find one for fairly cheap, i could whack it into the golf, and Voila, i would have a test bed for the biodiesel project.

Welcome

Welcome

This blog has been set up, so that a few brothers can share details of a number of projects. Some of the projects might also be of interest to others.

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home methane production home biodiesel methane from shit methane from poo renewable energy diesel engine VW golf bio-diesel biogas bio-gas renewable energy projects home project