Diesel 911
Written on December 19, 2009
Earlier this week my heater fan quit working. It was old and tired and that’s that. So instead of putting on thermal underwear just to commute to work I drove my wife’s car this week while I waited for the part to arrive from Camden.
The timing couldn’t have been worse, because during the three days my twenty five year old vehicle sat in the driveway, Maine was hit with the coldest temperatures we’ve seen this season. I was caught totally off guard with a quarter tank of a 50/50 blend of bio and petro diesel. And as the above pics illustrate, that is not enough to keep the bio from gelling.
The heater fan arrived last night and the temps reached about 25 F this afternoon. I left work a little early, filled a 5 gallon can with petrodiesel on my way home, and stopped at the auto parts store to pick up a couple varieties of anti-gelling additives. In retrospect I probably didn’t need these to start he car (just putting the 5 gallons of petro in probably sufficed), but in case of a clogged filter they are good to have, and I wanted to pick some up for my pickle jar experiments anyway.
With very little daylight left I first plugged in the block warmer and then poured in the five gallons of petrodiesel with about a quarter of the bottle of Gunk Anti-Gel and Cetane Boost. While that took effect I installed my new-used heater fan motor and tested it out. To my delight it worked, meaning that the problem wasn’t more serious. Then I went inside to warm up for a while, letting the block warmer continure to do it’s job. A half hour later I came back out and the engine started right up.
With a diesel blend I am more confident in and heat that blows hard again I am back in business. It feels good to be behind the wheel of the old TD again, but now I know that if I want to run a biodiesel blend all winter in Maine I need to keep and eye on the weather forecast and be prepared for the worst.