Hi.

I'm completely clueless about diesels. I recently bought a 1992 chevy van in the hopes of getting it converted to veggie oil. I knew when I bought it that it would not start hot, and the previous owner told me a new fuel pump was probably the answer. However when I drove it home it wouldn't shift passed 2nd, and was reving extremly high and wouldn't accelerate AT all. Top speed being about 45. So I pulled off the highway immediately and dropped it off at a place (4 hours from my house on memorial day weekend.) They've called me and told me they cant find ANYthing wrong with it and they've tested it multiple times on the highway at 65-70 (probably more)... They seem really nice and its odd for a garage to be like 'hey we'd love to fix it, but we can't find anything wrong...'

my question is... because I'm so clueless about diesels am I missing something basic? I had no idea about glowplugs, so thats the base level of info I'm operating on. Please make fun of me, as long as you tell me what I'm missing...

I'm not sure about your problem....but from what I've read about running WVO on the 6.2, it's probably the worst candidate for that conversion because the rotary fuel injection pump can't tolerate the particles or acidity of WVO.

See this extensive thread...

http://dieselplace.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149298

However the 6.2 runs biodiesel great after you've changed our your fuel lines and filter a few times.

Welcome to the forum! :welcome2:

Sounds like you had some sort of transmission problem, not really engine related. If you can't duplicate it again, however, it's going to be hard to fix. This may seem stupid, but are you absolutely sure that you didn't accidentally bump the shift lever down into second for the trip home? That would cause the problem and could be hard to duplicate...

You'll get up to speed on diesels pretty quick. They're really very simple engines (in my opinion much simpler than their gasoline-powered equivalents). You'll really get up to speed quick if you really do have the problem the previous owner described... That's not just a fuel pump, that's a fuel injection pump which costs about $500.

In response to previous posts regarding the suitability of the 6.2 for running WVO, it isn't the worst candidate for vegetable oil. This has (obviously) been discussed several times before and I really don't want another discussion on it, but since it's here I'll put my views on it down once and once only.

Most other diesels that you will find in automobiles here in America use rotary pumps so the 6.2 is really no worse than the others. Plus, I still believe that properly filtered and dewatered WVO run in a properly constructed system will have no effect on injection pump life. Whatever others may decide to do, I assure you that I will be running WVO this summer... And I will thoroughly enjoy laughing at everybody else as they pump $3-4/gallon diesel into their trucks.

But wait! I'm going to kill my injection pump!!! Can't do that... I might cut the 200K mile life of my pump down to 50K miles and the pump costs $500! Let's see... 50K miles @ 25 mpg = 2000 gallons of diesel fuel @ $3/gallon = $6000. No, it doesn't make sense that way either. Guess I'll just keep running regular diesel.

Even if you had to change the IP every 10,000 miles (which I don't think you would anyway) it would still cost less than half of what 10,000 miles worth of diesel fuel would cost you right now. 10,000 miles @ 25 mpg = 400 gallons of diesel @ $3/gallon = $1200.

Nobody that I know of has ever actually proven that properly filtered and dewatered WVO actually shortens injection pump life. Sure, there have been plenty of people who have had injection pumps fail while running WVO but there have also been plenty of people who have had pumps fail while running regular diesel. What I want to see is a side by side test of two identical trucks (one running properly filtered and dewatered VO through a well built, thermostatically controlled heated fuel system with a lift pump to keep fuel pressure up) with recently and properly rebuilt injection pumps of exactly the same model in a controlled environment. I think you would find that it doesn't really make much difference. If anybody has ever seen results from such a test please post the results along with exact information as to where I can find the results and contact information for the people who did the test.

Welcome again! :)