I thought you were going to say "burn diesel in it" haha. The stuff that is gathering in my heater (the white stuff) is ash (from waste oil) and does not burn. If your heater is suffering from soot / carbon, then there are a few tricks, like you say, that can get rid of it.👍
These are my favorites. I wonder if the use the additive from the beginning ( new) if it would alleviate future cleanings ? Would be amazing to find and additive that actually worked in these cool machines. Stay safe ya wacky mo pho. 😆
I think if you are using an additive all the time and just burning diesel, then you will not have any issues, as long as your heater is tuned reasonably well (not too rich) The ash build up that I got was from the waste oil, and is basically inevitable. Carbon, on the other hand, is from running rich, and can be consumed by running properly and or an additive.
Hi Joel, any data or observations as regarding the burn/CO emissions when the air intake tube and screener filter is taken off, such that there is easier access to abundant air (ie not restricted by the long tube etc)? Can you think of any unintended consequences through leaving the hose off? (for reference, my heater will be installed in a box to keep it outside my van, but the air supply into the box will be prefiltered, just not attached to the combustion air input tube on the unit). Thanks for any opinion offered. Hope all is well in your life. Your video's and knowledge are great resource, thanks for all the effort you put in.
Those are great questions. While I have not noticed any difference in CO between running no filter or tube, I have done tests where I have restricted flow and purposely caused a restriction, and it made a LOT of CO. As for not running a filter. I would only be worried about protecting the inlet from being blocked. You want to make sore debris, components, mice etc are not able to block the inlet. Based on the design of the heater, I do NOT see regular dust particles becoming a problem, and the "filter" is more or less there to keep critters like bugs and mice out. I have run several of these heaters and have almost never used the filter or filter tube.
I run them heaters all winter 24hours a day and I like diesel kleen fuel injector cleaner and octane booster is in it too,I don't have to take them apart much.
@@loweredexpectations4927 It's essentially the same thing just non aerosol, You dump it directly in your fuel or crank cace or induction system. They also make a transtune / power steering treatment I've used and my favorite lube deep creep. A note of caution: do not put deep creep on anything that you need to get grip again, This stuff is relentlessly slippery! 😂 😅 🤣
I had been running a waste oil mix on my 5kw heater. When it got to the point I'd have to cycle it a couple times to get it started, I refilled the 10L tank with clean diesel and added ~5oz of Seafoam and let it run through about 3L before shutting it down for the night. While I didn't take it apart to do a before / after comparison, the heater was able to start on the first try after that until I serviced it a few weeks later.
I would like to try seafoam. I have had a few people suggest it. When I first started burning waste oil it made a lot of black oily carbon. Burning clean diesel was able to clean a lot of this up. Now that I have modified my heater, it seems to be producing less oily carbon, but much more ash... I don't know that there is any solution for getting rid of ash other than physically removing it. All that to say, your heater may have had a lot of soot or carbon and that's why the seafoam worked.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Honestly, I'm amazed at your results with straight waste oil. Mine ran fine for a couple months with ~ 1/3 oil to 2/3 diesel mix before it fouled. Checked the exhaust outside and had an oily sludge patch on the ground. Found that was mainly due to the fact that when it would flame out, it would continue to pump fuel until the ECU recognized it wasn't getting up to temp. At that point, I'd start it up and let it get the glowplug hot, then shutdown manually. It would restart on the next try without dumping unburned fuel. Any rate, I really enjoy your videos. Keep it up!
@@KC-ly7zd You're amazed that mine runs for such a short period of time ? I really need to get a new burn chamber and start over with some of my tests. Yes, the controllers aren't very smart... They take a long time to react to a flame out. I have had to do the same thing with heating the glow plug and manually shutting down, as well.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Amazed that with mine, I had no expectation it would run on straight oil, hence my more conservative mix. Before it fouled, I did manage to run about 3gal of very old, dirty waste oil and about 3 gal of used ATF with 100K miles on it. All mixed at the same rate with roughly 12Gal of diesel. When I finally took it apart, it had crusties much like yours. I chipped it out to take a look but since I'm running it in my garage, put a new burner from Amazon in it for $15 to err on the side of safety. In the meantime, Amazon had a special on these and I picked up a spare for $80, so now I can tinker a little more having a 'hot' spare on hand. 😂
If you burned wmo then this experiment with the dpf cleaner without cleaning the oil residue out of the burn chamber... then the cleaner did it's job the cleaner is suppose to turn the soot into ash that is the white chunks you are seeing it will produce more ash with oil I am just learning this as me and the wife bought a sprinter van with a diesel motor and the van has a dpf filter on it and I was wondering how these dpf cleaners work the cleaner is suppose to raise the exhaust temperatures up while your doing city driving and to me this proves that the product works thanks for doing these experiments it helps in other ways than one 👍
Our advice is this use Dipetane this will keep the burner clean big time as we have them fitted into our ambulances and no problems but read the instruction's carefully on the bottle and in passing we also use the Dipetane in with our Diesel fuel and in passing if you have a night heater say your caravan use a little Dipetane as well.Note if fitted into a caravan use Home Heating Oil only.
Thanks for the comment. Have you noticed issues when not using Dipetane ? The only time I have had issues with my heater is when I'm burning stuff that shouldn't be in there (waste oils) or when it is running rich. I only have 4 heaters and probably less than a thousand hours on any one, but they seem to burn VERY clean with diesel.
great test, so we can tick off this product for a chamber cleaner?! A rumor here around seems settle in: Heating oil burns clean, or when diesel or filtered oil was used some use Aspen D for a periodical clean burn and after Aspen D it looks like new obvoiusly?! whether the A D could remove such a contamination you showed would be well worth a test❤
From my experience I can say two things pretty confidently, but not for certain. First is that these cleaners will often work with carbon as with a little extra heat carbon is easily consumed, but the residue from waste motor oil is mostly not carbon. The second thing I have learned is that these heaters produce almost no carbon when burning diesel and functioning properly. A buildup of carbon indicates that there is a problem that needs to be taken care of. A build up of ash indicates that the fuel has stuff in it that will not burn. Regardless of the temp or chemical used, you are stuck with this ash.
@@rveurope Yeah for sure. From tests that I have done, it actually seems as though the chamber gets hottest at half heat, or just above. I have checked this with a thermocouple. My guess is that the additional air flow at higher settings has more of a cooling effect and the steel chamber isn't able to absorb the heat fast enough to get hotter. People often get confused and think that more heat energy means higher temperatures, but there is more involved.
@@loweredexpectations4927 i agree also with this one , i run a 2 kw planar 2 d for years now with 1/2 power and fan, it does a heat up cycle and a full heat cycle beginning and end of use its clean! My home heaters from Vevor and Maxpeeding rods similar so far so good no maintenance at all! once i don't use it i add a few mls of 2 stroke oil to keep the pump lubricated for the idle time👍
@@rveurope Yes, they are all pretty dependable now. If course, as with anything, when you get millions of them out there, you are going to have horror stories along with the good ones, and people who buy a $100 heater trying to save money, are typically going to be a lot less careful with their install and how they treat the heater. More Planar, Espar and Webasto heaters will get professionally installed, so that gives them the upper hand, statistically.
I don't think I made a specific video about it, but yes. I ran it and the cetane booster in my mix after this, for the rest of the season at different amounts. It seemed to help slightly with increasing the temperature, but ultimately, was not a magic solution. A few diesel mechanics have explained why this would not work. I forget their reasoning, but it seems to be correct.
To be fair to the DPF cleaner it wouldn't clean a DPF that was contaminated with engine oil either, it's really for cleaning out soot in vehicles that don't regen. As usual chap a great vid and really enjoying learning along side you 👍😎👍
I learn so much from all my time wasting experiments 😂 ... I had a feeling like it wouldn't work, but now I actually know the reasons WHY it doesn't work and what it is actually used for.
5:30 You could take this opportunity to splash in a bit of red or blue food coloring as an indicator. A couple drops go a long way. I do this when tinkering about with chemicals. Example - I have some electrolyte water NaOH, I dyed it red. I have some Sodium Bicarbonate electrolyte, dyed it blue. I have some insect killer spray (50%isopropyl/50% water + a spritz of dish soap) - Dyed that green. Heck, the new diesel I got is very very clear, I might add some yellow to make it more visible and what I'm used to. Incidentally, a splash of ATF will dye fuel very red. I wonder... How different 2 cycle oil is from ATF, 2 cycle is much more expensive and I use a lot of it for lawn equipment.
I like that idea... where were you when I was filming the video ! Come on!! haha. I have some two cycle oil and was considering using it for a test... but yeah... it's pricey. I may sacrifice it anyway.... for science and my loyal followers.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I was thinking about your use/waste streams with the jet skis and marine 2-cycle. What I'm thinking is just a bit for lubrication, 50:1, maybe 100:1. The dye is a bonus, and as something intended to be burnt, 2 cycle might burn clean in the heater, ATF the opposite train of thought to the same result, use for combustion in an engine, save on oil cost if ATF works as well as 2 cycle. - no idea why it would, just a super random thought.
@@easymac79 I got what you were saying about the dye, but I had been thinking about burning 2 cycle oil and just blurted all of that out uncontrollably, haha. My father once ran a Honda motorcycle on vegetable oil for a while (40+ years ago) to make a point that oil pressure is more important than what oil you use.... Haha... again, just a random thought. Anyway, I have never used ATF in a two cycle, but I know people do use it. Also, people use it in rotary engines and in the SU carburetor slide on the classic Mini...
@Lowered Expectations Totally off topic thought, but I've always wondered about running diesel in a two stroke in place of gas and oil mix... After all, diesel fuel is in oil! Maybe ditch the spark plugs and run extremely high compression like a diesel, probably would have to play with the timing a bit, but would it run????? Come on Joel, I know you have an answer for that!
@@AtimatikArmy Haha... I have honestly thought about doing this for fun. I have run diesel in a 4 cycle engine, and it will run but makes a huge amount of smoke. Ideally you would want to start on gas and switch over once it gets hot as it takes a LONG time to build heat. I'm not sure that you would want to do it on a performance engine as the low octane of the diesel would basically be producing pre ignition on every stroke, haha. It would provide its own lubrication for sure ! I was thinking of a mix of gas and diesel instead of gas and oil to see where it would start getting out of hand.
I have to wonder what would happen if you just ran the heater on diesel fuel with out the additive. Basically the same test but with out the dpf additive. Would the clean burn of the diesel clean the same as with the additive.
@@johncollinsgrove1750 I did think of that. It is about $20 for half a litre, so the duration of the test wouldn't be very long. Others have pointed out that what I had left behind is ash, and not soot or carbon. The DPF cleaner is designed to burn soot and can't do anything with ash.
It’d be a long ass test… probably all winter, but I would have thought since there’s considerable carbon buildup in there you’d need to run the entire bottle through it? Based on the small result there maybe that’d do it.
Yeah, my thoughts were that anything more than I did would not be terribly practical. You could possibly have an effect on the build up, but if it is building up many times faster than it cleans out, that's not going to work.
How did you pull the the burning chamber apart. I cleaned my yesterday for the first time and didn't relise it could do that. Burned like 15 liter of 40/60 oil/diesel mix ,ther is about 20% of gas i. The diesel per of the mix. Had clog of ash . And couldn't start the heater any more.
Hey... Most burn chambers do not come apart like this. I have a video showing how I cut it apart. Link below if it works. You can cut it in half with a saw, but I have a lathe. Yeah... The ash is a problem. If you can, run the heater on full speed to try to push as much out as possible. th-cam.com/video/NpKp6UlYSl8/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LoweredExpectations
Someone help please! I have a Chinese diesel heater. When it's running, it's fine. If I shut it off, it won't restart and shows an e10 error. I've cleaned the air intake, pipe, so there isn't any build up. It tries to start, but quits with white smoke coming out the air intake. Any help would be great! I use it to heat a mini home in Canada.
Try removing the air intake and the exhaust (if you can) and then try starting it. If it starts, try installing the exhaust and see if it has issues. This white smoke can be caused by a plugged exhaust, plugged intake, plugged flame initiation hole by the glow plug, a really dirty glow plug mesh, a plugged burn chamber, or also just a low battery or poor connection to the heater.
@@loweredexpectations4927 You could try putting the DPF cleaner in with the waste oil and see if it prevents the buildup rather than using it to remove the buildup.
@@williamwilliams8145 Thanks for the suggestion... I have thought of that and will be doing it in upcoming tests... I'm not sure that I will do a dedicated video on it though.
Well been playing more. Preheating and etc (I listed in previous comment). At 10% gas 90% waste even filtering and preheating the white buildup happens pretty fast plugging the burn chamber screen preventing a good burn. We have to find a way to keep that white buildup out...
My team and I are working on a solution night and day... I ran a test last evening that seems to be producing interesting results, but it is too soon to tell. I'm releasing a video tomorrow where I test Cetane booster. I got it as a Redline additive, but if you can find it "pure" (2-EHN I believe) then it may work even better.... it seems to make some difference, but I'm just one guy who has run one test...
Looks like it reduced the build up by a little bit. I think if you clean it out, and then run the dpf-cleaner with the waste oil it will probably reduce the build up.
I don't know if I made a specific video about that, but I did try it several times. It may have helped some with carbon, but there was still plenty of ash.
Might be best if used in all fuel burned. Then make a decision at the next scheduled cleaning. Maybe it would lengthen the time between cleanings. Look-up the MSDS to see the major ingredients to see if there is something interesting to test.
I have an idea for a future test. First off, how many liters of waste oil mix was burned to accumulate all that build-up? Now, with a freshly cleaned burn chamber, burn the same amount of that same waste oil / diesel mix except WITH the Lucas cleaner added to each tank. Once you've burned the same amount as was burned leading up to this test, then inspect the burner for buildup. This would determine if the cleaner works or not. I don't think any cleaner can take an enormous build-up like that and make it go away. But seeing how it WAS able to burn the existing sludge into a white chalky powder, I'd be curious as to whether it would prevent the build-up from ever accumulating in the first place. Now THAT is a test I'd love to see. Also looking forward to watching your CETANE video next. Thank you for posting these videos. I've really been enjoying them as I learn more about these heaters. I'm trying to learn all I can as mine will be here in a few days. I plan to put a 2KW in my tractor cab for winter snow maintenance and then, if that one is everything I hope it'll be, another one will be purchased for the shop to take the chill out of my workspace. So thanks again for sharing all of your test results. I hope you have a Blessed New Year.
That does seem like an interesting test. I am considering running more tests at a lower oil ratio... something like 10 or 20% I agree... this would be a cool test. Make sure that you recirculate the air with your heater, so the inlet air is not pulling from the outside.... it will work much more efficiently this way, and heat up a lot quicker. 5 and 8 kw units are the exact same, and are the better choice for any space larger than a vehicle. Cheers.
Yes Lucas is good but after different tests we found Dipetane way far better and please note we do not endorse any fuel cleaner nor do we work or sell those fluid cleaners as we use any of those purely for ourselves and our fleet.
I think it would be something you add when it was already clean, then add a little to remove it gradually. The clue would be that amount of fuel it mentions, a good test would be two identical heaters from clean one adding the additive the other without. That would be a fair test. I was wondering if anyone had used PTFE Teflon oil additive in a diesel heater? It might stop carbon sticking to the chamber.
Good eye... this may deceptive though. The controller has the sensor on it AND because of previous experiments, where the fuel line goes in there is a hole in the side of the hot air duct ... that blows air directly at this area... Haha... yeah... ok. Science.
@Lowered Expectations Location of the sensor may be a factor - and your curtain wall. Oh BTW *. During the analysis I was considering maybe the higher burning temps raised the ambient air - leaning towards trusting your tests. The ash, hmm. Was it cleaning something out? Okay, here's a good one for you: Intentionally cake it up with waste oil, stalagmites out the wazoo. Then run waste oil with Seafoam. Check the chamber. Clear it with diesel burning, coke it up again with WMO and the large white deposits, then run diesel and Seafoam. Then, we should look at what is in seafoam, I reckon the results will be remarkable. If i's a simple compound, like, IDK, water/meth, it can be made cheaply. * Have you considered insulating the garage door? I had some scrap rockwool I split thickness-wise. Messy. But it doubles the area. I used plastic pipe strapping to secure it to the garage door panels, Insulation is one of those things that can pay for itself in short order.
@@easymac79 You really think seafoam is that good ? I've heard lots of people harp on about it... I've never actually used it. Well... that may not be true... I probably used seafoam to "fog" and engine before storage. My whole garage is pretty well insulated except for the ceiling ... probably the most important part. I have 2x6 walls with horizontal strapping to lower the contact patch between the sheathing and the studs (I think it's called a Mooney wall) My floor has R40 rigid under it ... I bought it used form a cancelled roofing project... My door is a high quality PU insulated door... it is likely not very high in R value... but much better than average.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I've never used it personally, it's just one of those things everybody and their grandparents seem to mention it as some sort of magic product that fixes everything, even the impossible. Brake pads need replaced? "have you tried Seafoam?" Headlight burnt out? "Have you tried Seafoam?" LOL
@@loweredexpectations4927 I almost overlooked the insulation topic. That sounds great to be insulated well in the walls and floors. It's a little hard to see the overhead door in the background, is it insulated? You described an insulated door, but that sounds like the man-door. I meant the overhead, as they are usually thin sheet metal and very leaky.
The cleaner worked as expected. Maybe try to wash the ash out fully automated by injecting water at higher settings, that might work, as long as the water expands to steam completely and get,s a bit superheated. Will probably not work anymore from the point on, when the steam gets wet. But then you have to do the same you'd do with cooled down exhaust gases - outlet in a continuous downfall. Otherwise your heater will choke, at least at low settings with low exhaust speedSo, no solution with a chimney involved. The automated wash will probably not work with oil or carbon already sitting there. But maybe it even prevents unburned oily buildups. My exhaust is heat exchanged and from heat exchanger outlet on it's constantly dripping water at low heat settings and this without added water injection. If it's really far below freezing point, the exhaust cannot be completely heat exchanged, because then it will clog with ice and you'll have a flame out in the middle of the night.
I have thought if injecting water but at this point, the chamber is struggling to stay hot, so this would just make things worse. All good points. Once I can keep this running for more than a few days I will likely try to collect more heat from it (the exhaust)... My testing now is focused on trying to get as much heat as possible into the burn chamber where the fuel enters.
@@loweredexpectations4927 The idea is to rise heat by distributing hot waste oil with steam expansion. The following flame expansion should also help to superheat this steam, so, no cooling effect would occur. Maybe. If that happens like planned, the ashes should just fly out. If the heater doesn't explode. Preheating of the burn chamber and high setting will be required, of course. I'd say, if the water is mixed with 50% ethanol, it should certainly work, but that's not cost efficient. Right now after shooting through the roof with pandemic's demand of sterilization, ethanol still has almost double the price of fresh clean diesel.
@@werner.x That is quite interesting. So the emulsifier keeps the water in the oil until just before combustion... I assume it would be important not to heat the oil over a certain temp (they say 70C) or the water would steam too soon. If the process involves converting water into steam, that requires heat energy, so there has to be a cooling effect. The resulting heat may be more than enough to overcome the cooling, but to change state from water to steam take a LOT of heat energy. It does seem very interesting... the water being vaporized would help atomize the oil and that would lead to a much cleaner burn. Ethanol evaporates very easily, so you would not be able to preheat the oil... the trade off of not heating the oil may not be worth any benefit of using ethanol. Oh... are you saying to just use ethanol and water as a spray and not in with the oil ? ... I'm not sure about the price or if it would work as well, but you can use methanol (methyl hydrate / gas line de icer)
Could you run a steam cleaner through it, you know the hand held ones with a nozzle used to clean stuff with. Run some oil, take the heater apart to see how much soot there is, put it back together without cleaning it, Put the steamer in the intake for say 10 minutes, then take the heater apart and see if it did anything?
I have considered this and may try something like that in the future. I believe the issues, as of now, are that the burn (where the fuel is vaporized) is not getting hot enough. Steam could potentially loosen up sot / ash and allow it to be pushed out but at the cost of cooling the chamber. I suspect, for this to work well, the chamber would have to be hot, it would have to be done while operating the heater at a high fan speed and it would have to be done a few times an hour, for a few minutes.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I've thought about putting a 3d printer hot end cartridge (wired in parallel with the glow plug maybe) then attaching the hot end cartridge to the metal fuel intake pipe right before it hits the glow plug using thermal conductive glue, to try pre warm the oil. Maybe Insulate the pipe with fibreglass wrap to keep the heat in (as the airflow around the heater might cool it)
@@rattech I like the creative thinking ! Good stuff. The glow plug only stays on for a minute during startup, so you would need to power the nozzle in a different way. I have been preheating my fuel and am able to get the fuel temp up to about 100C. Using an electric heater would be more consistent, and if you were doing it right at the glow plug, you could heat it much hotter.
Are you running kerosene exclusively, or running it to clean the heater periodically? Kerosene seems like a good fuel option for some people, depending on location. For others, like myself, kerosene is way more costly than diesel.
Curious is a ceramic coating of all the bits of the combustion chamber would prevent the gunk sticking to it and would be expelled with the exhaust gasses. Should make it a lot easier to clean anyway. Nice video again, keep 'm coming!
Yes... that would be interesting. It could have the negative side effect of not allowing the burn chamber to get hot, though. The chamber needs to get hot to flash off the oil. I have seen comments of a few people who are trying this, so we may know the answer soon.
I'm curios, if ceramic coating will be able to survive the environment. I haven't heard about durability on motor bikes up to now. I wouldn't have any hopes of anti stick durability, because this feature doesn't last long on frying pans either.
@@werner.x I don't' have a lot of experience with it. I do know that some ceramics have been used to coat the tops of pistons successfully, but I don't think they see as much temperature.
@@werner.x That would depend on the type of ceramic coating. For turbines, exhaust manifolds etc an yttrium zirconium coating works great and can withstand temperatures up to 1200°C. I don't think you will come close to that temperature in most applications...
Hey, I will see what I can do about doing this test and posting it for you. I am a few videos behind as of now. ( I have shot footage for videos but have not edited or uploaded them)
Drop it down to about 10% clean waste oil, 90% diesel. The problem you run into with higher than 10% is air fuel ratio. I have successfully ran 1 qt of clean used motor oil to 5 gallons of gasoline in an old predator generator for literally thousands of hours. Have to modify the choke a little but it will run at about 75% power output
Much better intro it fits well with what your doing , im suprized the dpf cleaner didnt do much, maybe the cetane booster will raise the temperature, we have 5kw all in one unit and it gets up to 230 degrees C on Diesel in Automatic mode, I guess you have the Lcd remote control being as you have the blue screen, if you push the up and down buttons on the lcd remote at the samer time you can switch between automatic and manual mode. in automatic mode the heater chases the temperature you have set and then ramps down the fan and fuel to run at a much lower speed as the temperasture drops in the room it ramps back up again to full speed to heat the room back up again, I wonder if this is where your problems lie maybe running the heater at full chat all the time at full fan speed isnt allowing the burn chamber to get hot enough for long enough. once ours gets hot in auto mode it reaches the max temperature you have set then it ramps down and as it does so the burn chamber gets slightly hotter for a few minutes you can watch the temperasture of the casing increase as it ramps down, it then maintains the heat in the burn chamber but using much less fuel than it would at full chat because at full chat it has much more airflow holding down the top temperature of the burn chamber. if you want more heat drop the fan speed to 4500 in the special settings maybe even 4650 you may also need to drop the fuel flow slightly to around 4.6 Hz in changing the special settings keep your carbon monoxide dector close by. and write down the orriginal spoecial settings if you want to go back to them later on. I think this is the only way your going to acheive burning waste oil in the long run. but its not one size fits all different heaters run best at different settings even though they all look very similar.
Yeah... I'm not sure of the chemical claims or how it is intended to work... but it really didn't' seem to do much... especially much more than just running clean diesel would have done. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is designed to burn soot ... and it may be that what we are dealing with here is ash ? It did seem to clean up / convert some of the black stuff, so that is my theory. I have the blue control BUT it has blue (green) digits. The ones with red digits have the features that you speak of, but this one does not. I have ordered an ecu and controller to give me this control👍 By installing the second heat sensor I have been able to determine a few things, and the heat of the exchanger and burn chamber are often not closely related... For burning waste oil, the most important piece of the puzzle is getting the chamber temperature up where the fuel comes in. I hope to be able to do this with some upcoming mods. Cheers !
@Lowered Expectations I'm guessing if you feed the dpf thru your air intake would Help steam clean your whatchamacallit you just need a dohicky to do it 😉
@@loweredexpectations4927 yes, the white stuff are ashes, can't burn ashes. The better part should easily float up in water and rinsed away, though. That's, why i mentioned this diy home method to backflow diesel particulate filters - they don't clog with soot, normally, they clog with ashes. And then these cleaners also cannot help. They only help you out, if your engine has an oil burning or running rich problem, which leads to blue or black smoke. Or if your engine ecu by whatever reason doesn't start or finish the regeneration burn phase. Then this bottled mechanic helps you out, temporarely.
DPF cleaner won't remove any existing carbon deposits in your heater caused by you burning waste oil or diesel. No additive will. Its designed to help your fuel burn cleaner, but it won't do jack for the heater itself if it's really gummed up.
I thought the same thing too. However... after think about it more, and talking to people smarter than me, I came to this realization. Some, I already knew, but just didn't process. Gas and oil don't burn. The vapours from gas and oil burn. Gas vaporizers at a very low temperature. (-42C) So, when you have a puddle of gas and oil mix, the gas will flash off extremely quickly and burn, while the oil, taking much more heat to make it vapourize, will sit there as a liquid until it gets really hot (149C) By the time the oil gets hot enough to burn, the gas is long gone. The sad truth is, that heavy oils, such as engine oil, will always leave ash behind, because the ash has not been refined out of it. The reason diesel doesn't leave ash, is because it is a more refined product. Old diesel, had a lot of sulphur, but now days, the sulphur is refined out, so it no longer leaves deposits.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Water injection would be another way to help clean it out. The water flashing to steam will remove carbon buildup, and make more horsepower as well. Water injection was used on tractors a hundred years ago for that reason.
@@rangeraficionado87 I have considered this, and a few have suggested it. The problem with this, is that water will absorb a lot of heat energy, and cause cooling in the chamber. The chamber already struggles to get hot enough, so any cooling effect would cause problems. Not that this is practical, but I had thought of IF you could put small explosive charges into the fuel ... like REALLY small, and every hour or so, it would go "BANG" and knock the carbon free, haha.
Like your experiments but love that mini behind you. You should mention it. Im doing dirty diesel but i'll add acetone and filter it again before using in my diesel heater. If something extraordinary happens i will report
Uh Oh.... We've got another Classic Mini fan who is going to be dissapointed ... I have released a few videos on my other channel, the Joel Arseneault channel. One video is called Classic Mini - First Start In 10 Years !! Project Mini Gets Some Love and another is Polishing A Turd - Classic Mini Gets CMW Race Wheels & Tires. Good luck with the experiment... let me know how it goes!
Haha... While I do love that philosophy, I don't' have that kind of "who gives a F" money 🤣 ... I'd like to be able to just buy gallons of it and burn it pure ... that would be interesting.
Have you tried a oil 70/ 30 gasoline mix yet? The diesel guy on tiktok is using oil mixed with old gas like that to run all his old deisel engines. I want this to work and have "free heat" in my garage too haha.
I may try it again, but I ran a 50/50 mix before and it made the heater run really poorly.... My vaporization chamber was really plugged up at the time tho, and I didn't realize it, so maybe. The issue with gasoline is that too much of it and it burns way too aggressively causing odd over pressure pulses. It sounds like a pulse jet engine.
Yeah... you and a few others ... My apologies and I appreciate the comment. I've run into some hard times, both mentally and financially... These videos are taking all of my time and effort, keeping me somewhat sane and might even make me a few dollars eventually...
I would not have burned the waste oil in the diesel heater. There are waste oil heaters for that I hear. Use diesel or kerosene and you don’t have to go through all that trouble. 😊unless you just want something to make a video about. I mean I did watch all of this one. Not sure why it popped up in my feed though. 🤷♂️
Haha... you hit the nail on the head "😊unless you just want something to make a video about" I thought for about 3 days that this might work, then it just turned into a series of experiments and tests to see how it would fail next. I have had a lot of people comment saying I saved them from trying this themselfs, so that's a big win. I currently have 2 natural gas heaters in my garage, floor heating and a Mr Heater, for a total of 280,000 BTU, so I can't justify any other large heat source.
@@loweredexpectations4927 what would be really cool is how to legitimately convert these things to burn propane. Not some redneck rigged apparatus but something legit. The same concept that does burn propane goes for a couple grand and normal folks can’t afford that. I have a cheap diesel heater and it works fabulously. I’m beginning my second season with it, mounted under the hood of my pickup and ducted to the bed with zero problems--knock on wood. I’d rather have a propane but I can’t afford that. Figure out that one and then you will have done something great. 😊 Thanks for the reply and I’ve watched I think three of your videos now just because they’re interesting and funny 😄
your problems are totally different than mine burning waste veg oil, mine never have that white stuff. i think the oil contain metal or what ever makes that white stuff
@@loweredexpectations4927 They put like grafite and stuff in, grafite will first burn at 800f and dont know it it burns clean or white. Think the white is sone sort of oxidised metals grafite etc.
@@loweredexpectations4927 i think it might be. would not like to run on black "diesel" in my van with all that white stuff, but a little carbon from the wvo just helps for compression :) my pistonrings have not gummed up or any other problem runs great - but also switch to diesel before stopping and starting.
@@mnp3713 Burning fuels in an engine is a little different than in a heater. In an engine you have the added advantage of a much more violent process. The exhaust gasses are expelled under much higher pressures and the compression and combustion process is much more aggressive. It is less likely to cause issues in an engine... I would assume.
well i giggle at all these vids on the heaters. , use kerosene it burns cleaner. also try using hot shot secret diesel extreme to reduce carbon. unfiltered used oil is a massive mistake. but do whatever you want. 4000 hrs on kero hardly any carbon in my 99 buck diesel heater , 30 hrs a gallon on low. glow plug fine , fyi that stuff is junk, and won't do much to carbon already built up.
I get what you are saying, but where I am, Kerosene is about $8 litre & Diesel is $1.66 a litre When burning diesel, if the heater is tuned properly, it will not produce any soot to speak of. The actual issue with engine oil is that it is heavy oil, not that it is dirty, used or has additives. Refined fuels like diesel and kerosene have all the stuff removed that we see left behind when we burn waste oil. The reason why people burn / try to burn waste oil, is because it is prohibitively expensive to burn diesel or kerosene and staying warm is a big deal. Carbon build up is pretty easy to take care of. It burns off when you get it hot, so if you can get the burn chamber hot, you're good to go. The issue is things like sulphur and other ash that will not burn period. I agree that most of these chemicals do nothing or almost nothing. Making a video showing this in a real life test is better than trying to explain it to people.
Interesting... I have never heard of that. The idea of the fiberglass in my tests was to act as an absorbent mat but also as an indicator as of now hot it is getting.
Kerosene is first class for fitted heaters which have a separate tank :) but mix in a little Dipetane in just a small amount and from time to time run your heater at full temperature for around an hour and set the temperature which suits yourself.
I have heard form a few diesel mechanics that the filter actually has to be talken apart and pressure washed out or something... I can't remember... That being said, the instructions say "For a deep clean, pour 1 bottle into approximately 30 gallons of diesel fuel. Deep clean as needed, at least every oil change."
@@loweredexpectations4927 for the summer consider the thermatop version. . It makes hot water. You can have a waste oil powered backyard hot tub!! My thermal top uses gasoline It's great
@@Dirt-Diggler From what I understand, it all depends on what is causing the issue. If it is carbon / soot, then this will help. If it is ash, then you have to mechanically remove it.
@@loweredexpectations4927 yep, like all so called snake oil potions you need the right one for the right circumstances, that's where the knowledge, past experience and intuition of a skilled mechanic come into play, EGR, cleaner, engine flush, DPF cleaner ect are all just tools but you need to know when to use them 👍 As usual chap your on the ball on such matters 😎
Best way to keep your diesel heater clean is to run it on high for about an hour before turning off.
I thought you were going to say "burn diesel in it" haha.
The stuff that is gathering in my heater (the white stuff) is ash (from waste oil) and does not burn. If your heater is suffering from soot / carbon, then there are a few tricks, like you say, that can get rid of it.👍
@loweredexpectations4927 oops I Meant to say run on high to burn soot off.
Thanks for the old intro, really enjoy having it back again!
Haha... I will try to use it now and then... Like the beginning says "some people love it, some people hate it" Cheers !
Thanks for the direct new and old photos to compare.
Thanks for the comment. This is an older video and I have continued playing with waste engine oil and had some interesting results.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I have been enjoying them too 🙂
These are my favorites. I wonder if the use the additive from the beginning ( new) if it would alleviate future cleanings ? Would be amazing to find and additive that actually worked in these cool machines. Stay safe ya wacky mo pho. 😆
I think if you are using an additive all the time and just burning diesel, then you will not have any issues, as long as your heater is tuned reasonably well (not too rich)
The ash build up that I got was from the waste oil, and is basically inevitable. Carbon, on the other hand, is from running rich, and can be consumed by running properly and or an additive.
Hi Joel, any data or observations as regarding the burn/CO emissions when the air intake tube and screener filter is taken off, such that there is easier access to abundant air (ie not restricted by the long tube etc)? Can you think of any unintended consequences through leaving the hose off? (for reference, my heater will be installed in a box to keep it outside my van, but the air supply into the box will be prefiltered, just not attached to the combustion air input tube on the unit). Thanks for any opinion offered.
Hope all is well in your life. Your video's and knowledge are great resource, thanks for all the effort you put in.
Those are great questions. While I have not noticed any difference in CO between running no filter or tube, I have done tests where I have restricted flow and purposely caused a restriction, and it made a LOT of CO.
As for not running a filter. I would only be worried about protecting the inlet from being blocked. You want to make sore debris, components, mice etc are not able to block the inlet.
Based on the design of the heater, I do NOT see regular dust particles becoming a problem, and the "filter" is more or less there to keep critters like bugs and mice out. I have run several of these heaters and have almost never used the filter or filter tube.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Cheers Joel, excellent pointers again. Much appreciated mate.
I run them heaters all winter 24hours a day and I like diesel kleen fuel injector cleaner and octane booster is in it too,I don't have to take them apart much.
Awesome ! Great little units if you burn diesel in them, haha.
Seafoam is awesome, I put that shuff in everything!
I have used the fogging stuff you use before storage, but none of their other products.
@@loweredexpectations4927 It's essentially the same thing just non aerosol, You dump it directly in your fuel or crank cace or induction system. They also make a transtune / power steering treatment I've used and my favorite lube deep creep.
A note of caution: do not put deep creep on anything that you need to get grip again, This stuff is relentlessly slippery! 😂 😅 🤣
@@bikerboymc54 In other news. Mitchell Connors just invested his life savings into SeaFoam... 🤣🤣 Just kidding ! Thanks for the info !
@@loweredexpectations4927 no kidding, the amount of it I go through they should sponsor me! 😂 🤣 😅
Yes we tested Seafoam and yes works well but read our above comments re engine cleaner.
You have the old intro music back! Excellent as it represents well.
I find it really amusing how many people comment on the intro / music ! 🤣 I had no idea people were so attached to it.
I had been running a waste oil mix on my 5kw heater. When it got to the point I'd have to cycle it a couple times to get it started, I refilled the 10L tank with clean diesel and added ~5oz of Seafoam and let it run through about 3L before shutting it down for the night. While I didn't take it apart to do a before / after comparison, the heater was able to start on the first try after that until I serviced it a few weeks later.
I would like to try seafoam. I have had a few people suggest it.
When I first started burning waste oil it made a lot of black oily carbon. Burning clean diesel was able to clean a lot of this up. Now that I have modified my heater, it seems to be producing less oily carbon, but much more ash... I don't know that there is any solution for getting rid of ash other than physically removing it.
All that to say, your heater may have had a lot of soot or carbon and that's why the seafoam worked.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Honestly, I'm amazed at your results with straight waste oil. Mine ran fine for a couple months with ~ 1/3 oil to 2/3 diesel mix before it fouled. Checked the exhaust outside and had an oily sludge patch on the ground. Found that was mainly due to the fact that when it would flame out, it would continue to pump fuel until the ECU recognized it wasn't getting up to temp. At that point, I'd start it up and let it get the glowplug hot, then shutdown manually. It would restart on the next try without dumping unburned fuel. Any rate, I really enjoy your videos. Keep it up!
@@KC-ly7zd You're amazed that mine runs for such a short period of time ? I really need to get a new burn chamber and start over with some of my tests.
Yes, the controllers aren't very smart... They take a long time to react to a flame out. I have had to do the same thing with heating the glow plug and manually shutting down, as well.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Amazed that with mine, I had no expectation it would run on straight oil, hence my more conservative mix. Before it fouled, I did manage to run about 3gal of very old, dirty waste oil and about 3 gal of used ATF with 100K miles on it. All mixed at the same rate with roughly 12Gal of diesel. When I finally took it apart, it had crusties much like yours. I chipped it out to take a look but since I'm running it in my garage, put a new burner from Amazon in it for $15 to err on the side of safety. In the meantime, Amazon had a special on these and I picked up a spare for $80, so now I can tinker a little more having a 'hot' spare on hand. 😂
@@KC-ly7zd Right on.... I need a few spares as well.
If you burned wmo then this experiment with the dpf cleaner without cleaning the oil residue out of the burn chamber... then the cleaner did it's job the cleaner is suppose to turn the soot into ash that is the white chunks you are seeing it will produce more ash with oil I am just learning this as me and the wife bought a sprinter van with a diesel motor and the van has a dpf filter on it and I was wondering how these dpf cleaners work the cleaner is suppose to raise the exhaust temperatures up while your doing city driving and to me this proves that the product works thanks for doing these experiments it helps in other ways than one 👍
Interesting, Thanks for the comment !
Our advice is this use Dipetane this will keep the burner clean big time as we have them fitted into our ambulances and no problems but read the instruction's carefully on the bottle and in passing we also use the Dipetane in with our Diesel fuel and in passing if you have a night heater say your caravan use a little Dipetane as well.Note if fitted into a caravan use Home Heating Oil only.
Thanks for the comment.
Have you noticed issues when not using Dipetane ? The only time I have had issues with my heater is when I'm burning stuff that shouldn't be in there (waste oils) or when it is running rich.
I only have 4 heaters and probably less than a thousand hours on any one, but they seem to burn VERY clean with diesel.
great test, so we can tick off this product for a chamber cleaner?! A rumor here around seems settle in: Heating oil burns clean, or when diesel or filtered oil was used some use Aspen D for a periodical clean burn and after Aspen D it looks like new obvoiusly?! whether the A D could remove such a contamination you showed would be well worth a test❤
From my experience I can say two things pretty confidently, but not for certain. First is that these cleaners will often work with carbon as with a little extra heat carbon is easily consumed, but the residue from waste motor oil is mostly not carbon.
The second thing I have learned is that these heaters produce almost no carbon when burning diesel and functioning properly. A buildup of carbon indicates that there is a problem that needs to be taken care of.
A build up of ash indicates that the fuel has stuff in it that will not burn. Regardless of the temp or chemical used, you are stuck with this ash.
@@loweredexpectations4927 well thats good news so we use the diesel or heating oil and do a full blast once in while, right?
@@rveurope Yeah for sure. From tests that I have done, it actually seems as though the chamber gets hottest at half heat, or just above. I have checked this with a thermocouple. My guess is that the additional air flow at higher settings has more of a cooling effect and the steel chamber isn't able to absorb the heat fast enough to get hotter.
People often get confused and think that more heat energy means higher temperatures, but there is more involved.
@@loweredexpectations4927 i agree also with this one , i run a 2 kw planar 2 d for years now with 1/2 power and fan, it does a heat up cycle and a full heat cycle beginning and end of use its clean! My home heaters from Vevor and Maxpeeding rods similar so far so good no maintenance at all! once i don't use it i add a few mls of 2 stroke oil to keep the pump lubricated for the idle time👍
@@rveurope Yes, they are all pretty dependable now. If course, as with anything, when you get millions of them out there, you are going to have horror stories along with the good ones, and people who buy a $100 heater trying to save money, are typically going to be a lot less careful with their install and how they treat the heater. More Planar, Espar and Webasto heaters will get professionally installed, so that gives them the upper hand, statistically.
Did you ever get around to adding it into the waist oil to see if it helps ignition and burning
I don't think I made a specific video about it, but yes. I ran it and the cetane booster in my mix after this, for the rest of the season at different amounts.
It seemed to help slightly with increasing the temperature, but ultimately, was not a magic solution. A few diesel mechanics have explained why this would not work. I forget their reasoning, but it seems to be correct.
To be fair to the DPF cleaner it wouldn't clean a DPF that was contaminated with engine oil either, it's really for cleaning out soot in vehicles that don't regen.
As usual chap a great vid and really enjoying learning along side you 👍😎👍
I learn so much from all my time wasting experiments 😂 ... I had a feeling like it wouldn't work, but now I actually know the reasons WHY it doesn't work and what it is actually used for.
5:30 You could take this opportunity to splash in a bit of red or blue food coloring as an indicator. A couple drops go a long way. I do this when tinkering about with chemicals. Example - I have some electrolyte water NaOH, I dyed it red. I have some Sodium Bicarbonate electrolyte, dyed it blue. I have some insect killer spray (50%isopropyl/50% water + a spritz of dish soap) - Dyed that green.
Heck, the new diesel I got is very very clear, I might add some yellow to make it more visible and what I'm used to. Incidentally, a splash of ATF will dye fuel very red. I wonder... How different 2 cycle oil is from ATF, 2 cycle is much more expensive and I use a lot of it for lawn equipment.
I like that idea... where were you when I was filming the video ! Come on!! haha.
I have some two cycle oil and was considering using it for a test... but yeah... it's pricey. I may sacrifice it anyway.... for science and my loyal followers.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I was thinking about your use/waste streams with the jet skis and marine 2-cycle.
What I'm thinking is just a bit for lubrication, 50:1, maybe 100:1. The dye is a bonus, and as something intended to be burnt, 2 cycle might burn clean in the heater,
ATF the opposite train of thought to the same result, use for combustion in an engine, save on oil cost if ATF works as well as 2 cycle. - no idea why it would, just a super random thought.
@@easymac79 I got what you were saying about the dye, but I had been thinking about burning 2 cycle oil and just blurted all of that out uncontrollably, haha.
My father once ran a Honda motorcycle on vegetable oil for a while (40+ years ago) to make a point that oil pressure is more important than what oil you use.... Haha... again, just a random thought.
Anyway, I have never used ATF in a two cycle, but I know people do use it. Also, people use it in rotary engines and in the SU carburetor slide on the classic Mini...
@Lowered Expectations Totally off topic thought, but I've always wondered about running diesel in a two stroke in place of gas and oil mix... After all, diesel fuel is in oil! Maybe ditch the spark plugs and run extremely high compression like a diesel, probably would have to play with the timing a bit, but would it run????? Come on Joel, I know you have an answer for that!
@@AtimatikArmy Haha... I have honestly thought about doing this for fun. I have run diesel in a 4 cycle engine, and it will run but makes a huge amount of smoke. Ideally you would want to start on gas and switch over once it gets hot as it takes a LONG time to build heat. I'm not sure that you would want to do it on a performance engine as the low octane of the diesel would basically be producing pre ignition on every stroke, haha. It would provide its own lubrication for sure !
I was thinking of a mix of gas and diesel instead of gas and oil to see where it would start getting out of hand.
Thankyou for this vid! Been researching these things a lot recently
Thanks for the comment.
I have to wonder what would happen if you just ran the heater on diesel fuel with out the additive. Basically the same test but with out the dpf additive. Would the clean burn of the diesel clean the same as with the additive.
I actually kinda have run that test before and yeah... This test wasn't any better than just running pure diesel.
@loweredexpectations4927 maybe try to run it on straight dpf cleaner. I think it's unlikely going to do much but never know.
@@johncollinsgrove1750 I did think of that. It is about $20 for half a litre, so the duration of the test wouldn't be very long. Others have pointed out that what I had left behind is ash, and not soot or carbon. The DPF cleaner is designed to burn soot and can't do anything with ash.
It’d be a long ass test… probably all winter, but I would have thought since there’s considerable carbon buildup in there you’d need to run the entire bottle through it? Based on the small result there maybe that’d do it.
Yeah, my thoughts were that anything more than I did would not be terribly practical. You could possibly have an effect on the build up, but if it is building up many times faster than it cleans out, that's not going to work.
HI bin watching for a bit now wondering if you tried to Burn the stuff with a blow torch out side and at hat temp it will burn with a blow torch
I have tried to burn it and it does not seem to burn.
How did you pull the the burning chamber apart. I cleaned my yesterday for the first time and didn't relise it could do that. Burned like 15 liter of 40/60 oil/diesel mix ,ther is about 20% of gas i. The diesel per of the mix. Had clog of ash . And couldn't start the heater any more.
Hey... Most burn chambers do not come apart like this. I have a video showing how I cut it apart. Link below if it works. You can cut it in half with a saw, but I have a lathe.
Yeah... The ash is a problem. If you can, run the heater on full speed to try to push as much out as possible.
th-cam.com/video/NpKp6UlYSl8/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LoweredExpectations
Someone help please! I have a Chinese diesel heater. When it's running, it's fine. If I shut it off, it won't restart and shows an e10 error. I've cleaned the air intake, pipe, so there isn't any build up. It tries to start, but quits with white smoke coming out the air intake. Any help would be great! I use it to heat a mini home in Canada.
Try removing the air intake and the exhaust (if you can) and then try starting it. If it starts, try installing the exhaust and see if it has issues.
This white smoke can be caused by a plugged exhaust, plugged intake, plugged flame initiation hole by the glow plug, a really dirty glow plug mesh, a plugged burn chamber, or also just a low battery or poor connection to the heater.
Prime it for 45 seconds before you start it. Mine did the same even after a service and rebuild. If I prime it, it just fires up every time.
I really like the new meter that shows temp in F. (edit... I'm looking forward to seeing how the cleaner works being mixed with the new and use oil.)
Yeah... The controller doesn't even have a F setting on it... It's nice that I don't' have to do conversions, haha.
@@loweredexpectations4927 You could try putting the DPF cleaner in with the waste oil and see if it prevents the buildup rather than using it to remove the buildup.
@@williamwilliams8145 Thanks for the suggestion... I have thought of that and will be doing it in upcoming tests... I'm not sure that I will do a dedicated video on it though.
Well been playing more. Preheating and etc (I listed in previous comment). At 10% gas 90% waste even filtering and preheating the white buildup happens pretty fast plugging the burn chamber screen preventing a good burn. We have to find a way to keep that white buildup out...
My team and I are working on a solution night and day... I ran a test last evening that seems to be producing interesting results, but it is too soon to tell.
I'm releasing a video tomorrow where I test Cetane booster. I got it as a Redline additive, but if you can find it "pure" (2-EHN I believe) then it may work even better.... it seems to make some difference, but I'm just one guy who has run one test...
Looks like it reduced the build up by a little bit. I think if you clean it out, and then run the dpf-cleaner with the waste oil it will probably reduce the build up.
I don't know if I made a specific video about that, but I did try it several times. It may have helped some with carbon, but there was still plenty of ash.
Might be best if used in all fuel burned. Then make a decision at the next scheduled cleaning. Maybe it would lengthen the time between cleanings. Look-up the MSDS to see the major ingredients to see if there is something interesting to test.
Thanks. After this test, I did continue to use a mix of this and cetane booster in every batch of fuel.
I have an idea for a future test. First off, how many liters of waste oil mix was burned to accumulate all that build-up? Now, with a freshly cleaned burn chamber, burn the same amount of that same waste oil / diesel mix except WITH the Lucas cleaner added to each tank. Once you've burned the same amount as was burned leading up to this test, then inspect the burner for buildup. This would determine if the cleaner works or not. I don't think any cleaner can take an enormous build-up like that and make it go away. But seeing how it WAS able to burn the existing sludge into a white chalky powder, I'd be curious as to whether it would prevent the build-up from ever accumulating in the first place. Now THAT is a test I'd love to see.
Also looking forward to watching your CETANE video next. Thank you for posting these videos. I've really been enjoying them as I learn more about these heaters. I'm trying to learn all I can as mine will be here in a few days. I plan to put a 2KW in my tractor cab for winter snow maintenance and then, if that one is everything I hope it'll be, another one will be purchased for the shop to take the chill out of my workspace. So thanks again for sharing all of your test results. I hope you have a Blessed New Year.
That does seem like an interesting test. I am considering running more tests at a lower oil ratio... something like 10 or 20% I agree... this would be a cool test.
Make sure that you recirculate the air with your heater, so the inlet air is not pulling from the outside.... it will work much more efficiently this way, and heat up a lot quicker.
5 and 8 kw units are the exact same, and are the better choice for any space larger than a vehicle.
Cheers.
Yes Lucas is good but after different tests we found Dipetane way far better and please note we do not endorse any fuel cleaner nor do we work or sell those fluid cleaners as we use any of those purely for ourselves and our fleet.
@@donkirk5433 Thanks for the advice.
I think it would be something you add when it was already clean, then add a little to remove it gradually. The clue would be that amount of fuel it mentions, a good test would be two identical heaters from clean one adding the additive the other without. That would be a fair test. I was wondering if anyone had used PTFE Teflon oil additive in a diesel heater? It might stop carbon sticking to the chamber.
What about just adding a little to each refil starting with a clean chamber theory will delay the crud building up.
That is possible, but it seems to build up very quickly.
I'm sorry, I am sure you answered this. What is the SQ. FT. of the area are you heating?
624 pretty well insulated for a garage. When it gets quite cold, this will keep it from freezing, but you wouldn't be wearing a T shirt.
7:34 The ambient air temp is up 3C from earlier. I reckon this explains the increase in unit temps.
10:14 Interesting analysis. Ignore the above, lol.
Good eye... this may deceptive though. The controller has the sensor on it AND because of previous experiments, where the fuel line goes in there is a hole in the side of the hot air duct ... that blows air directly at this area...
Haha... yeah... ok. Science.
@Lowered Expectations Location of the sensor may be a factor - and your curtain wall. Oh BTW *. During the analysis I was considering maybe the higher burning temps raised the ambient air - leaning towards trusting your tests. The ash, hmm. Was it cleaning something out?
Okay, here's a good one for you: Intentionally cake it up with waste oil, stalagmites out the wazoo. Then run waste oil with Seafoam. Check the chamber. Clear it with diesel burning, coke it up again with WMO and the large white deposits, then run diesel and Seafoam.
Then, we should look at what is in seafoam, I reckon the results will be remarkable. If i's a simple compound, like, IDK, water/meth, it can be made cheaply.
* Have you considered insulating the garage door? I had some scrap rockwool I split thickness-wise. Messy. But it doubles the area. I used plastic pipe strapping to secure it to the garage door panels,
Insulation is one of those things that can pay for itself in short order.
@@easymac79 You really think seafoam is that good ? I've heard lots of people harp on about it... I've never actually used it. Well... that may not be true... I probably used seafoam to "fog" and engine before storage.
My whole garage is pretty well insulated except for the ceiling ... probably the most important part. I have 2x6 walls with horizontal strapping to lower the contact patch between the sheathing and the studs (I think it's called a Mooney wall) My floor has R40 rigid under it ... I bought it used form a cancelled roofing project... My door is a high quality PU insulated door... it is likely not very high in R value... but much better than average.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I've never used it personally, it's just one of those things everybody and their grandparents seem to mention it as some sort of magic product that fixes everything, even the impossible. Brake pads need replaced? "have you tried Seafoam?" Headlight burnt out? "Have you tried Seafoam?" LOL
@@loweredexpectations4927 I almost overlooked the insulation topic. That sounds great to be insulated well in the walls and floors. It's a little hard to see the overhead door in the background, is it insulated? You described an insulated door, but that sounds like the man-door. I meant the overhead, as they are usually thin sheet metal and very leaky.
Great video thanks
Thanks for your comment. I appreciate it.
The cleaner worked as expected.
Maybe try to wash the ash out fully automated by injecting water at higher settings, that might work, as long as the water expands to steam completely and get,s a bit superheated.
Will probably not work anymore from the point on, when the steam gets wet.
But then you have to do the same you'd do with cooled down exhaust gases - outlet in a continuous downfall. Otherwise your heater will choke, at least at low settings with low exhaust speedSo, no solution with a chimney involved.
The automated wash will probably not work with oil or carbon already sitting there. But maybe it even prevents unburned oily buildups.
My exhaust is heat exchanged and from heat exchanger outlet on it's constantly dripping water at low heat settings and this without added water injection.
If it's really far below freezing point, the exhaust cannot be completely heat exchanged, because then it will clog with ice and you'll have a flame out in the middle of the night.
I have thought if injecting water but at this point, the chamber is struggling to stay hot, so this would just make things worse.
All good points. Once I can keep this running for more than a few days I will likely try to collect more heat from it (the exhaust)... My testing now is focused on trying to get as much heat as possible into the burn chamber where the fuel enters.
@@loweredexpectations4927
The idea is to rise heat by distributing hot waste oil with steam expansion. The following flame expansion should also help to superheat this steam, so, no cooling effect would occur. Maybe. If that happens like planned, the ashes should just fly out. If the heater doesn't explode.
Preheating of the burn chamber and high setting will be required, of course.
I'd say, if the water is mixed with 50% ethanol, it should certainly work, but that's not cost efficient. Right now after shooting through the roof with pandemic's demand of sterilization, ethanol still has almost double the price of fresh clean diesel.
@@werner.x That is quite interesting. So the emulsifier keeps the water in the oil until just before combustion... I assume it would be important not to heat the oil over a certain temp (they say 70C) or the water would steam too soon.
If the process involves converting water into steam, that requires heat energy, so there has to be a cooling effect. The resulting heat may be more than enough to overcome the cooling, but to change state from water to steam take a LOT of heat energy.
It does seem very interesting... the water being vaporized would help atomize the oil and that would lead to a much cleaner burn. Ethanol evaporates very easily, so you would not be able to preheat the oil... the trade off of not heating the oil may not be worth any benefit of using ethanol. Oh... are you saying to just use ethanol and water as a spray and not in with the oil ? ...
I'm not sure about the price or if it would work as well, but you can use methanol (methyl hydrate / gas line de icer)
Great Video!
Maybe chuck some more of that 'additive' stuff in the mix. ;)
I have a Canadian company sending me some additive stuff to test... not specifically for the oil tests, haha.... but it will get used for that.
Could you run a steam cleaner through it, you know the hand held ones with a nozzle used to clean stuff with. Run some oil, take the heater apart to see how much soot there is, put it back together without cleaning it, Put the steamer in the intake for say 10 minutes, then take the heater apart and see if it did anything?
I have considered this and may try something like that in the future. I believe the issues, as of now, are that the burn (where the fuel is vaporized) is not getting hot enough. Steam could potentially loosen up sot / ash and allow it to be pushed out but at the cost of cooling the chamber.
I suspect, for this to work well, the chamber would have to be hot, it would have to be done while operating the heater at a high fan speed and it would have to be done a few times an hour, for a few minutes.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I've thought about putting a 3d printer hot end cartridge (wired in parallel with the glow plug maybe) then attaching the hot end cartridge to the metal fuel intake pipe right before it hits the glow plug using thermal conductive glue, to try pre warm the oil. Maybe Insulate the pipe with fibreglass wrap to keep the heat in (as the airflow around the heater might cool it)
@@rattech I like the creative thinking ! Good stuff.
The glow plug only stays on for a minute during startup, so you would need to power the nozzle in a different way.
I have been preheating my fuel and am able to get the fuel temp up to about 100C. Using an electric heater would be more consistent, and if you were doing it right at the glow plug, you could heat it much hotter.
Kerosene is my preferred choice to keep the heater clean.
Are you running kerosene exclusively, or running it to clean the heater periodically?
Kerosene seems like a good fuel option for some people, depending on location. For others, like myself, kerosene is way more costly than diesel.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I run it all the time when I can get it, It is cheaper than Diesel in the UK.
Curious is a ceramic coating of all the bits of the combustion chamber would prevent the gunk sticking to it and would be expelled with the exhaust gasses. Should make it a lot easier to clean anyway. Nice video again, keep 'm coming!
Yes... that would be interesting. It could have the negative side effect of not allowing the burn chamber to get hot, though. The chamber needs to get hot to flash off the oil. I have seen comments of a few people who are trying this, so we may know the answer soon.
I'm curios, if ceramic coating will be able to survive the environment.
I haven't heard about durability on motor bikes up to now.
I wouldn't have any hopes of anti stick durability, because this feature doesn't last long on frying pans either.
@@werner.x I don't' have a lot of experience with it. I do know that some ceramics have been used to coat the tops of pistons successfully, but I don't think they see as much temperature.
@@werner.x That would depend on the type of ceramic coating. For turbines, exhaust manifolds etc an yttrium zirconium coating works great and can withstand temperatures up to 1200°C. I don't think you will come close to that temperature in most applications...
Could you please do a test on 1/3 of wmo and 2/3 of diesel . My hopes are that it would burn cleaner while offsetting the price of the diesel . Thanks
Hey, I will see what I can do about doing this test and posting it for you. I am a few videos behind as of now. ( I have shot footage for videos but have not edited or uploaded them)
Drop it down to about 10% clean waste oil, 90% diesel. The problem you run into with higher than 10% is air fuel ratio. I have successfully ran 1 qt of clean used motor oil to 5 gallons of gasoline in an old predator generator for literally thousands of hours. Have to modify the choke a little but it will run at about 75% power output
Much better intro it fits well with what your doing , im suprized the dpf cleaner didnt do much, maybe the cetane booster will raise the temperature, we have 5kw all in one unit and it gets up to 230 degrees C on Diesel in Automatic mode, I guess you have the Lcd remote control being as you have the blue screen, if you push the up and down buttons on the lcd remote at the samer time you can switch between automatic and manual mode. in automatic mode the heater chases the temperature you have set and then ramps down the fan and fuel to run at a
much lower speed as the temperasture drops in the room it ramps back up again to full speed to heat the room back up again, I wonder if this is where your problems lie maybe running the heater at full chat all the time at full fan speed isnt allowing the burn chamber to get hot enough for long enough. once ours gets hot in auto mode it reaches the max temperature you have set then it ramps down and as it does so the burn chamber gets
slightly hotter for a few minutes you can watch the temperasture of the casing increase as it ramps down, it then maintains the heat in the burn chamber but using much less fuel than it would at full chat because at full chat it has much more airflow holding down the top temperature of the burn chamber. if you want more heat drop the fan speed to 4500 in the special settings maybe even 4650 you may also need to drop the fuel flow slightly to around 4.6 Hz in changing the special settings keep your carbon monoxide dector close by. and write down the orriginal spoecial settings if you want to go back to them later on. I think this is the only way your going to acheive burning waste oil in the long run. but its not one size fits all different heaters run best at different settings even though they all look very similar.
Yeah... I'm not sure of the chemical claims or how it is intended to work... but it really didn't' seem to do much... especially much more than just running clean diesel would have done.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is designed to burn soot ... and it may be that what we are dealing with here is ash ? It did seem to clean up / convert some of the black stuff, so that is my theory.
I have the blue control BUT it has blue (green) digits. The ones with red digits have the features that you speak of, but this one does not. I have ordered an ecu and controller to give me this control👍
By installing the second heat sensor I have been able to determine a few things, and the heat of the exchanger and burn chamber are often not closely related... For burning waste oil, the most important piece of the puzzle is getting the chamber temperature up where the fuel comes in. I hope to be able to do this with some upcoming mods. Cheers !
@Lowered Expectations I'm guessing if you feed the dpf thru your air intake would Help steam clean your whatchamacallit you just need a dohicky to do it 😉
@@donnied6759 Damn !! It seems so obvious now that you say it like that... 🤣
@@loweredexpectations4927 yes, the white stuff are ashes, can't burn ashes. The better part should easily float up in water and rinsed away, though.
That's, why i mentioned this diy home method to backflow diesel particulate filters - they don't clog with soot, normally, they clog with ashes.
And then these cleaners also cannot help.
They only help you out, if your engine has an oil burning or running rich problem, which leads to blue or black smoke.
Or if your engine ecu by whatever reason doesn't start or finish the regeneration burn phase.
Then this bottled mechanic helps you out, temporarely.
@@werner.x Okay... that makes sense to me now.
try running it on JP-8 jet fuel
I would if I could get my hands on some.
It is basically kerosene with a few additives, eh ?
DPF cleaner won't remove any existing carbon deposits in your heater caused by you burning waste oil or diesel. No additive will. Its designed to help your fuel burn cleaner, but it won't do jack for the heater itself if it's really gummed up.
But it says "DPF Cleaner" on the bottle and claims to magically remove everything... You're not telling me these companies would lie !! haha.
Waste of money DPF in your night heater.
Good info
Good idea
Nice to know😮
Thanks for the comment. If nothing else, entertaining, haha.
I would think if you added octane, such as a small amount of gasoline to your diesel, it would clean it out better.
I thought the same thing too. However... after think about it more, and talking to people smarter than me, I came to this realization. Some, I already knew, but just didn't process.
Gas and oil don't burn. The vapours from gas and oil burn. Gas vaporizers at a very low temperature. (-42C) So, when you have a puddle of gas and oil mix, the gas will flash off extremely quickly and burn, while the oil, taking much more heat to make it vapourize, will sit there as a liquid until it gets really hot (149C) By the time the oil gets hot enough to burn, the gas is long gone.
The sad truth is, that heavy oils, such as engine oil, will always leave ash behind, because the ash has not been refined out of it. The reason diesel doesn't leave ash, is because it is a more refined product. Old diesel, had a lot of sulphur, but now days, the sulphur is refined out, so it no longer leaves deposits.
Just realizing, after my huge rant... that I may have read your comment wrong... oh well, haha.
@@loweredexpectations4927 Water injection would be another way to help clean it out. The water flashing to steam will remove carbon buildup, and make more horsepower as well. Water injection was used on tractors a hundred years ago for that reason.
@@rangeraficionado87 I have considered this, and a few have suggested it. The problem with this, is that water will absorb a lot of heat energy, and cause cooling in the chamber. The chamber already struggles to get hot enough, so any cooling effect would cause problems.
Not that this is practical, but I had thought of IF you could put small explosive charges into the fuel ... like REALLY small, and every hour or so, it would go "BANG" and knock the carbon free, haha.
@@loweredexpectations4927 You could do that with water injection.
Like your experiments but love that mini behind you. You should mention it. Im doing dirty diesel but i'll add acetone and filter it again before using in my diesel heater. If something extraordinary happens i will report
Uh Oh.... We've got another Classic Mini fan who is going to be dissapointed ...
I have released a few videos on my other channel, the Joel Arseneault channel. One video is called Classic Mini - First Start In 10 Years !! Project Mini Gets Some Love and another is Polishing A Turd - Classic Mini Gets CMW Race Wheels & Tires.
Good luck with the experiment... let me know how it goes!
Ha, original theme music back by popular demand😁
I figure I can get away with it in a few videos, haha.
I set my cheap ass Chinese diesel heater to high altitude mode,it just works now
Cool.
Just dump the whole bottle in who needs all that complex math!
Haha... While I do love that philosophy, I don't' have that kind of "who gives a F" money 🤣 ... I'd like to be able to just buy gallons of it and burn it pure ... that would be interesting.
Thats the video i waited!
Coool !
please try WVO
I would love to and hope to in the future. Thanks for the suggestion.
Try pure white spirits.
Thanks, sorry I missed your comment !!
Commenting to help the algorithm
Appreciated 🤟
Have you tried a oil 70/ 30 gasoline mix yet? The diesel guy on tiktok is using oil mixed with old gas like that to run all his old deisel engines. I want this to work and have "free heat" in my garage too haha.
I may try it again, but I ran a 50/50 mix before and it made the heater run really poorly.... My vaporization chamber was really plugged up at the time tho, and I didn't realize it, so maybe.
The issue with gasoline is that too much of it and it burns way too aggressively causing odd over pressure pulses. It sounds like a pulse jet engine.
a good video for a test👍👍
Thanks 👍
You did it 👏 your making water burn lol
You can burn anything if you try hard enough !!
Missing the jetski stuff
Yeah... you and a few others ... My apologies and I appreciate the comment.
I've run into some hard times, both mentally and financially... These videos are taking all of my time and effort, keeping me somewhat sane and might even make me a few dollars eventually...
I would not have burned the waste oil in the diesel heater. There are waste oil heaters for that I hear. Use diesel or kerosene and you don’t have to go through all that trouble. 😊unless you just want something to make a video about. I mean I did watch all of this one. Not sure why it popped up in my feed though. 🤷♂️
Haha... you hit the nail on the head "😊unless you just want something to make a video about"
I thought for about 3 days that this might work, then it just turned into a series of experiments and tests to see how it would fail next. I have had a lot of people comment saying I saved them from trying this themselfs, so that's a big win.
I currently have 2 natural gas heaters in my garage, floor heating and a Mr Heater, for a total of 280,000 BTU, so I can't justify any other large heat source.
@@loweredexpectations4927 what would be really cool is how to legitimately convert these things to burn propane. Not some redneck rigged apparatus but something legit. The same concept that does burn propane goes for a couple grand and normal folks can’t afford that.
I have a cheap diesel heater and it works fabulously. I’m beginning my second season with it, mounted under the hood of my pickup and ducted to the bed with zero problems--knock on wood. I’d rather have a propane but I can’t afford that.
Figure out that one and then you will have done something great. 😊
Thanks for the reply and I’ve watched I think three of your videos now just because they’re interesting and funny 😄
your problems are totally different than mine burning waste veg oil, mine never have that white stuff. i think the oil contain metal or what ever makes that white stuff
Yeah... The white stuff could be from oil additives or it could simply be from ash.
@@loweredexpectations4927 They put like grafite and stuff in, grafite will first burn at 800f and dont know it it burns clean or white. Think the white is sone sort of oxidised metals grafite etc.
@@mnp3713 I have been told that there is a high likelihood that some of it is calcium ... I can't say one way or another.
@@loweredexpectations4927 i think it might be. would not like to run on black "diesel" in my van with all that white stuff, but a little carbon from the wvo just helps for compression :) my pistonrings have not gummed up or any other problem runs great - but also switch to diesel before stopping and starting.
@@mnp3713 Burning fuels in an engine is a little different than in a heater. In an engine you have the added advantage of a much more violent process. The exhaust gasses are expelled under much higher pressures and the compression and combustion process is much more aggressive. It is less likely to cause issues in an engine... I would assume.
Just run 25% ethanol or methanol with diesel.
As a cleaning solution ? or as fuel ?
@@loweredexpectations4927 Both.
im waiting for a sea foam test. lol
A few others have suggested that as well... I suppose I did this one I should do that as well.
well i giggle at all these vids on the heaters. , use kerosene it burns cleaner. also try using hot shot secret diesel extreme to reduce carbon. unfiltered used oil is a massive mistake. but do whatever you want. 4000 hrs on kero hardly any carbon in my 99 buck diesel heater , 30 hrs a gallon on low. glow plug fine , fyi that stuff is junk, and won't do much to carbon already built up.
I get what you are saying, but where I am, Kerosene is about $8 litre & Diesel is $1.66 a litre
When burning diesel, if the heater is tuned properly, it will not produce any soot to speak of.
The actual issue with engine oil is that it is heavy oil, not that it is dirty, used or has additives. Refined fuels like diesel and kerosene have all the stuff removed that we see left behind when we burn waste oil.
The reason why people burn / try to burn waste oil, is because it is prohibitively expensive to burn diesel or kerosene and staying warm is a big deal.
Carbon build up is pretty easy to take care of. It burns off when you get it hot, so if you can get the burn chamber hot, you're good to go. The issue is things like sulphur and other ash that will not burn period.
I agree that most of these chemicals do nothing or almost nothing. Making a video showing this in a real life test is better than trying to explain it to people.
Instead of fiberglass you can buy ceramic wool insulation. It will not melt lIke fiberglass.
Interesting... I have never heard of that. The idea of the fiberglass in my tests was to act as an absorbent mat but also as an indicator as of now hot it is getting.
Our shop runs kerosene through our heaters once a year to clean it out.
Cool... I have had good luck with just diesel if the heater is plugged up with carbon, but I don't know that anything will remove this white ash.
Kerosene is first class for fitted heaters which have a separate tank :) but mix in a little Dipetane in just a small amount and from time to time run your heater at full temperature for around an hour and set the temperature which suits yourself.
I don't think that's how dpf cleaner skills be used. More like a parts cleaner
I have heard form a few diesel mechanics that the filter actually has to be talken apart and pressure washed out or something... I can't remember...
That being said, the instructions say "For a deep clean, pour 1 bottle into approximately 30 gallons of diesel fuel. Deep clean as needed, at least every oil change."
If you ran 5 or 6 heaters you’d get through a lot more tests. You’d probably be melting in the heat but it’s all in the name of science
🤣 That's so true.... If I had more heaters I could do more tests... My whole neighbourhood would be warm... and smoky.
@@loweredexpectations4927 for the summer consider the thermatop version. . It makes hot water. You can have a waste oil powered backyard hot tub!!
My thermal top uses gasoline It's great
@@gutrali Genius... "sorry ladies... I need to go check on the heater... it seems to be a little smoky"
I had to raise my standards while lowering my expectations....
I'm not sure if that is an insult or a complement ... well done.
@@loweredexpectations4927 "I am so clever, sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying"
@@realeyesrealizereallies6828 Haha... that can be a problem.
Maybe some seafoam would clean er up?
I have had that suggestion at least a few times. I have a lot of tests to do in the future, but that is one of the things I need to try for sure !
Snake oil. IMO.
I MAY actually work to clean soot from a DPF ... but it didn't work in this situation... that's for sure.
@@loweredexpectations4927 I've used it successfully before on many occasions, though not that brand 👍
@@Dirt-Diggler From what I understand, it all depends on what is causing the issue. If it is carbon / soot, then this will help. If it is ash, then you have to mechanically remove it.
@@loweredexpectations4927 yep, like all so called snake oil potions you need the right one for the right circumstances, that's where the knowledge, past experience and intuition of a skilled mechanic come into play, EGR, cleaner, engine flush, DPF cleaner ect are all just tools but you need to know when to use them 👍
As usual chap your on the ball on such matters 😎
@@Dirt-Diggler Haha... Some would say I'm on the ball... others would say "like a dog _______ a football" 😂