Fuel news

Well, for the first time in nearly a year, SVO is cheaper than diesel.
98p/l from Tesco Maccesfield last night, with pump fuel running at 105.9p/l at the same place. I can get diesel in SPOT in Buxton at 101.9 at the moment, although apparently they are rebranding to Esso, which may mean their competitive edge goes.

I stuck 12L of SVO in Bitsa last night, so she now smells like a chippy on wheels.
Still, it runs.

The long-term plan on fuel for Bitsa involves free fuel, but not vegetable oil.
I'm investigating running her on dead engine oil collected from garages.
Its cheep or free, doesn't stink like WVO, and only needs suitable filtering, rather than chemical processing. It also should be "di" safe, with no risk of doing the engine oil in, unlike WVO. I've a rather clever plan to find an old washing machine, and adapt the spin cycle to act as a massive centrifugal filter, prior to sticking the stuff in the tank.

That the 200 will run on engine oil is proven fact. I ran out of diesel last week, and stuck a gallon of cheep 20w50 in the tank, as it was all I had. She ran on it like it was quality diesel, no loss of power, no smell, clouds of smoke or the like.
She didn't want to start much with a quantity of it in the injector pump the following morning, but did go after a bit of cranking over, instead of the usual instant start-up, but I can live with that.

The main hold ups at the moment are legal, as HMRC won't tell me what rate of duty applies to the stuff, or how to pay. I bet they would respond rather quicker if I was writing in to shop someone else doing it undeclared.

I've also got to figure out what I've got to do to collect the stuff - I think I may need a waste handlers licence... £144, for a bit of paper. Talk about robbing so and so's.

In other news, the speedo cable snapped on Sunday, so no milage/MPG updates till I fit a new one.