Fuel System Plumbing

Engine Coolant

Engine coolant is used to heat the vegoil so it will approach the viscosity of diesel fuel. I put a "T" in the coolant line going to the cab heater, and there is another "T" in the return line.

I pulled the hose barb from the engine, and discovered it had a restriction in it, so I replaced it with a full-flow hose barb. Someday, I want to put adjustable shutters in front of the radiator to help regulate engine heat -- the Cummins 4BT is so efficient that it can be hard to get much heat out of it when air temperatures drop below 10° Centigrade or so!

Coolant heat goes from here to the driver's side, into the Vormax filter, then into the left vegoil tank. The coolant outlet of the left tank is tightly bundled with the fuel lines going to the right tank and the fill/recirculate valve, and the whole bundle covered with insulation. This so-called "hose on hose" (HOH) tecnique extracts a bit more heat from the coolant into the vegoil.

From the right tank outlet, coolant goes through a 2cm (3/4") ball valve that is easily reached from outside the vehicle without crawling under. This allows the heat to the fuel system to be cut off when the tanks are empty.

Fuel

I used over nine meters (10') of rubber 1 cm (3/8") tubing for the fuel plumbing. When the hole thing was plumbed, I fired it up, leak-checked, then went back and covered all the added plumbing with foam pipe insulation.

Connections were via brass hose barb fittings and stainless steel hose clamps.

Aux Heat

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the Webasto to work. I'm going to dig back into it in early 2005, and rip it out for warranty replacement, if necessary.

Issues/Problems