L200 and smartveg kit

[treeboa]

looking for some ideas from anyome who has fitted a smartveg kit to a classic model L200, mines a 2005 model warrior, not a lot of space under the bonnet, only place i can see that will take the valves is the nearside inner wing behind the battery, means moving my aux lighting relays, the pipe in pipe exchanger has me wondering though, were has anyone found it best to mount that, wiring i am thinking of down the firewall and through the passenger side floor mounted gromet as thats shielded ( my spots wiring goes that route into the cab
then its the tank, i have a load liner and a full canopy on mine as i carry three labs and or my fishing tackle in the back, thinking of mounting below the floor with a floor flap for access to the filler, has anyone done this, if so where mounted

cheers in advance for anyones thoughts

[Nathaniel]

If you lie underneatht he rear of the truck and look behind the rear quarter panel of the pickup bed there should be quite a big empty gap behind this panel (There certainly is on a Hilux)

I would fit a startup tank here.

In my opinion a suitable tank would be a coolant expansion tank from behind the cab on a wagon (you don't see so many with these nowadays, I think the older DAF's had them.

Nice flat sturdy tank.

[treeboa]

hi nat, oooo good thinking there mate, not able to play today as its persisting down and i dont have anywere under cover, still the expansion tank idea has got to be worth looking into

managed to get the valves attached to the inner wing and one pipe on to the exchanger before `rain stopped play`

[treeboa]

right the kits fitted, to be honest about this if i had paid smartveg for it they would have sore ears, the kit is not supplied for the L200, for someone who is mechanically minded the problems of fitting the kit are easy, for someone who changes oil and checks tyre pressures they will come unstuck most likely, so lets start off with the first glaring error
the manuals supplied, its a generic manual supplied i would say with ALL smartveg kits, no suplimentary info for the l200 supplied, the manual talks about a wire thats on the loom that is not on this kit, no sticker in the manual to say they no longer fit it, its not missing either as theres no sign of it ever being fitted in the multi plug

so now lets move onto the kit itself
1 length of heater hose, slightly larger than the mitsi heater hose fitted

1 length of fuel pipe, fits to the filter and all the bits that smartveg supply, however once you reach the injector pump the pipe is too big for the tails on that, now comes the fun bit, ALL the pipe clips supplied were far too small to fit the fuel pipe supplied !!

two leak off blanking pipes, far too small to fit the injector leak off for the injectors or the injector pump, had to source diiffent bore pipe and blanking plugs, plus clips to suit

you tee off the injector pump return and feed the injector leak offs to that, the supplied plastic tee is of poor quality, the smaller elbow of the tee broke off pushing the pipe on, good job there were two in the box, should be metal, again none of the supplied pipe clips fitted

so to now i have had to locate a length of correct size pipes and clips to fit not only the new pipes but also the smart veg pipes, then a blanking plug, £20 added to the cost of the kit, and if you did it on a bank holiday or say a sunday you would be in trouble as no where would be available to get the bits from

one of the resons for these kits is to have all the parts you need in one box, the smartveg kit is sadly lacking in this and in my opinion has been thrown together without any form of consideration for different vehicles, the amount jubilee clips and other none mitsi adaptors for the heat side shows this, i would have thought that the kit priced as it is would have been more comprehensive and had at least a manual that was at least mitsi based

would i recomend it as a kit for a mitsubushi -NO, it is a basic multi vehicle kit that needs other parts to finish the conversion, something smartveg do not say

so lets have a bit about fitting it
the pipe in pipe exchanger i have fitted on the firewall , ideal for the water connections and the fuel pipes, the valve block i have fitted to the nearside inner wing behind the battery, the wires from the control valves i have routed under the vehicle and up through the shielded gromet in the passenger footwell, the switch is fitted to the right of the gear lever on the center console, the display is mounted below the console just below the `junk` hole but in front of the transfeer lever, the main control unit i hoped to fit behind the console but without drastic mods and loosing the `junk` hole it was a none starter, so the control unit is tucked away under the dash on the passenger side
wiring for me was easy, my warrior had a mobile phone cradle when i got it, the wiring to that supplied perm live and a live when the ign was on, including when being cranked, so that saved me jointing into the main harness, the night time lighting i picked up from the glove box lights feed wire as that becomes live with side lights

i have the mitsi rear cover on mine, so the 33ltr tank ( tbh i feel too big) is now fitted against the tub front wall, drilling a hole through the floor and the liner was not the easiest of jobs, but it brought the fuel line out over the orig fuel tank which will protect it from damage i hope, another problem here, they supply and grommit and recomend a 20 mm hole once fitted you can just get the fuel pipe through never mind the vent pipe or the wires from the tank level float. so you need to either make a larger hole or drill two holes

again i would say the supplied tank is too big if you as i do use the rear space, a better idea may have been for a tank that could be fitted under the tub on the rear valance, a filling spout feeding out though a hole drilled into the valance possibly

as to how it runs i will have to wait to report on that, i am away on hols next week so hopefully i will get a better idea of its running on 100% svo then

time to fit is hard to say fully as i have been doing it over three days, rain and having no cover has not helped, in total though i would say 7 hours, not inclluding sourcing other parts

[terence]

that may have something to do with them goin bust !

[treeboa]

i didnt buy it off them bud, it was purchased some time ago by someone else. who i brought it off, unopened and unfitted ( 1/2 price), he got it as an L200 kit, so unless they could see the problems when he did ibuy it then possibly it could have been thrown together, still though if anyone on here has one unfitted, ( with what i found poss for any vehicle) then hopefully if nothing else i have warned of the possible problems before they disable thier vehicle

had it out on a test run, seems fine, set it to flush before getting back, let it cool down a fair bit and she restarted no problems, i did do a stop without flushing the system on purpose, nice audible warning that you have forgotton

end the day i have a twin tank system which will hopefully seriously improve my running costs

terrance you seem to be a guy inthe know, assuming you run near out of veg on these systems, as you know the aux tank flushes to the main, will it affect the fuel if you run straight dino or bio running through a heat exchanger untill you can get the tank filled back up with veg

[terence]

Nope any quantity of Bio or Derv in the main tank will pose no probs at all, the aux tank tends to empty and airlock mine if i forget to fill it....

keep the veg tank topped up though because if left for a while it will form condensation in the tank and algae can grow in it.

i estimate that when flushing mine down it uses 400ml of bio to do so, so in my veg tank i get 400 ml of dilution every time i flush it. in theory a 50 /50 mix veg bio shouldnt need flushed , but its best to do so.

HTH

[treeboa]

thanks for the replies there bud, must admit my one worry was dino becoming a problem if run through a heat exchanger on a hot summers day - stop laughing it might happen one day
algea buildup was one thing i had not thought about, again thanks for warning me on that one

[terence]

I drove across Morooco and western sahara with a HE on diesel, because i couldnt get veggy cheaper than diesel.

twas fine..


youll never get close to th flashpoint and apart from the density issues , the hot fuel , up to a certain point is more easily and more completely combusted...

[treeboa]

can see this country providing that kind of ambient heat, your thoughts and advice appreciated sir, many thanks

[terence]

you are very welcome , thank you. for taking the time to appreciate it.

[Nathaniel]

I noticed better MPG when running dino through a HE

Never did any proper trials tho.

[treeboa]

well she now has 100 miles on veg under her belt, not a lot yet but still its a start, there is deff a slight improvement on the svo i am using power wise, also a smoother feel to the engine, a long hill this morn was were she went onto veg from dino, foot in same place and she increased speed a few miles per hour, hard to say as yet if the mpg is better or worse, or even the same, end the day if the same i will still be getting more miles per £ which is good

as a side note i may have found someone who is being charged to take away thier old cooking oil, awaiting confirmation i can have it instead

[treeboa]

now the part smartveg dont supply, the labrador pup tank protector

takes up more space than i would like but with the `girls` its needed, plus it gives me something to bungee my fishing box to, perhaps in the event the strap gives way it will also keep the tank from bouncing around the back, has a flapped cutout over the filler which i can lock down

[Nathaniel]

Nice addition

I have to waste veg that the moment which seems like rocket fuel!

The truck has never gone so fast! Its usually slower on WVO than it is on Diesel...

[treeboa]

ok returned last night from our hols, bridgnorth for some quality fishing, took off down there on svo, ran like a dream, took 19 ltrs with me, all i could get in the back with her kitchen sink , rod bag on the roof rack and the spots mounted to the front roof bar, stopped on A38 and put the 19 ltrs in, while down there i met someone i could get wvo filtered to 1 micron off, total trip i have averaged around 30/32mpg, that was going down there at around 60 mph, a fair bit of around town and around the fishing marks were i was not expecting a good mpg, then the return trip were i was averaging around 70mph, not bad for a vehicle that the back was full, carrying two adults, 3 labradors and our 10 year old lad, plus as i say she has the roof bars on and has 4 big spots mounted on that

misshap lol, second day in she started like a drunk in the morning, then while on warm up ran out of dino ( must fit the wire to the aux tank sensor ) absolute pita to bleed, thought at one point the battery was going to die on me as well, , found the best way was to blow into the vent pipe while someone operated the bulb type pump on the dino side the system, deff going to change this to a cav type filter i have that has a pump on the housing, if nothing else it has shown me that i need to keep an eye on the aux tank levels, she still had a gallon or so in the tank but as its flat bottomed the slight inlines mean it can suck air, she had three gallons in it when i fitted the kit and has only done the initial bleed and the flushes before stopping, around 6 of them, though i may have done a few more, im actually supprised how much seems to have been used, so from now on i am flushing her on tickover rather than a few miles from a stop, reasoning behind that is the leakoff goes to the main tank still and tickover should use a lot less than normal driving, end the day its a timed process, around 90 seconds, again warm up, i will do it on tickover, gives turbo chance to be well fed with warmer oil as well

fun side, seems to stop idiots tailgating the bus, obviously the chippy/fryup smell coming from the back is especially disturbing to the idiot brigade that think its fun to see how close they can get to the tailgate

filling with a 20ltr container in a carpark, you can see people talking - "look at that idiot over there, god hes putting cooking oil in tht vehicle", then they walk away laughing, now to those in the know i have a big greedy vehicle that at whats its cost in `new` age fuel is doing around 60mpg at todays prices ( around 50p a ltr ), cheaper than running your average car and im the one whos really laughing