Turbo67

Bought a 96 Ram 2500 with an earlier 93 VE Intercooled engine already installed. Been driving it the last few months and turning it up some and fixing leaks and stuff. I have learned much valuable information from this site!

The plan is to convert it to wvo. I have previously converted 2 Mercedes vehicles and been at this for a little over 5 years now driving my 87 Mercedes 300D 100 miles a day on wvo.

Anyway, I pulled out the tank and fuel reservoir to fix the tank sending unit per some of the blogs about using a small bolt and nut. That seems to work fine now, at least on the bench anyway…

Both my other vehicles use a Mallory 140 gerotor pump and I am pleased with the gerotor design and low cost of this pump. I don’t run the pump 100 percent of the time, just to purge the filters and whenever the fuel filter starts becoming clogged to get me home. The rest of the time I have a check valve in parallel with the pump and the lift pump pulls the oil around the Mallory.

While the tank was out, I decided to see how well my Mallory 140 gerotor pump would work with the stock reservoir.
Pulling from the original supply line and returning into a 5 gal bucket on the floor. After about a minute, the clear stream of oil turned to an emulsion of oil and air!

I pulled apart the stock reservoir and studied the design. It appears that the stock design requires some return flow from the injection pump to keep a level of fuel within the reservoir to cover a filter at the bottom inside of the reservoir. If this filter is not covered with fuel, it will be open to air, the air will be sucked through the filter, past a check valve and into the supply standpipe. So with all my flow going into a 5 gal bucket on the floor, none returning to the reservoir, it took about a minute to uncover the filter and allow air in. I can fill the reservoir with oil, but again after about a minute, the filter becomes uncovered and air begins to mix with the oil that is being pulled from the bottom of the reservoir past the other float / check valve assembly that is on the outside bottom of the reservoir. The pump is pulling oil from the bottom of the tank during all this, but it also pulls from the reservoir.

From my observations, this will always happen if there is no return flow from the injection pump and if the level of fuel (oil for me) is below the upper level of the open reservoir, about a half tank.

I could certainly disable this feature by modifying the reservoir, drilling holes in it just above the inner filter, but I don’t like to try to re-invent stuff if it works well. This would also potentially cause me to loose the last 1/8 of my tank volume before I “run out of fuel”.

I don’t have plans to restrict the return supply from the injection pump, so there will be return, but not having previous experience with this particular injection pump and reservoir, I was wondering if anyone on here had converted one of these vehicles ( I assume 94 to early 98 since that is what my fuel tank design would be) with a single tank system on 100 percent wvo?

Does anyone have any issues running the stock fuel reservoir / stock pickup on either moderately turned up injection pumps or running WMO or WVO?

Thanks,

Turbo67

Does anyone have any issues running the stock fuel reservoir / stock pickup on either moderately turned up injection pumps or running WMO or WVO in 94 to 98 Cummins Ram Trucks?


I think my original post was too lengthy, but posted above is why I am asking this question.
Thanks,

dieselluvr

I would not use the stock tank or pickup. The stock tank could be used if it were modified to accept a heat exchanger and pick up such as the Hot Fox or something similar.

Turbo67

I actually wound up using the stock tank with my wvo "conversion" after removing it and examining the sump and how it works. Not much of a conversion, as most things are unmodified. I removed the plastic ball check valve from the filler neck. The observation I made with the tank out and dumping into a 5 gallon bucket with an electric pump has not been an issue ..I guess because the system returns enough to keep the filter at the bottom of the reservoir covered. It has been running for 18 months now on filtered wvo. Gets 19 mpg. I did just add heated supply and return lines so I can drive it this winter. I replaced the fuel pump with a later model style that had it's regulator spring replaced with a 14 psi spring from the much higher pressure later model engines. The water sensor in the bottom of the fuel filter would leak wvo, so I just replaced the filter with a non-water sensor type. For cold weather, I have a mallory gear-rotor electric pump that pushes the oil forward, but still pull out the top of the tank thru the oem setup. I am very pleased with it.

Thanks for the reply and suggestions.