B5 Diesel fuel no longer offered by my dealer

[Furu]

Where I have purchased my diesel fuel for the last 8 years no longer sells B5 diesel (5% biodiesel) I never really worried about the loss of lubricity with ULSD since the B5 added the required lubricity back in without adding the problems that higher level bio-D can create.

I now have to decide if want to buy straight bio-D and mix it with dino-D to get back to B5 or to go to adding an additive. I am not really worried about the standard treatment issues that folks address but am looking at a lubricity additive only. Some treatments accomplish multiple thing however.
I am aware of and heard good thing about the following:

Power Service
OptiLube
Stanadyne

What do you guy use and what are your pros and cons for what you use?

Or due you think it all hooey and don't bother.

Thanks

 

[aczlan]

We run Power Service in the white bottle to keep it from gelling in the winter and usually run the same in the summer.

Aaron Z

 

[JasG]

We run Stanadyne Performance Formula and had very good results. No gelling and it seems to do everything it claims. My wife's uncle also uses it on his farm.

My dad for his Kubota uses power service.

 

[DeereMann]

There are studies that prove soybean-based biodiesel adds significant lubricity to diesel fuel, so loss of that could be a problem if the supplier does not offset the loss of lubricity with additives. Since there is no way to know what they do, I would suggest protecting your investment with your own supplemental additive.

I use OptiLube XPD in the winter & OptiLube Boost in the summer. There are other theads on this, search for additives.

Good luck.

look at post #13............http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/mahindra-owning-operating/292194-do-new-tractors-need-fuel-3.html

 

[nahfwt]

I have done a lot of research on this and the lubricity additives test from 2007 that is so wildly touted on the internet uses a baseline of untreated diesel fuel. Any diesel fuel you buy at a pump will be treated to meet the lubricity requirements of ASTM D975 which is the diesel standard that all the manufacturers have in mind when they design a Diesel engine for the US. So the short answer is that no, you do not have to add anything to fuel from the pump.

 

[batwing]

GM recommends not using an additive, but I put some stanadyne in my Duramax for extra lubricity, them injectors are expensive!
Ron

 

[jagyzf]

GM recommends not using an additive, but I put some stanadyne in my Duramax for extra lubricity, them injectors are expensive!
Ron

I have read and was also shown by a fuel injection repair place. Adding a good additive is a good idea. Older engines it helps for lube, newer ones though are built to take the current fuel. That being said, what they showed me was water damage. They showed me a article on the new ULSD has more water that is blended in to the point it doesn't drop out very well. Many of these products are supposed to help deal with that water. I don't remember why, something about the process to get the sulfur out ends up blending the water in greater.

This isn't one I've seen before, but has information I have seen before.

Expedite Now Trucking Magazine - Be Aware Of ULSD Issues

 

[batwing]

I also put some seafoam in all my vehicles once in a while to remove carbon deposits among other things. if I was putting a lot of hard miles on my toys I would use less additive including marvel mystery oil.
Ron

 

[DeereMann]

I have done a lot of research on this and the lubricity additives test from 2007 that is so wildly touted on the internet uses a baseline of untreated diesel fuel. Any diesel fuel you buy at a pump will be treated to meet the lubricity requirements of ASTM D975 which is the diesel standard that all the manufacturers have in mind when they design a Diesel engine for the US. So the short answer is that no, you do not have to add anything to fuel from the pump.

I don't think that conclusion is correct. You need to dig a little further into what the fuel injection pump requirements are - 460mm wear ball scar max. The pump blenders are supposed to blend to 520mm max. The Spicer report give us relative differences, not absolutes. The information is still useful, and unless you test your pump fuel lubricity every time you fill up, it is wise to use additive to protect the most expensive part of any diesel engine (the fuel injection system).

 

[nahfwt]

I don't think that conclusion is correct. You need to dig a little further into what the fuel injection pump requirements are - 460mm wear ball scar max. The pump blenders are supposed to blend to 520mm max. The Spicer report give us relative differences, not absolutes. The information is still useful, and unless you test your pump fuel lubricity every time you fill up, it is wise to use additive to protect the most expensive part of any diesel engine (the fuel injection system).

I think my conclusion is correct and here is why. First off it's a 520 micron (not mm) wear scar from the HFRR test a micron is 10^-6 meters ( a human hair is about 100 microns in diameter). That 460 number was a suggestion from European manufacturers for the European market in 2003. There is contention among the experts about what that number should be, they have agreed that fuels with values higher than 600 may not prevent excessive wear and fuels with values lower than 450 should provide sufficient lubricity. Whenever you see the words may and should that is a sure sign that those are not hard and fast numbers. There are three problems with the D6079 high frequency reciprocating rig (HFRR) method. 1 Correlation between the test a fuel injection equipment is not perfect. 2 This test is not applicable to all fuel-additive combinations. 3 The reproducibility value is the test method is large ie large variance between tests of the same fluid. The better test to use as a metric is the industry accepted long term durability pump test such as Test Method D6898. I agree that the Spicer report is interesting and is useful from the standpoint of adding lubricity to untreated diesel fuel. However no end user is buying untreated fuel the oil company you are buying the fuel from has included additives for you to meet the ASTM D975 spec. A subtle point is that the addition of an additive package will not yield a linear response meaning that just because you have doubled up in the additive does not mean you have doubled the lubricity or any of the other properties being modified. This is called a buffering effect. In addition do you know for certain that what you are adding is compatible with the additive mix already present in the fuel? Mixing incompatible additive packages can have the effect of decreasing the characteristic that you are trying to modify. This happens because there could be a limit to the amount of free charges in the solution and you basically tie up your chemical reactions. So I also agree that no one should run untreated fuel but this fuel has already been treated. If you are having fuel contamination issues you need to find a different source of fuel as this is not something that can be fixed by pouring in chemicals. Ultimately you can do as you choose, I am going to follow the recommendations of my equipment manufacturers and industry who say to not run an additive instead of the recommendation of the guys selling additives.