uses for used motor oil?

[JJZ 109]

My vortex v6 in my blazer likes to drink a little off road diesel.

Just out of curiosity, what would the benefit be?

 

[pjbci]

Im wondering the same thing. Offroad fuel here is more expensive than premium gas.

 

[Diamondpilot]

I was thinking of 2 possible uses for used motor oil;
1. In a hydraulic system.
seams like even used motor oil has got to be better than many hydraulic oils since it is a much higher grade of oil to start with. Could this cause damage? I don't see how having suspended carbon in the oil would hurt anything and the loss of additives would mean nothing to hydraulic oil.
2. Well diluted in diesel fuel.
I've heard of people burning straight ATF, so it seams like I could burn used motor oil at 10:1 or so without any harm

I'd rather not go through the hassle of properly recycling it if I don't have to, and if I can get away with using it in place of something that would cost $4 a gallon or even $20 a gallon, all that much better, but it certainly isn't worth risking the equipment if it isn't safe.

What do you guys think?

You are walking over a dollar to pick up a penny here. Trust me on this one. I do a 100 plus oil changes a year and you are better off just getting rid of it. The cost savings on say diesel fuel would be lost 10 times over if you ate up a injector pump or even just more filter cost. Lets not even talk about the cost of injectors themselves.

Same holds true for your hydraulic system.

Trust me, I am cheap also but there are times to cut corners and times to do it right.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

I'm surprised it works well. Bar oil has "stickiness" additives in it.

Yep, it does. Use the right oil for your saw also. A $6 gallon of bar oil last the average guy a year or more.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

Just out of curiosity, what would the benefit be?

Diesel burns hotter than gas. He is cleaning up the valves and pistons of carbon deposits doing this. Old trick but can do damage also if used wrong.

Chris

 

[D7E]

I use it mainly for torching brush piles, preservative for wood lumber, coat it on some of my farm implements especially if it has fertilizer hopper. My planter and seed drill and drop spreader owners manuals all recommend coating with used oil or diesel.

Likewise... most goes for lighting fires on bush clearing and some on rusty knives on combine headers/haybines etc .

 

[D7E]

Yep, it does. Use the right oil for your saw also. A $6 gallon of bar oil last the average guy a year or more.

Chris

We cut 150 cords a year firewood and i have always just used new 15/40 in saws , I worked for some large forestry and logging crews and 15/40 is all they used too wether company workers or self employed that supply saws .

 

[LD1]

Regardless of what your flavor for bar oil is (engine oil, bar oil, veg oil), I would certainly NOT put used engine oil in MY saws.

It isnt the bar and chain I am worried about, it is the oil pump. ALOT of saws just use a plastic/nylon gears. They like clean oil. And if an oil pump goes out, it can get expensive. Not to mentioned some of the 20+ year old saws I have that you just cannot find parts for anymore. Last thing I'd want to do is make the saw totally unusable because I tried to save a few pennies with used motor oil. Not to metion the environmental concerns, but that is another matter completely.

So that leaves me with ONLY clean oil that will go into my saws. And bar oil @ $6/gallon is about the cheapest there is. So that is what I use.

We cut ~20-30 FULL cord per year. And are lucky if we even use 3-4 gallons. So what am I saving???? $25 for ~ $3k plus worth of wood??

 

[grsthegreat]

Diesel burns hotter than gas. He is cleaning up the valves and pistons of carbon deposits doing this. Old trick but can do damage also if used wrong.

Chris

I thought the opposite was true. A gasoline engine runs hotter overall than my diesels do. The gas blocks are way hotter.

 

[MHarryE]

Cat's , especially the older one were designed to be road job friendly. A road crew would only need to have one oil (15w40) and it could be used thru the entire machine. Most other brands are not made this way. Komatsu for example, you better be using 10w hyd oil and 30w trans fluid or you are headed for more problems than you can stand. The newer equipment with wet brake systems are very picky about the type oil that's required. Use the wrong type fluid and you will find out the hard way that you have no brakes. With the high prices of parts and repair these days how much money are you really saving by dumping used engine oil in anything?
I had a friend that would mix his used oil in the fuel in his Pete then turn around and complain about having to change his fuel filters so often. What good is it if you are changing your filters 2 or 3 times more often than normal.
Good use for old engine oil? Burning brushpiles.
Bar oil??? As high as a new Stihl bar and chain cost, I'll pay a few dollars for bar oil. You might get by with used oil if you only went thru a gallon or two every few years. We've went thru 4 or 5 gallons of bar oil in the last few months. My Stihl dealer said not to use even new motor oil for lube. It just doesn't have the correct additives to lubricate propperly.
That's just my 2 cents anyway.

Cat current equipment has 15W-40 engine oil as a recommended hydraulic oil. For the most part Cat uses the same hydaulic component suppliers as all the other major manufacturers.

This chart is their recommendation for all Cat hydraulic and hydrostatic systems. Note that for many of the temperature ranges engine oil (DEO is Diesel Engine Oil, DEO-ULS is Diesel Engine Oil - Ultra Low Sulphur. 15W-40 is good from 5° to 122° while their standard fill 10W is -4° to 104°. Sorry about the formatting getting all mixed up.

Hydraulic System and Hydrostatic Transmissions
Lubricant Viscosities for Ambient Temperatures
Oil Type and Performance Requirements
Oil Viscosities ï½°C ï½°F
Min Max Min Max
Cat HYDO Advanced 10
Cat TDTO SAE 10W -20 40 -4 104
Cat HYDO Advanced 30
Cat TDTO SAE 30 0 50 32 122
Cat BIO HYDO Advanced "ISO 46" Multi-Grade -30 45 -22 113
Cat MTO
Cat DEO-ULS
Cat DEO SAE10W-30 -20 40 -4 104
Cat DEO-ULS
Cat DEO SAE15W-40 -15 50 5 122
Cat TDTO-TMS Multi-Grade -15 50 5 122
Cat DEO-ULS SYN
Cat DEO SYN SAE 5W-40 -25 40 -13 104
Cat DEO-ULS Cold Weather SAE0W-40 -40 40 -40 104
Cat TDTO Cold Weather SAE 0W-20 -40 40 -40 104

 

[schweizer]

I use waste motor oil (WMO) in a Listeroid 6/1 stationary diesel engine (1920's technology, 600 rpm, 5 inch piston, 800 lbs, and only 6 hp). Start and stop on red diesel, then switch to WMO when hot. Carbon deposits will form on the injector which needs to be cleaned every so often, but that's easy to do. I let the WMO sit in 55 gal drums for >6mos to settle out as many particulates as possible, then it gets thinned with about 20% diesel. After that I heat it in a 40 gal old water heater tank, then centrifuge it at 8000 rpm. Great free fuel! Time will tell how long the engine lasts...

Marcus

 

[Diamondpilot]

We cut 150 cords a year firewood and i have always just used new 15/40 in saws , I worked for some large forestry and logging crews and 15/40 is all they used too wether company workers or self employed that supply saws .

Why use 15W40 when its twice as much?:confused2: Around here the cheapest 15W40 oil I can get, (Rotella, Dello 400, or Mobil Delvac) runs $12 per gallon. I can buy bar oil all day long at Menards or Rural King for $5.99 per gallon.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

I use waste motor oil (WMO) in a Listeroid 6/1 stationary diesel engine (1920's technology, 600 rpm, 5 inch piston, 800 lbs, and only 6 hp). Start and stop on red diesel, then switch to WMO when hot. Carbon deposits will form on the injector which needs to be cleaned every so often, but that's easy to do. I let the WMO sit in 55 gal drums for >6mos to settle out as many particulates as possible, then it gets thinned with about 20% diesel. After that I heat it in a 40 gal old water heater tank, then centrifuge it at 8000 rpm. Great free fuel! Time will tell how long the engine lasts...

Marcus

Does not sound free to me. Sounds like a lot of equipment is needed and work to get something usable. How much fuel do you use per year in this engine and what is your time worth?

I looked into bio diesel a few years back. Just was not worth it in the long run. Kind of a false economy when I considered my time and setup cost.

Chris

 

[rsewill]

After that I heat it in a 40 gal old water heater tank, then centrifuge it at 8000 rpm.
Marcus

Centrifuge? Must be quite the centrifuge! Do you get much waste product from centrifuging your oil?

 

[schweizer]

Sounds like a lot of equipment is needed and work to get something usable. How much fuel do you use per year in this engine and what is your time worth?

Yeah, it's probably more trouble than what it's worth for most people, including me. Now that it's running, There's actually not much time involved. We're off-the-grid and this time of year the generator provides us w/ over half our power, so it's running a few hours/day. Burning a gallon a day probably saves me $100/month of diesel. The centrifuge was about $500 w/ gear pump & motor. The old water heater tank was free. WMO is free from friends.

You can get the little centrifuges at: PA Biodiesel Supply : Waste Vegetable Oil Cleaning : Biodiesel Centrifuge : Motor Oil : Water Removal : WVO Filtering : Dewatering Centrifuge : WMO Filtration Units
They're not as good as the much larger ones, but cost a small fraction of the price, and this is an experiment anyway.

If you think about burning WMO in an engine, you'll need to have either a primitive old engine, something without EFI, or dilute it quite a bit. Here's my Listeroid engine: Listeroid 1

Marcus

 

[Tollster]

I use it as Bar oil as well with no issues, the bark alone has more dirt than any cup of oil from my truck.

I also use it on green wood piles,pine and hemlock, diesel, oil,and the leaf blower will get any pile to consume itself...fairly quick I might add.

 

[SHORT KID]

I had a mechanic friend that worked for Roadway Express, their engines were piped right into the fuel tanks. the oil was metered and every so many miles they just added oil to the engine. The filters were changed at normal intervals and all was well. They saved money and time that way and always had clean oil and no disposal.

 

[KubotainNH]

I would not put used motor oil in a chain saw. My FIL did this for a couple seasons and then the pump stopped drawing oil. I took the saw apart and found the lube oil hose was like goo, I assume from the contaminates in the used oil. I have burned some in my house oil furnace. I filtered and mixed it with normal fuel with no issues. The furnace filter and blower nozzle get replaced fairly often as maintenance and haven't seen any issues. Actually, I'm way overdue to replace them as it is and it's still fine.

 

[Bud Soda]

Just out of curiosity, what would the benefit be?

Maybe top cylinder lube I guess.

 

[fairwelder]

I pour my used motor oil on my sandy road. Helps settle the sand and control dust