Small oil burner recommendations pls.

[raccabuda]

Ive had 3 ZX's (one got pinched, I sold one when I got the S2 cos I was only doing 20 miles a day to work and back and another wrote itself off when the bonnet came up at70)!

I've now got an early 406 and every one has run perfectly on 100% veg oil in the summer and about 80/20 in winter, you need to make sure the glow plugs are up to scratch though!

They've all been pretty much bullet proof mechanically with only 1 CV joint to change on all four(apart from the bonnet trying to get into the cabin through the sunroof obviously)! One point is to check all the electrics, cos that's not a French strong point!

Regarding the Rover, my other half has a 620td and it's a comfortable cruiser and it's got 15bhp over the Frenchies, which is quite a notcable difference when each horse counts!

Good luck, Dave.

[sheppardnias]

I'm running a Passat 130TDI PD on about 30 - 40% veg oil. It's 4 years old, 132k miles and runs a remap at about 160BHP.

Smokes slightly on start up with oil in the tank and is lumpy for the first 20 secs but after that it runs absolutely fine. Fuel economy doesn't really change with oil in the tank and I haven't seen any change in the way it drives at all. I even tow running on the mix and recently took a Peugeot 205 GTI on a twin axle trailer from Wigan to Edinburgh at a slightly quicker speed than I should and returned with the empty trailer. Still averaged 35 MPG on the journey.

It's a great car but in terms of value, a Peugeot 306 / 406 or Citroen ZX / Xantia wins hands down. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to repair and very little if any different on fuel.