Biodiesel: Mitsubishi Triton run on chicken fat!

“You fed your Mitsubishi Triton diesel chicken fat? And now you tell me it’s feeling sick?” Well I have to admit, I felt a bit sick too when Gene from Queensland told us what he’d done to his Mitsubishi Triton that he was running on chicken fat. Before we get started, I know what you’re thinking… chicken fat? What??? Well, chicken fat (and other animal fats) are actually a common base ingredient for Biodiesel.

The whole idea of Biodiesel is utilising otherwise waste products to power engines.

Heated chicken fat will burn, and Gene had been successfully using it in his 2.5L turbo diesel Mitsubishi Triton for some time. The key is you switch it over to run on diesel before you shut it down. That way the chicken fat doesn’t solidify overnight in your fuel pumps and injectors. A 10 minute stop is fine, but this time Gene stopped for three hours! He switched it back to diesel and she started, but wouldn’t get over 2000rpm, and much less on hills. Top speed was down to 70kph, and it was a long 100km trip back home.

How to keep your Boidiesel fuel system clean…

There was no improvement! That’s about when a fellow Biodiesel member recommended he talk to us. In all honesty, we didn’t know what damage the solidified chicken fat could have done to his fuel pump and injectors, but felt that he would need something to clean out the fuel system, and also de-coke inside combustion spaces to have any chance of improving things. We sent up a small bottle of Cleanpower Fuel Treatment and FTC Decarbonizer for him to try.

It was a couple of weeks before we had another call from Gene, and this time he was a lot cheerier. He told us that he added both Cleanpower and FTC Decarbonizer to the fuel, and within 40kms, he’d started to notice an improvement. And by 100km, the Triton was performing way better than before, when it was struggling to hold 100kph. Now, it was quieter, smoother and was more responsive… doing 110kph without really trying: