Home heating oil

[KentCountyCoal]

This may be beat to death so please correct me or point me in the right direction if you can... But are there risks associated with running heating oil as alternative fuel? Where I'm from people often do this to skate around high diesel costs in dump trucks/commercial diesels. Will this be detrimental to my LLY? Thought about getting an aux tank and filling it to run as alternative on long trips. Thanks. maybe I'm

[1978steven]

Best to be careful doing something like that, the home heating oil they put in my tank here in NY is red dyed, I'm sure you get caught running that in your truck there are prolly pretty hefty fines associated.

[KentCountyCoal]

yeah same in my home state... they're cracking down on the commercial use. Thought i might be sly about it at least for the winter and use the aux tank to mask it. i know the exhaust can be tested to check for it.. but my truck wont pass emissions either way. so i dont know... i just dont want to damage anything. from what i understand its essentially the same thing, maybe a different cetaine rating? idk...

[WVRigRat05]

It wont hurt it. Make sure its clean. other than that, the DOT.

[KentCountyCoal]

Originally Posted by WVRigRat05

It wont hurt it. Make sure its clean. other than that, the DOT.

lol its funny you mention it cause my dad is a trooper and enforces this law, but still gave me the idea... go figure. even the people enforcing it know its a bull*&^ law to keep diesel prices ^

we agree with you

[07durty]

its the exact same fuel just with red dye in it. I put some in my pickup once in a while from our farm tank, just keep it clear when pulling a trailer cuz that's when they dip you!

[jblather]

Once you quit using the dyed fuel, How many tanks of fuel you'll need to run through your truck before they can't detect it anymore?

I understand that a visual test isn't the only way they detect it, but also through some sort of chemical means to detect the dye....

[Jacked_GMC]

Huge fines for using heating oil in CT and they take the plates off of your truck until you fix the issue. Also one of the companies that i worked for ran heating oil one winter, it ran a lot dirtier and tended to gell up faster in the winter than pump diesel.

[07durty]

Originally Posted by Jacked_GMC

Huge fines for using heating oil in CT and they take the plates off of your truck until you fix the issue. Also one of the companies that i worked for ran heating oil one winter, it ran a lot dirtier and tended to gell up faster in the winter than pump diesel.

It gelling up faster doesn't make any sense because "heating oil" is supposed to be straight #1 diesel.

[spl642]

Heating oil is very different than On-road diesel fuel. It can have up to 2000 parts/million sulfur content. Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel Fuel can have a max of 15ppm. The warnings you see about newer than 2007 trucks requiring 15ppm ULSD started showing up in 2006 when the EPA required a switch from the the standard of 500ppm diesel. So if you run heating oil in a new truck you could be running 133x more sulphur than the manufacture suggests. In 2012 New York State switched to Ultra Low Sulphur Heating Oil and other states will follow, but another concern is that Heating Oil does not have a minimum Cetane requirement (Centane is the diesel equivalent of Octane) so your performance could suffer.

Originally Posted by 07durty

It gelling up faster doesn't make any sense because "heating oil" is supposed to be straight #1 diesel.

Heating Oil is #2 Diesel. In winter diesel is blended with Kerosene which has a lower freezing point to prevent gelling. Heating oil is not.

So more than a few reasons to not use it.