Shrek said:
this indicates a misunderstanding of what alpine/winter diesel is.
normal diesel fuel starts to gel at about -5. it will not flow.
I have learnt lots about diesel and waxing. Over three winters living at Dinner Plain and one camping trip on the Dargo High plains road in January.
After the January episode which happened to a mates cruiser, we did some testing.
We brought fuel from various servos in town and used a car fridge/freezer we could control temperature on to see what happened when.
Safeway fuel started to wax at +4.5 and we could not suck it through the inline filter that is in the fuel tank at 3 degrees.
Mobil, Shell and BP were good to 0 degrees and completely stopped flowing at -3.
The waxing starts around the edges of the container, similar to ice forming on a glass of water. When we tried to suck the fuel through the filter the waxing pulled onto the filter and blocked it amazing fast.
When living at Dinner Plain for seasons '07, '08 & '09 we could not get reliable Alpine Diesel on the Omeo side of the hill. When I say reliable, we were running two 4x4's, a 200 series cruiser and a '04 Hilux (last of old shape and engine)
If we filled the cruiser at any outlet on the Omeo side of the hill with "Alpine diesel" it would run like a pig, when it got below -2 would stop running completely.
Pete Canning would arrive with his heater and then the bloody computer would spit the dummy, requiring disconnection of the batteries to reset the computer. Once the computer had a problem, it would go into "safe mode" not allowing the engine to go above 2000rpm.
The Hilux would still run, just. Because a diesel fuel pump, pumps more fuel than consumed by the engine, it recirculates the unused fuel back to the tank, each time it goes around it gets a little more heat and will slowly correct itself.
The drive from DP to Hotham was enough to clear it out and the truck would be running fine again.
As we were on and off the mountain each week, we ended up just buying Shell fuel on the coast and putting our own additive in. Toyota told us, that by us putting the additive in ourselves we were voiding our warranty on the cruiser.
These days we can buy Alpine diesel at Safeway in Lakes Entrance and Bairnsdale and over the last three seasons have not had an issues with it at all.
We now run two diesels, a Hyundai i30 and a VW Amarok.