Greasy Field Report

"While my VW TDI is the best vehicle I have ever owned, I despise the fact that it requires fossil fuel that pollutes the environment and increases our need to maintain unsavory relationships with foreign governments. I look forward to the day that I drive an electric car (solar charged, of course), but for now, my transportation choices are limited.

That's why last Sunday, against what most folks would say was sane reasoning, I stood in front of my beloved 2001 Golf and cut the fuel lines in half.

And I did it with a smile on my face.

Running your car for (and on) peanuts [...]"

http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/1160...

"My MCI 102A3 bus can run on vegetable oil, also known as "SVO" (straight vegetable oil) or "WVO" (waste vegetable oil) or veggie oil or even vegoil.

It works like this:

1. I stop by a restaurant that has a deep fryer (chinese restaurants for example). They need to pay to get rid of their waste oil, instead I take it off their hands for free.
2. I pump the oil into a large (210 gal) "dirty" tank.
3. Oil in the dirty tank is filtered and pumped into a "clean" (50 gal) tank as needed.
4. SVO in the clean tank is sent to the engine."

http://bus.getdave.com/Infrastructure/Vegetable-Oil/

"Adventures in greasecar conversion & our quest for sustainable travel.

Our Volksvegan Adventure" is a chronicle of the adventures of Megan, Seneca, and our 1982 VW bus which is being converted to run on bio-diesel and waste vegetable oil. We will post about our conversion process using a greasecar kit, the restoration of our beloved bus, and our many veggie-fueled travels."

http://meganpru.wordpress.com/

"Here I am with my lovely 1985 300d SVO Daily Driver. I got a lot of help for this project from the owner of Greasel.com who was very friendly and extremely helpful. I used the fuel return loop instead of the normal Fuel return."

http://brittentechs.com/benz

"Here are some pictures of my dad's 300 SD that we converted. We started working on it Monday, and by Sunday we were on vegoil. I worked during the week, and dad would pick up bits & pieces during the day. Our timing for the project was a little off,mit turned out to be an incredibly busy week at work, and I had to work late a few times. At night we'd plug away making heat exchanger, tank etc... Big push was on by Friday... By Friday night we had everything wired and mapped out. Also had heat exchanger completed and had begun to run fuel lines. By Saturday night we had fuel lines run to front of car to engine compartment, and Pollack valve installed with all diesel lines. On sunday we finished our cuts into the cooling system, installed the tank, installed the fuel pump, double and triple checked everything. At about 8 PM we flipped the switch."

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=447609751...

"Well, I’ve made a significant change to my WVO design. My original plan was to have 2 seperate fuel tanks. The first would contain regular petro diesel, and the second tank would have WVO with a heat exchanger (see below). With this plan, the vehicle is started on the diesel, and once the WVO has warmed up to coolant temp, the fuel path is switched to start injecting pure veggie oil. On Sunday I ran some viscosity experiments in the lab, and found that by blending diesel and WVO together, I can pour the mixture into my single existing tank and run it direct. I started with a 25% WVO/ 75% diesel, and found it ran quite nice. [...]"

http://www.mainelife.net/1982-vw-vanagon-wvo-conversion/

"Ours is a '87 GMC International 8.2L Detroit Diesel with Alison Automatic Tranny, and Drum brakes. The fuel system configuaration differs from a standard one in that the fuel travels from the tank through a 30 micron filter into the lift pump and then through a secondary 10 micron filter before entering the fuel injectors. This is similar to some Mercedes engines. Standard engines usually run tank->filter->injector pump. So this caused us to differ our conversion from the standard one slightly, and made our conversion a bit more challenging i think- but i could be wrong, we aren't mechanics by any stretch."

http://www.spaz.org/~clang/zinebiofuel.html

"Vegetable oil fuel tank being built. The internal pipe-work can heat solid palm oil for burning in the engine. Vegetable oil has to be heated to about 80 degrees C to attain similar viscosities to everyday road diesel. Once this temp has been achieved the fuel tanks can be switched over from normal diesel to vegetable oil."

http://www.veggiepower.org.uk/page402.htm

"First n foremost, please realize I am no Waist Vegetable Oil Guru by any stretch of the facts. Perhaps I have gone thru some additional trouble n expense to monitor the vital temperatures on my Diesle/WVO conversion project that has taught me a few things and that are both interesting and useful to others."

http://www.3cats.com/vJet/

"In April, my good long friend Bovie turned me on to a new idea that is making a movement into becoming free from the oil economy we're living in--Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) in cars. I vowed to never pay over $2.00/gal for gas back in 2003, and had to reclutantly eat my words. Well I said it again for $3.00/gal back in Sept 2005, managing to pay 2.72 at the highest peak. Well this time, no Katrina, no opec, just the plain facts that as long as people demand oil, the companies providing it will jack up thier prices. In April I noticed that 3.00/gal was coming back soon, and I really did not want to eat my words again. So Thanks to bovie, and the guys over at http://www.greaseon.com/ , I started the search. [...]

So there ya go. I'm now %98 free from the oil economy. Sure every 3000miles or so I need to use some petrol-oil for my car, but every day driving is now free. or at least more free than it was before. And within 10-12 months (perhaps less if I go on road trips this summer) it will have paid itself off financially. Not to mention I now know how to work on my 300SD!"

"This website provides conversion details for a specific car and specific conversion kit. It is meant to supplement the Greasecar.com instructions. There are also some links to good general information about conversions. This conversion information should work for a 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 Mercedes 300D. I decided to do a 15 gallon square tank in the trunk. This is so I can keep the spare tire. I converted this car while I had a second car and then sold the other car. You could do the conversion while it's your only car if you plan really well and do it in stages and on weekends."

http://www.geocities.com/jaycimini/index.html

Lots of great pics. Thanks Tonya!

"Check out my new prefiltering system in action - 10 gallons in 10 minutes including set up and tear down!

I'm in no rush during rush hour ...

I used to use an electric 12V fuel transfer pump that I had brilliantly wired a plug into my trunk. As you can see below, I would tie up one or two 5 micron filter socks to a regular camera tripod and let gravity do the work for me. It was a waiting game, taking about four 5 micron filter socks and 2 hours to setup/filter/cleanup 40 gallons of oil. I would use the 12V pump to transfer dirty grease into the filter socks, then use it again, saving my back, saving my back, to transfer the filtered grease from the catch buckets into my tank or storage containers.

Filter sock filtration is effective, no doubt. It was a bit messy though when the wind would blow droplets of oil off the sock and onto ... anything nearby. Hence, I took to filtering my oil on waste cardboard boxes (don't leave a mess in parking lots if you want to be welcomed back, Oilers!) and as you can see, my radiant blue mechanics suite assured my short skirts stay pink like they are supposed to. Nevertheless, I was rubbing grease off the side of my car and because I do not drive a beater, but a fine Punkass, ended up waxing my finish about twice as often as I would otherwise deem necessary."

"So, I have received and installed the FattyWagons 100watt "Electrotherm" inline electric straight / waste vegetable oil fuel heater in the Vanagon. You see, I wanted to save a little money by buying the $50 electrotherm rather than buying the more widely known $100 "Vegtherm" by neoteric biofuels/plantdrive.

Well, let me put it plainly. I just went and ordered the Vegtherm."

http://fillup4free.blogspot.com/2006/03/review-of-fatty...

"I currently live in hot S florida and drive an 03 jetta TDI on a blend of 85/15 SVO/diesel. I do somewhat heat my fuel but not with a two tank system. For all you south flroidians listen up."

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/15960555...

"this charming rocketsled of a vehicle is a 1982 diesel Chevette, which has been converted to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO). WVO flows freely like the nectar of the gods from the deep fryers of America. I installed the Greasel kit, and I'm convinced that the Isuzu / Chevy engineers were sitting around drinking cheap American beers when they decided to covertly design a perfect engine bay for grease conversions"

http://tharsis.ubertechnique.com/vette/

"Greasecar kit installation

The kit was installed as directed by the accompanying documentation with the following modifications and details: [...]"

http://www.veggieavenger.com/SVO-Jetta.php

"The Norton boys recently had a 2003 Volkswagen Jetta TDi converted to run on SVO. Though Tom’s the primary driver, Chuck was happy to hand over the keys to their “Vega Jet” for a spin last week and helped us understand what it’s like to own and operate a vehicle that eats out of a dumpster. Let us explain…"

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/04/04/in-the-autoblog-driv...

I just got back from a veggie road trip from Seattle to northern CA and back again. I had a chance to test out the 16 plate Kaori heat exchanger—see more at: http://www.kaori-taiwan.com/ecompa33.htm . It works well so far! I have been looking for a WVO heater that is off the shelf and cost effective… this may be it. I run a lot of miles in hot and mildly cold climates (West Coast—WA, OR, CA). I have been using the regular veg-therm (see at http://www.plantdrive.com/page4/pag...-1000-full.html) or Dana’s inline heater (at http://vegoilconversions.netfirms.c...tm#12v%20heater) on my ‘79 MB non-turbo 300TD wagon. Even running in +110° F desert heat in CA, the best WVO temp before the IP was 140° F with the regular vegtherm. Dana’s inline heater ran a tad hotter at about 150° F. I was not using a heated tank, just WVO filtered to 10 microns. As the weather got colder so did the WVO … damn, I hate when that happens. Usually you would have to heat the WVO tank and probably run two of Dana’s inline heaters (about 30 amps) or a Mega Therm (about 30 amps) (http://enviofuel.com/index.php?page...hpshop&Itemid=5)

Click here to view the Vegetable Oil Fuels Database

Straight vegetable oil (SVO) use in road going vehicles.

"I converted my 1981 diesel VW Rabbit to run on free waste vegetable oil from restaurant fryers. I get an exhilarating feeling of freedom from going down the road running on this renewable fuel."

http://www.thevoicenews.com/news/2003/0411/Features/f01...