Tomorrow I am heading to Joshua Tree. I’m going to be serving on a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It is a 364 mile drive each way. At 24 miles per gallon I will need roughly 30 gallons of veggie oil for the journey. My tank holds around 18, so I’ll bring 20 gallons in my trunk in cubies. I love pulling into a gas station in southern California, putting on my rubber gloves and pouring my own wvo into the tank.

The temperature has warmed up a bit here. Yesterday morning was around 35 degrees and the car started up fine. Morning temperatures in the teens seem to be the point at which I need to pre-warm the engine a bit.

I won’t be posting until I return from Joshua Tree, so to all vegcar.net readers…

Happy solstice, holidays, and New Year. May the new year bring peace and harmony to all beings!

Dan

This morning was a first. My car wouldn’t start. Sure, I have had other times the car wouldn’t start but for reasons related to failed equipment. This morning it was just too cold. At 9:00 am when I tried to start the car the thermometer read 15 degrees (fahrenheit). The engine barely turned over.

I turned on my injector heaters and left them on for 10 minutes or so. I figured I’d warm up the engine that way. It didn’t work. I wanted to get to work so I just drove my pickup truck. If I had taken more time, I feel confident that I could have warmed the injector pump enough to start.

My mom recently told me a story about our neighbor Herb, who, in the late 1970s drove a Mercedes diesel. We lived in the Boston area and the winter the mornings were frequently bitter cold. Herb would light a few charcoal briquettes and place them on a pie tin under his engine. Then he was off to work.

Temperatures in the teens are pretty unusual here, so I am not too concerned. I would like to see if the injector line heaters (from Fattywagons) are sufficient to get a start on a really cold morning. We’ll see.

UPDATE 1/4/07 – Now that I have received confirmation from my mechanic that the alternator that he installed in August failed, I know that the failure to start was due to a low battery charge and not the cold weather. I am happy to conclude that my single tank converted 300D has not failed to start due to cold thus far. My coldest morning start was last winter on an 18 degree (f) morning.

Last winter I met a woman passing through town with her Ford Powerstroke pickup (a big green truck with a camper shell), looking for some filtered oil. I just came across her blog which is appropriately named, biggreentruck. It is well-written, interesting and a good window on how it is to travel in a veg powered vehicle. Check it out here.

My friend just procured a 300D to add to the growing fleet in our little town. We are going to convert it soon. I recommended (and we ordered) the parts from Lovecraft Biofuels. I am so impressed by the performance of their heater/filter, the heat exchanger and the booster pump.

I have had two cold morning starts since installing the booster pump and I like the results. I have a 4 mile drive to work each morning that takes me up 1,000 feet in elevation. Going up the steeper parts of the hill, I was having a bit of a “bogging” problem last week. I guessed that the car’s fuel pump was just having a difficult time pumping the cold veg oil from the fuel tank, forward.

Since installing the booster pump, I have had two cold mornings to try it out. I have had no bogging at all. I know this is just anecdotal data, and on a very small sample size (2), but it seems like a significant change.

I’ll post more when winter really sets in here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

Today I installed a 12-volt, inline booster pump in my vegcar. The pump pulls the fuel into the engine compartment from the fuel tank. It then pushes the fuel into the Davco heater/filter. The idea is to relieve my car’s fuel pump and injector pump as much as possible from the effort required to move the vegetable oil – especially when it is cold and thick.

I got the pump from Lovecraft Biofuels. Another side benefit, is when changing the filter in the Davco, one has to pump the little hand pump to purge air and draw fuel into the injector lines. In the new configuration, the pump will fill the Davco when the key is in the #2 position. I’ll let you know how this works the next time I change my Davco filter.

I’ll post some photos when I have a chance.