A brand new Davco 234 heater/filter is for sale on Craigslist (my friend is selling it). I have put 18,000 happy wvo miles on mine. See the listing here.

Prince Charles will be converting his entire automotive fleet to vehicles running on B100 Biodiesel. Check out the details on AutoblogGreen.

I collected 45 gallons of wvo this weekend at my favorite Chinese place. Yesterday morning was cold (around 40 degrees). The cubies had been sitting on the concrete floor of my unheated filtering room and had obviously been chilled, to say the least. When I started pouring the oil into the funnel atop my 55-gallon filtering drum, out came something the consistency of oatmeal – or more accurately – stirred up jelly.

Much of it actually passed through the filter during the day as temperatures climbed into the high 50’s. My winter filtering has been and will likely continue to be quite slow. It was my hope to collect enough oil in the summer to carry me through the winter but that didn’t happen.

A couple friends and I have just ordered 660 gallons of filtered wvo from a guy who collects, filters and sells it. We will receive our delivery on Thursday. He collects all types of oil but filters and settles the oil rigorously. This is an experiment. I will let you know how the trial goes, running on the new oil.

In Joshua Tree, I met two cool people with vegcars. One was driving hers, the other had hitched a ride with someone else. The vegcar pictured is an ‘84 300D with a two tank conversion (Greasecar kit, I think).

I think the two-tank system is overly cautious, especially since the car is driven primarily in Los Angeles. Sometimes I wish we could fast-forward 10 years and see how these cars actually wear over time. Though many “experts” say the early 80’s MBZs work fine with a single tank conversion, do they really know? There is a lot of talk about injector wear, and other pitfalls, but who really knows? I don’t.

All I know is from anecdotal evidence. I have put more than 20,000 miles on my car, single-tank, running on 100% wvo. I haven’t had any performance degredation that I am aware of. I also maintain that the car has never failed to start due to cold, down to around 18 degrees (f).

I finally figured out why my car didn’t start the other day. The alternator died! This is the Bosch alternator installed by my mechanic in August. I brought my battery charger with my on the trip knowing that something funny had been happening. I thought the issue had to do with one of the electric appliances that I installed. These include the injector line heater and the booster fuel pump.

In the end it was the alternator and my mechanic installed another new on on Friday. There was no charge, of course.

The trip home was interesting. 365 miles and I couldn’t turn off the car and restart without a jump start. I stopped for some food in lovely Delano, CA and a nice guy and his girlfriend gave me a jump. The photo is of a sunrise at the meditation course.