Here is my truck (yes, it runs on gasoline!) full of cubies of wvo and a couple of new barrels. When I collect oil I do so in my vegcar. On this day my friends and I were divying up the 330 gallons of filtered wvo we purchased. I could haul more in the truck.

For those out there who haven’t started collecting wvo from restaurants here are a couple of truths:

1. Unless you are incredibly fastidious, everything gets a little sticky and starts to smell like old, used cooking oil. I recommend having some clothes just for collecting oil and wearing rubber gloves.
2. Collecting oil is fun (at least I think so)
3. Be gracious to the restaurant staff
4. Leave the area as clean or cleaner than when you arrived

A friend (and vegcar owner) recently got a laser thermometer thingy. I measured the temperature of my injector lines, after driving about 4 miles with the injector line heaters on. The temperature varied depending on my aim, but 173 was the highest.

I haven’t been using the heaters much. I sometimes switch them on for 10-15 minutes after starting on a cold day. I am concerned that for longer periods they might be too hot.

If anyone out there has any information or thoughts about these injector line heaters (from fattywagons), please let me know. Use the contact us link at the top of the page or submit a comment on this post.

Yesterday I had the misfortune of renting a Chevy HHR from Avis in Southern California. The underwhelming 4-cylinder engine felt like I was riding on a large lawn mower. I can live with a weak engine, especially if it is a fuel efficient car (which the HHR isn’t). I consider fuel efficient to be anything over 40mpg. The PR states that the car gets 30 mpg, which is in all likelihood fresh from a tune-up, going downhill with a strong tail-wind.

The fuselage of the car is large, nearly 15 feet long. Motortrend boasts, “[The HHR will] let you take your favorite eight-foot ladder wherever you go.” And they mean inside the vehicle. Avis calls this a “mid-sized car”. Chevy considers it an “SUV Crossover”.

Frankly, I don’t care that the design looks remarkably like the PT Cruiser. The worst part about this vessel, is the lack of visibility. It is as if the good people at Chevrolet have encased you in the lunar module and generously provided a couple of portholes in the back through which you can catch glimpses of earth. I am not sure what HHR stands for – and I can’t think of a clever acronym at the moment. The car should be called the Chevy Blind Spot and should be avoided at all costs!

BTW: I have gotten into the habit recently, when renting a car, of asking if they have any Hybrids. We should all keep asking until the major agencies get a clue and start offering them.

We have started using 330 gallon “totes” to store and dispense wvo. Here I am with the 660 gallons we purchased a couple of months back. As the season warms up, I will likely get back to collecting and filtering my own. Filtering in the winter is just too slow with my current setup. I am still reluctant to put additional energy into heating the oil to facilitate filtering.

This was taken on February 27 of this year. It is hard to believe it since it has been in the 70’s and 80’s all week! I got the car started a couple hours after this photo was taken. the only problem was I couldn’t get up the driveway (it gets pretty steep beyond the view in the photo). I have chains but blew off my meeting and worked at home.

My letter to Fox Rent-a Car…

Dear Madam or Sir,I flew into San Jose Airport in California on March 7 with a reservation for a Honda Civic Hybrid. I was really looking forward to renting a hybrid. So much so, that I posted about it on my blog here. To my chagrin, when I arrived at the airport, the guy behind the counter let me know that not only didn’t they have a hybrid for me, they had no cars at all. He said it in a nonchalant way, and added that this happens from time to time. Sorry.

I asked if Fox was going to help me rent from another agency, perhaps honor the $44/day rate that I had been promised when I reserved the car online. He said no. I walked down the line asking for quotes from a couple other companies. As you know, when booking at the airport, rates are considerably higher. I wasted about a half hour waiting in line and getting quotes and then got a car from Enterprise for $59/day (Hertz wanted $99!).

I posted my dissatisfaction on my blog here. I am really upset by your company’s lack of integrity around reservations. How difficult would it have been to have the agents call me and the other travelers to let us know we had no rental car waiting for us? These agents (there were two) were just sitting around. They had no business to conduct.

I applaud you for offering hybrid rentals but don’t think that I will risk the inconvenience of arriving and having no car waiting for me. I travel frequently and would have loved to do more for the environment.

Disappointedly yours,
Dan Rosenberg
North Fork, CA

I flew into San Jose this afternoon and reported to Fox Rent-a-Car to pick up my Honda Civic hybrid rental car. The guy at the counter informed me that they were out of cars, all cars. He said it could be hours or days until the cars came back in. I suggested that he could just find me a regular gasoline car but he repeated that they were completely out of cars.

I asked for prices at a couple of the other agencies and found the cheapest midsized car at Enterprise for $59/day. I took it as I didn’t have any other options. Had I pre-booked the car, it would have certainly cost significantly less.

I am torn. On one hand I applaud Fox for carrying hybrid cars. On the other hand, I feel they left me high and dry by not even attempting to let me know that they had no car for me. They didn’t even offer me a discount on a future rental. Somewhat reluctantly, I must recommend that people not book cars with Fox unless they are willing to face the same situation I did.

Check this out. I think some friends of Lovecraft made this commercial. I don’t think it actually runs on TV.

UPDATED 1-17-08: This video was removed from Youtube.

It has been pretty cold here, dipping below freezing at night and rising to the 40’s and 50’s during the day. As I filled my tank yesterday with wvo, as has happened repeatedly this winter, the bottom half of the cubie was kind of like jelly. New veg oil from Costco had the same consistency.

I have been using a 3 to 1 wvo to diesel mix and it has been performing very well. I have had no bogging lately. I don’t have a tank heater, nor a heated fuel line from the tank. I do have a booster pump that draws the wvo forward from the tank, taking some of the strain off of my injector pump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I purchased that booster pump from LovecraftBiofuels in LA.

I just booked my first hybrid rental car. It is for a business trip I am taking next week. Fox rent a car rents hybrid cars in various locations in California and Arizona. I booked a Honda Civic Hybrid. It was $44/day in San Jose which is a competitive price with the traditional gasoline engine cars. See my previous post on this rental company here.

I usually book my rental cars through one of the all-in-one travel sites. They don’t offer hybrids and I wrote them an email asking them to carry them. If they hear from enough of us, the might start carrying them.