The following email is from reader DG.
Hi i am buying a 85mb 300sd tomorrow just to use as a veg car, my question is if i live in n.c. where we don’t have long extremely cold winters, is a conversion needed or can i just increase the petrodiesl during winter? and if so where do i find a list of parts needed to do it myself instead of paying top dollar for a “kit”. thanks gas prices are nearly killing my small family in an already hard economic time for us, we are barely getting by now! i work in a restaurant so this would be a lifesaver for me!! thanks
I would strongly advise against putting vegetable oil in your fuel tank without installing at least a filter and better would be a heater/filter. There are two reasons for this:
- When you put wvo (waste veg oil) in your tank it actually loosens particles of debris from the inside of your tank and fuel lines. These will end up in your injectors unless you have a filter installed to catch them.
- Even if your weather isn’t too cold, vegetable oil burns a lot better if it is heated up. You may have noticed when cooking with veg oil that when it is heated it becomes less viscous (more watery).
I would advise doing the conversion yourself. You can do a single-tank conversion (no additional fuel tank). I would recommend buying the parts from Lovecraft Biofuels. I, and several friends, got the parts from this company and they have worked very well. It is a simple installation taking only about 4 hours for a beginner. I have step-by-step instructions on how we did it right here on the blog. The kit sells for $595.
If that is too steep, you can buy a Davco 234 filter/heater, hoses and other parts from your local auto parts store and do it that way. The Davco will cost you around $250 I think plus $16 each for the Fleetguard filter inserts.
If that is too steep, I saw a conversion recently that was really simple. They tapped into the coolant line and ran the coolant through a coiled copper tube. The coil surrounded a stock filter (truck filter I think) and that was it.
Basically, you are trying to heat the oil and filter it before it gets into the injectors.
I have had very good luck with Chinese restaurant oil. Japanese and Thai restaurants seem very good as well. I have heard that the big fast food chains have really nasty oil, lot’s of solid fat in there, but I have not seen it first hand. The few times I have visited those restaurants, their oil dumpster has been locked. I remember seeing something in the Liquid Gold DVD made by Golden Fuel Systems about the low quality of their oil. That said, one friend recently told me they collect decent grease from In-N-Out Burger.
