I get frequent questions about the best way to filter oil. After three years of filtering oil, I have tried many different set ups and arrived at a pretty simple setup that works well for me. Here is a short video tour of how to set up a do-it-yourself system for filtering waste vegetable oil.

Note: The clicking sounds you hear are from a woodpecker just outside the barn. I’ll try to redo this video to improve the quality.

One popular question I get is how to set up a home fueling station. Here is a short video showing my home filling station for filtered waste vegetable oil. It is powered by solely by gravity.

Note: This is a do-it-yourself project. Vegcar.net doesn’t sell any products at this time, nor do we have plans to do so in the future.

The LA Times ran a very interesting article on vegcars, road taxes and other regulatory bureaucracy that is hampering the vegetable oil as fuel movement. Fees to become an “Inedible Grease Transporter” have increased in California to more than $400 per year. And there is a fee to become a “Fuel Supplier” that is apparently being imposed on people supplying safe, non-flammable vegetable oil for fuel.

According to the article, the State of California has cited a few people for not paying the18 cent per gallon road tax. As I have written about previously, there are several states that have exempted cars running on veg oil from paying the road tax altogether as a reward for burning a carbon neutral fuel.

It seems that even our Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was unaware of having to pay this tax.

The regulations are so burdensome that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to set an example for Californians by driving a Hummer that burns cooking oil he buys at Costco, had not complied. Schwarzenegger, who has said that the exhaust from his Hummer smells so much like French fries that his passengers get hunger pangs, was unaware that he was required to send Sacramento an 18-cent road tax for every gallon of kitchen oil he burned, according to spokesman Aaron McLear. After The Times raised the issue, McLear said the governor would pay the taxes he owed.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a Virgin Atlantic 747 will  fly across the Atlantic with a blend of 80% jet fuel and 20% biodiesel.

…aircraft represent up to 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the U.S. transportation sector, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

[...]

“This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected,” [Sir Richard] Branson said in a statement. “The demonstration flight will give us crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint.”

[...]The fuel used in the flight will be a blend of 80 percent conventional jet fuel, which is essentially kerosene, and 20 percent biofuel. Although the exact type of biofuel to be used has not been disclosed, the airline said it is a form that does not compete with food and freshwater resources.

With Super Tuesday fast approaching, it would be good to know:

• Which candidate would do the most to reduce our dependence on petroleum for fuel (domestic or foreign)?
• Which candidate would do the most to promote alternative energy and conservation?
• Which would do the most to reduce our production of greenhouse gasses?

I have invited all four remaining candidates (McCain, Romney, Obama and Clinton) to be interviewed here on vegcar.net. What questions would you like to ask them. I’ll let you know when I hear back from them. 

Is there a difference between 300D’s and 300SD’s in how they handle wvo?

I love the 300D. Aesthetically, I think it is the better looking of the 300 series cars. That, of course, is completely subjective. I also love the way my 300D handles wvo. My 1984 300D has performed remarkably well for the two-and-a-half years I have owned it. It is a has  a single-tank conversion using the Davco 234 heater/filter. Here in the Sierra foothills, the temperature gets down into the 20’s and 30’s and occasionally dips to the teens. I occasionally mix in about 20% diesel in the winter but run almost exclusively on wvo. The wvo my friends and I purchased from Sphere Energy was filtered down to 5 microns but does get creamy in the winter. On the coldest days, when I have 100% wvo in the tank, I do experience bogging, especially going up long hills. But on days like today, when the weather is in the high 30’s, my car started right up and didn’t bog at all.

Two of my friends, let’s call them Josh and Barry, have ‘84 and ‘85 300SD’s that have had bogging problems especially in winter. We are using the same wvo from Sphere. Even mixed with some diesel, they have more severe bogging problems than I do. So my question is this:

Are 300D’s better suited to running on wvo than 300SD’s?

I don’t know what the differences are in the engines. Maybe my sample size is too small and this simply reflects the characteristics of these particular cars. I would love to hear from y’all…

Welcome to the new format for vegcar.net. I migrated the blog to a new platform (Wordpress) which is really impressive. I hope that this will make the information contained within more easily accessible.

The blog is also going to become a collaborative project. If you have something to say about your experience using veg oil as fuel, or if you just want to share some information you came across, you can do so on vegcar.net. Whether you have an idea for a single post or regular contributions, you are welcome to become part of the team. To become a contributor, fill out the following form.

–DanR

Well winter is here and my filtered wvo is pretty creamy. I filled up yesterday and the oil was coming out of the hose pretty slowly. I have had no problems starting up. I am using the glow-three-times winter strategy that a mechanic taught me. I turn the key so the preglow light goes on, then off. I turn off the key and do it again. Then I do it one more time before starting the engine. It has worked like a charm even on a 20-something degree morning last week.

This is an interesting article about Jonathan Goodwin, a 37-year old “car hacker”, showing Detroit that fuel efficiency and large muscle cars (SUVs) are not mutually exclusive. Personally, I think GM’s Hummer vehicles epitomize the excess and waste at which American automakers excel. They are unsafe, gas-guzzling behemoths that are more about making militarism more family-friendly, than about getting your 9 kids to their baseball game. These vehicles do however, help Mr. Goodwin make his point, and Detroit, it seems, may actually be getting the message.

He [Johnathan Goodwin] aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it’ll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the turbine, Goodwin’s secret ingredient. Whenever the truck’s juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it’ll recharge a set of “supercapacitor” batteries in seconds. This means the H3’s electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What’s more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it’s time to fill the tank, he’ll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease–as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double–from 300 to 600.

[...]

This is more than a mere American Chopper–style makeover. Goodwin’s experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered–the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion–he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions. On a full-size gas-guzzler, he figures the kit earns its money back in about a year–or, on a regular car, two–while hitting an emissions target from the outset that’s more stringent than any regulation we’re likely to see in our lifetime. “Johnathan’s in a league of his own,” says Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, the nation’s largest producer of biodiesel. “Nobody out there is doing experiments like he is.”

Nobody–particularly not Detroit. Indeed, Goodwin is doing precisely what the big American automakers have always insisted is impossible. They have long argued that fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars are a hard sell because they’re too cramped and meek for our market. They’ve lobbied aggressively against raising fuel-efficiency and emissions standards, insisting that either would doom the domestic industry.

[...]

The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America’s passenger cars and light trucks to diesel, we’d reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day–precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.)

Read the article.

I received the following email today from a vegcar.net reader.

I’ve used your guide to changing filters for a year now, Thank you! I have a question. I am trying to figure out what number the filter is from Fleetguard so I can purchase them in greater number.

I was happy to hear that he has been using our step-by-step filter change guide to change the filter in his Davco 234 heat exchanger. The filter that goes in the Davco is a Fleetguard FS19761 filter (2 microns). I just bought a case of 6 from the Kenworth Dealer in Fresno, CA for $92 including tax.