For the past 3 years, I have been buying filtered WVO from Sphere Energy, a San Luis Obispo company. I contacted them last week and they said that business is very slow. They said that oil is not worth enough to cover filtering costs, so they are selling it all to a big biodiesel company. I also came across a blog post at Arctic Vegwerks that an Alaska WVO retailer has also suspended retail sales.

I’m going to contact Sphere again. There has to be a price at which it is feasible for them to filter oil. It might be a high price but I for one would be willing to pay a bit more for WVO than the current price of diesel at the pump. I don’t think I am alone in this, either.

I recently asked a friend who collects, filters and sells wvo, about the longevity of the stuff. How long can I store wvo before it will go bad? He didn’t have a definitive answer but his response is informative on many levels.

It’s hard for me to give you a good answer on this because I have had similar experiences to yours. I have have had UNFILTERED oil sit for only a few weeks and smell just awful, but I also have never had filtered oil go bad on me. I think that because we are required to render the oil, and then we remove all the particles that a year [of shelf life] can easily be achieved if the container is air tight and it’s not sitting in direct sunlight etc.. If i was going to have oil sit for a while i would buy a diesel biocide (a chemical designed to prevent growth) and add that to the veggie oil. Our oil doesn’t really get a chance to sit for too long, but like i said I’ve never had the filtered stuff go bad. Hope that helps!

I am reposting this post from July 26, 2006…

For a long time I have wanted to determine definitively how much cleaner svo (straight vegetable oil) burns compared to diesel and compared to gasoline. In a post on the lovecraftbiofuels website forum, Stephen Blackburn posts the results from having his car smogged. Remember, in California diesel vehicles are exempt from smog inspections (brilliant idea, eh?).

The results are impressive and confirm what many of us have believed all along, namely that using vegetable oil as a fuel reduces dangerous emissions significantly, even compared to many late model gasoline powered cars.

Here are the highlights:

1. HC (Hydrocarbons) – 8 ppm (parts per million)
   • new cars are allowed 40 ppm
2. CO% (Carbon Monoxide per gallon of fuel burned): 0.03%
   • new cars are allowed 0.9%
3. CO2% (Carbon Dioxide per gal. fuel burned) 14.3
   • Average is 14-15%. NOTE: the carbon removed from the air while growing the plants is greater than that released when it is burned. Therefore, airborne carbon is reduced with svo as a fuel.

Read the post for more details. One of these days I’ll get my car smogged to see how it rates on these emission measures. If anyone else out there has had their vegcar smogged, please send me the results.

I currently have three and have had as many as five mercedes vege oil cars. Three have been 300SD’s two are 300D’s and my newest acquisition is an unbelievably cherry 240D 4cyl 4 spd manual trans creampuff. By the way, the 300SD’s and the 300D turbo diesels all share the same 5cyl power plant, no difference in these engines, none, interchangeable.

I’ve had both one tank and two tank conversions, one of the two tanks I drove 40K on veg oil and it just kept getting better.

The bogging problem can be pretty annoying and I would not attribute it as much to the model (although the sd’s are heavier and more sluggish than the smaller lighter 300D’s). I would look to the fuel screen inside the fuel tank. Since these cars are of the one tank variety, it is likely that there may be some residue in the tank that the veg oil has dislodged and it tends to settle over the screen inside the tank. Remove it and it will probably be coated with the stuff. If so, it might be a good idea to get the tank cleaned so the problem doesn’t reoccur. When this screen clogs it can restrict the flow from the tank to the injector pump and “bogging” will be the outcome. [Read more →]

Reader MA writes:

I have heard that chinese resturants are the best places to get your used veggie oil from rather then McDonald’s or KFC. Can you tell me if that is true? I am just starting to get set up.

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.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

My friend Forrest took this photo. He calls it, “Various oil filters that fit the MBZ 300-series”. I think the composition is only surpassed by the emotional content.

I have read many discussions online with the pros and cons of the various brands. I use the Bosch filters for my car.

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…

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.

Here are a couple more photos of us filling our totes with the filtered WVO from Sphere Energy. I just returned from a 400 mile roundtrip to the Bay Area on the new fuel. The car ran great.