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 →]

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.

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…

Here is a story from CNN on vegcars.

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.

My friend just procured a 300D to add to the growing fleet in our little town. We are going to convert it soon. I recommended (and we ordered) the parts from Lovecraft Biofuels. I am so impressed by the performance of their heater/filter, the heat exchanger and the booster pump.

Today I installed a 12-volt, inline booster pump in my vegcar. The pump pulls the fuel into the engine compartment from the fuel tank. It then pushes the fuel into the Davco heater/filter. The idea is to relieve my car’s fuel pump and injector pump as much as possible from the effort required to move the vegetable oil – especially when it is cold and thick.

I got the pump from Lovecraft Biofuels. Another side benefit, is when changing the filter in the Davco, one has to pump the little hand pump to purge air and draw fuel into the injector lines. In the new configuration, the pump will fill the Davco when the key is in the #2 position. I’ll let you know how this works the next time I change my Davco filter.

I’ll post some photos when I have a chance.

Installing the heat exchanger from Lovecraft Biofuels in my 1984 300D proved to be extremely simple. The heat exchanger replaces the standard fuel filter that comes with the Mercedes 300 series car. It doesn’t filter the fuel, rather, it uses engine coolant/water to heat the fuel. The two fittings that you see in the photo are for the coolant hoses.

Here are the steps required to install the heat exchanger:

1. Drain the coolant/water from the radiator
2. Disconnect the coolant line where it goes into the heater/filter (mine is a Davco 234)
3. Connect that coolant line to one of the fittings on the new heat exchanger (I shortened the hose by 8 inches or so)
4. Use another piece of coolant hose to connect the other fitting on the heat exchanger with the heater/filter
5. Replace the radiator drain plug and refill the coolant/water

That’s it.

Technorati Tags: lovecraft, biofuels, heat, exchanger, parts, wvo, svo, biofuel, conversion, mercedes, benz, 300d, diesel, biodiesel, filter, vegetable oil, vegcar, grease

UPDATE: A few days ago I posted the following regarding www.greenbenz.com. I have no firsthand knowledge doing business with this company but have subsequently read some disturbing things about their business practices. They sell cars on ebay under the username auto_usa. What troubles me is that on a couple of their listings for converted Mercedes, the filter clearly displayed the Lovecraft Biofuels sticker. Brian at Lovecraft told me himself that he had not converted those cars. The seller received two negative feedbacks on ebay on 46 sales transactions. Caveat emptor.

GreenBenz is taking orders for the 2007 Mercedes Benz 3.0 CDI, converted to run on veggie oil. You can be the first on your block to drive this 2007 vegcar!

The 3.0 CDI features an engine block made of cast aluminum. Here is some more information on this new generation of diesel engine.