i wonder how many of you know or understand the benefits vegetable oil as a fuel? i have a diesel bus and im thinking about installing a vegetable oil system into my fuel system.my friends are already doing this but they are having trouble keeping fuel up to tempature when it hits the injecters. so my question is do any of you own a veggie system or know of a sucessful system operating around. i have met and seen running systems but i wasnt able to inquire about the installion of the system. cost is a factor, one person told me that it was going to cost 3000 for a system to be built. which is not a lot unless your like me with very little money. i would want to build my own. greasel makes a kit but once again it would cost me a fortune to get the 100 gallon tank that i would want. biodiesel is an option but i have 3 children ,and to have to carry the chemicals that is required to process it is a situation for us right now, that would require a trailor where as i need a car.
I have heard about these systems and think that they are very cool. Im sorry that i do not know of any companies that offer cheap kits but if your looking for a car why dont you fine one of those old mercedes that had desil engines and convert it so that both of your vehicles can run on vegoline
Forget the kits, bro. Always problematic. Now I had heard that Justin at Greaseworks was the man, so I asked him where to find plans on the internet. he sent me to this dude's website. http://www.danalinscott.netfirms.com. SVO doesn't seem to be as much of an open-source technology as biodiesel processors. This dude wants $50 for the plans. But I trust Justin, and Justin trusts him. The greaseworks website www.greaseworks.org has some more good links too.
Some folks I know ran the veggie fuel through a copper pipe between the tank and the engine, and put a second pipe around the copper one and ran hot radiator fluid through the second pipe. This helped keep things warm when they were up in Canada. I believe it helped with the fuel injectors, but they're still tweaking it. Hope this sends you in a good direction.
Yeah, Justin told me the hose in hose method that livewyer talks about is what you need in cold weather. Otherwise you just heat the fuel filter and the line from the fuel filter and the injector. Like I said, I have a reliable recomendation for the plans on Dana Linscotts's website, but as for the filter heaters that he sell for $120, I have no idea of their effectiveness.
We are very happy with our vegetable oil-diesel system from Grease Car, in our opinion, the best. It's a custom built kit you can install yourself, about $800. If your nervous, they will recommend an installer. These guys rule! ANY diesel engine can be converted to run on used veggie oil!
don't they have kits for gasoline engines as well? If so i'll save up for a conversion kit for my car
hay brother this might help http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53732 check out the links in that post.and thank you for wanting a cleaner earth. love my family frog
Try this one too. Alcohol can be a gas it's called. http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/alcohol/index.htm
At Magnolia fest, "hot buttered rum string band" has a bus that ran off used fryer oil, i asked who tweeked their carb, and they told me that any desile can run off fryer oil & they had a seperate tank & a pump & filter.
Ok, here's the dummies guide to the process. Veggie oil is too viscous (thick) when cold to run through a diesel engine. but when heated to 170 degrees, it works fine. So, the warm whether method involves heating the fuel filter (tis is often acheived by coiling a copper pipe around the fuel filter and diverting your coolant through it. Electrical methods are also used. And a 12v line heater heats the short line from the fuel filter to the injectors. Cold weather method involves heating your veggie oil tank and all lines running from tank to fuel filter to injector. The reason you have two tanks is because the heat of the running engine is used to heat the oil, and you need to run regular diesel or biodiesel through to get the engine heated up. Then you through a switch that trips a solinoid and you're running off veggie oil. The other reason for the second tank is that if you shut down your engine with veggie oil in the lines, the oil will cool and solidify and you are in a word fucked. So you flush the lines with petrodiesel or biodiesel before shutdown. there are systems available that swap out the whole injector system and don't require a second tank or heated lines, and they are available mail order from germany at www.ellsbett.com. If you want to know more, check out www.journeytoforever.org or email people like Justin at www,greaseworks.org and the dudes at www.greasecar.com and so forth.
The trick to this process, as papabear is well aware, is filtering the oil. It must be PERFECTLY filtered.And there are plenty of hippies out there who will tell you of the hassles involved when you don't filter enough. Papabear's seen what happened to my truck when I didn't filter enough...
I didn't get all the details, but someone told me that they fire up on desiel & then switched over to the fryer oil, there was a tank in the bus behind the driver seat, it was incased in wood that was the fryer oil tank.
