GreaseDrive

I had to get towed near BakersField CA earlier today.  My veggie filters clogged up pretty bad in a hurry so I was forced to change them at a gas station.   Warning to all,  cheap Supertech ST8A (fram PH8A) filters apparently have a by-pass.   So instead of clogging up tight after they get completely full they start to let particles past.  This is really bad!    Shortly after getting towed off  the high-way I was able to get the car running again after getting a quick jump.   I had worn the battery down a bit trying to start it on the side of the high-way.

I made it to vegas safe and sound.   Vegas is symbolic for me as it is the location my WVO dreams came true and where I bought my beloved 300D.   I am here staying with my uncle in which I am going to do some work on his 240D and do some other work around his place.    I will post more soon!

After leaving my friends in Bend OR,  I drove for 9 hours to Humboldt county California.   What I hear is the countries leading Hive of greaser’s and Bio-diesel burners.   I have heard that this county actually has higher demand for WVO than it actually produces.  A true first for the nation if this is the case.   And its further proof that WVO is not the solution for everyone by any means.

I intend on spending a couple days taking pictures and hugging the Giant redwoods and sequoias.  I just posted a craigslist ad to try to find some WVO.  We will see if it gives me any results.  The car made the trip just fine,  not a single issues even after the small disaster with the air bubbles while I was in bend.

It was hard to leave my friends,  I had stayed for two weeks and felt like I belonged.  A feeling I have not had in a while.   Hopefully it is good for me.

2 days of fairly dedicated trouble shooting have uncovered many things.

First,  My air leak was caused by several small holes cut into my small vacuum line that runs to my in-car gauge.   Some of the hoses slack must have gotten caught up near/in the hood hinge and it pinched it so much it cut up a large section of the hose badly.  I have spliced in a new section of hose and hope my fairly hasty fix will hold up.

Second,  Temperatures in excess of 180F warp/melt the small sacrificial filter.  You know the clear one just before the injection pump.  It usually only costs a few dollars at the auto-parts store.   Ideally in a good system this filter is almost not needed as nothing harmful should make it that far down the chain.   However I have noticed that on several occasions I have found black/slimy/flaky gunk starting to build up in the filter.   After some experimentation I discovered that this was coming from the diesel side of the system,  SCARY… the only thing I can think of is that the WVO contamination that happens over time with a 1 switch system like mine is clearing out more junk in the diesel loop?   So I have found a solution.  I found a re-usable filter housing with re-usable filters at a auto parts store here in Oregon.  It wasn’t cheap ($10.00) but I suspect it will save its cost in the next 6 months.   I boiled all the plastic components for 10 minutes in a rolling boil (212+ degrees?) and the parts did not even soften so I suspect they will hold up to my WVO temps.  I will post pictures as soon as I can.

Third,   That diesel is thick when its been contaminated to 50% or more with WVO at 40F.   After a severe hot snap of I think a almost record breaking 97F a few days ago last night it got down to 40 degrees here in downtown Bend.   I had only put 5 gallons of #2 Diesel in my tank roughly 5 weeks ago and driven 4,000+ miles.  The gauge was nearing empty but not totally.   Looking at the thickness of what I was pumping out of the diesel side I would say it was 50% or so WVO.    I am curious as to the possible harmful side effects to running so much WVO in the un-heated side of my fuel system.  When I am doing heavy town drivng I suspect half of my driving time is on Diesel not WVO.    Am I coking things up?  and if so how can I reverse the effects.

Fourth,  As soon as possible,  buy the largest bag of GOOD hose clamps I can find.  The cheap ones you get everywhere are just junk.  I have, maybe upwards of 50 of them in my system if you tighten them to much they can actually cause air leaks themselves not to mention they cut-damage the hoses.   Several different types of clamps exist.  I need to do more research.

Fifth,  It is lonely traveling,  alone.   I need some companionship in a dire way.   Having many lovers scattered about the continent is great when I can expect to see them soon,  But when I am not sure where I will be and for how long the distance starts to hurt.

I am a avid Mountain Biker though I don’t seem to have much time to do it!  I currently have a Saris Bones rack that goes on the trunk of my 300D.   It works great but it makes it very difficult to keep my veggy tank full.  I have to unlock the bike,  take it off the rack and bungie the trunk open just to pour in my cubee of oil.   It is really a pain in the ass to put it lightly.   I found on craigslist here in Bend a Yakima roof system for a good deal.  The 300D takes yakima Q32 clips to work with their standard Q-tower system.   I am hoping to buy it today get it install and sell off my old rack.   I’m sure this is not a very important subject for most but I think a roof rack for almost any grease-car is a requirement.  Biking is better than driving even when we burn WVO so I feel strongly about making it easy for me to keep my bike with me at all times.

Q32 clips for a Mercedes 300D,  They cost about $60 for a set of 4.

I have just today completed the last major leg in my coast to coast trip entirely on Dumpster-Fill WVO. I have a dozen articles I wanted to write on this blog before I even get to what is happening now. However after 3,300 miles (just highway) I am just excited to say that I made it! Only a couple veggie related issues. Specifically I switched to veg to early after sleeping at a rest stop in northern Colorado and sucked a huge air-bubble into my Injection Pump which took a while to clear. Besides that the only other trouble I experienced had nothing to do with WVO. My rear CV joints started to squeak and chatter. After closer inspection I discovered they have ripped/torn over the 24+ years of use. Most of the oil/grease has leaked out and the joints are dry!

Unable to afford the price of new Axel’s ($1000) I decided to do the worst thing and that is put a band-aid on it. I know the joints will get louder and more prominent before they break apart and shred my car. So I have filled the boots with grease as best I can and will keep a close eye (and ear) on them until I can fix the issue.

For reference I did a calculation today. Fully loaded carry over 500lbs of oil (70 gallons) going 65-70mph maximum. I averaged 26.6 MPG today. This is with a rear-mounted bike rack with bike in tow. Pretty good numbers for a 300D I am told!

At 103,000 miles or so shortly after I first purchased this car I purchased a Single Tank kit from PlantDrive.com.   Including the Vormax filter housing and the VegTherm 12v in-line heater.  The kit arrived quickly in the mail and I began the install.

A single tank system typically uses your original/stock fuel tank for the WVO or WVO blend and all additional filtering/heating happens typically under the hood.  The PlantDrive system is in my opinion one of the better kits out there from a single tank perspective.  I have read many good things about Elsbet but at a price of over $2,000 and shipping vital parts of your car overseas put its into a category all to its own.  My experiences and this blog are from a more hands-on,  low-budget but still give a damn perspective.   At the time of my purchase the complete cost of the conversion was around $900.

My uncle and I did the conversion in the late fall in southern Nevada.  The weather was in the 70’s during the day dipping into the low 40’s at night.  The conversion was straight-forward and only had a couple hurdles which we overcame when we read the instruction manuals better.   The single Tank Plant Drive system is basically hands off once it is installed.  No switches or in-cab gauges to watch.   I ran this conversion for approximately 4,000 miles.

Advantages of single-tank:

Low-Cost,  less parts/switches/hoses/wires and only one fuel tank
Ease of use,  in warm climates
Easier/faster Install
Does not clutter your engine-bay as much

I switched to Dual-Tank after driving on the stock single-tank plant-drive system for approximately 4,000 miles in November/December of of 2007.  In a single tank system the colder it gets outside the more normal #2 Diesel you need to blend into your fuel.  Typically if it is getting into the 20’s and 30’s at night it is recommended you blend up to 50% normal diesel into your fuel.  Keeping it blended well is a challenge in itself and I recommend you put a couple gallons of diesel with a couple gallons of veggie into a gas can and shake it vigorously before putting it into your tank.  Yes it will still stratify or seperate out over time it works MUCH better then just adding them to your tank pure.

I drove the single tank kit through northern Nevada, Utah and Wyoming during December.   Using only about a 20% Diesel blend.  To this day most people I talk too think it was crazy I did not get stranded considering how terrible the weather was (blizzard conditions,  below 20 degrees, strong winds)  But I essentially did not shut the car off for 36 hours.  I made it with out any issues and arrived in Denver Late one night.  The next few days I got my education about Single-Tank in cold environments.   The Denver winters are brisk,  below 20F at night and into the high thirties during the day.   Even at a 50/50 blend I was having terrible trouble starting my car.

Most of this is because my car does not have a block heater,  and I am certain the glow plugs are faulty/weak.  The car is from California and a block heater was never installed.  After replacing the Glow Plugs and buying a oil pan heater I was able to start the car but it was still very difficult.  In Denver I met up with Kirby,  Owner of GoGreenEarly.com.   A friend of a friend contacted him when I was having trouble getting my car going.  Shortly after meeting I decided to go check out his shop and his SVO Systems.   We soon worked out a deal in exchange for my web-design services he would help me design a new Dual tank system for my car, effectively allowing me to use almost any kind of grease in almost any climate.

This my hybrid system was born,  I am now running a custom Dual-Tank system designed for Dumpster fill.

Advantages of Dual-Tank

No blending of fuels, using almost 100% WVO even during winter
Works in even sub-zero winters
Allows you to keep your stock Diesel system mostly unmodified
Dirtier Grease can be used if your grease tank has easy access for cleaning

This is only a smart part of the pros of using a Dual Tank system,  suffice to say it allows you to burn much more WVO in much worse conditions.  However Dual Tank is a considerable amount more expense and takes longer to install.   A good system parts and labor can and almost should costs upwards of 2,000.    Granted this is almost as much as the Elsbet single tank system.   But even that system requires you to blend and in fact I am uncertain if that system is even approved for WVO at this time (I think it is designed for Bio Diesel)  Though many people use it for WVO.

Sorry for all this information to be a bit dis-jointed and confusing I am trying to sum up months of information into simple posts I have time to write!  In the follow posts I will go into more detail about my current system and its operation.

I drove about 4,000 miles on my single-tank PlantDrive system. The system uses a very large Racor filter. It is rated for I believe up too 4000-7,500 miles on very polished oil (read clean!) at a replacement cost of $33 a piece if you buy 3 at a time it is not a bad solution for people who want a simple hands off system and who live in a warm climate. At 7500 miles on a filter that is $0.66 cents for every hundred miles. Understand though that if you are using poorly filtered oil these filters will clog MUCH sooner. Mine became clogged around 2500 miles. Some of this clogging may have been due to the SVO-blend in my tank ‘cleaning’ some of the 24 years of Diesel crud from the tank. The oil I was using was by my standards clean but not as clean as I suspect would be recommended for max filter life. It was heat-settled for a month and filtered to 20 micron.

Unfortunately for me when the filter clogged, it clogged FAST. I was driving between Reno and Elko Nevada in January. Anyone who has made this drive can attest that not much exists here but 80 mile stretches of absolutely nothing littered with fantastic views. I found myself on the side of I80 in a driving wind cutting hoses in an attempt to by-pass to my Racor filter that clogged up with only 15 minutes notice of reduced throttle response.

I made it to Elko where I was able to install the new filter that I pre-filled with straight #2 Diesel and all was good from there. The rest of the driving was uneventful with the system performing amazingly well considering the weather.

The W123 Chassis Mercedes Benz Diesels are comfy cars to drive. But I am in the drivers seat now waiting for a friend to get out of work and the seat just doesn’t go back far enough to make typing on a laptop easy so it will be a short post.

I discovered a air leak today in the veggie oil system. It has been causing me some serious head-aches in the past week or so. I did not take the time to locate/fix it because I have been really busy trying to spend some time with my partner whom I do not get to see often L,   She is a manager at a up-scale Italian bistro and she was able to allow me to have free-range over the grease dumpster.  I’ll post my spoils later!