GreaseDrive

This morning bright and early we began doing a ‘warm weather’ dual tank conversion on my uncles 240D. The car is virtually identical my 240D I am currently selling on ebay here: 240D Ebay Link Wish me luck on this auction! :)

I say its a warm weather conversion because he lives here in the high desert of Nevada. Now it does get cold in winter. He might even get a few days of below freezing temps. But for the most part he does not have to worry about the kind of weather conditions I do in the mid-west and up north. In the southwest single tank conversions are much more common but I am of the belief that vegetable oil should never be used as a cold starting fuel. My first conversion was a single tank, and I could start it up easily on straight veggie oil even in the low-mid 40’s. Now I had to wait several minutes for the system to warm up enough to give me adequate power but it worked.

The only way to really make single tank work when it gets into colder temps (Lets define colder as mid-50’s or below) is to blend the veggie oil with normal Diesel. (Biodiesel can gel/thicken up too!) Granted unless it was ‘REALLY’ cold outside (below 20’s) a 50/50 blend in a single tank would probably suffice. But see what is happening here… Lots of IF’s and Maybes. That is not good enough for me. I want to be running on pure veggie as long as I possibly can as quickly as I possibly can with no blending. I am not trying to knock on single tank conversions. But the more and more research I do the more and more I become convinced that starting and stopping the engine on the fuels it was designed for is the only way to go. It makes the conversion obviously more complicated. But when it is done right it makes your car more reliable, better in adverse weather and could possibly increase your engine life. Don’t forget veggie oil contains all sorts of acids/compounds/fats etc etc. Not found in normal diesel. It is still unknown what kinds of effects letting that veggie oil sit cold in your engine/injection pump for days/years could have on component longevity.

Sorry for the long-winded paragraph but we are just scratching the surface here. I am not a tribologist, nor a professional diesel/injection pump mechanic. I learn new things every day so do your own research and try to draw upon a large pool of good minds.

System Overview:
We are going to use his stock fuel tank as the veggie tank and add a small 8 gallon fuel cell for diesel to start and stop the car. Fuel cell is going to go into the trunk inside a fender well. We are going to reuse the steel fuel lines under the car and extend them into the trunk essentially keeping the stock diesel system the same just moving the tank farther back. We are going to use a wrap of coolant hose around the stock tank to add a small degree of heat (for the coldest days) and use a heavily insulated Hose-on-Hose line to the stock fuel tank from the engine bay. This will serve to add heat to the veggie oil soon as it is pulled from the tank. We are using a PlantDrive Racor filter housing to pre-heat and filter the oil. A standard Ford fuel selector valve for switching between tanks. A 12v Vegtherm in line heater to add more heat to the system and a looped return on the veggie line. A control panel will be installed where the ash-tray used to be. That is basically it.

Here is the engine bay before we touched anything. Gotta love how simple it all looks, To me anyway!

Here is the insulated Hose on Hose connection that will run from the engine bay to the stock fuel tank. It will be nicely tucked away once it is installed into its final location.

Here I am using a small section of 3/8″ fuel line I cut down its length to act as a grommet to keep future fuel lines from rubbing on the bare metal. This hole will be used for the fuel lines that run to the new fuel cell in the trunk.

Many, MANY more pictures and posts to come on this project.

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.