VW Beetle Conversion in Process

A Vegcar.net reader sent in this link to a new blog documenting the conversion of a Volkswagon Beetle TDI. They are using a kit from Frybrid. Good luck guys!

Great souce for filtered WVO

I get emails from time to time from people asking where they can buy filtered wvo for their vegcar. Today we got our second delivery from a company out of San Luis Obispo, CA called Sphere Energy. The owner, 23 year old Ian Hoover, is a very bright mechanical engineer who is devoted to alternative fuels an wvo in particular. I have a short video interview I made today that I will post to the blog soon.

He separates the oil after heating and filtering it. The "sludge" is picked up by another renderer. The creamy stuff is sold to a biodiesel plant and the "amber" is sold to vegcar drivers like me. We purchased three 330 gallon "totes" filled with 5 micron filtered wvo for $1.75/gallon (delivered 200 miles!).

I recommend Ian highly. I have already run 165 gallons of his oil through my car (a previous test order). The oil performed perfectly, even through the 20 degree winter weather.

Injector heaters are certainly hot

A friend (and vegcar owner) recently got a laser thermometer thingy. I measured the temperature of my injector lines, after driving about 4 miles with the injector line heaters on. The temperature varied depending on my aim, but 173 was the highest.

I haven't been using the heaters much. I sometimes switch them on for 10-15 minutes after starting on a cold day. I am concerned that for longer periods they might be too hot.

If anyone out there has any information or thoughts about these injector line heaters (from fattywagons), please let me know. Use the contact us link at the top of the page or submit a comment on this post.

Winter snow

This was taken on February 27 of this year. It is hard to believe it since it has been in the 70's and 80's all week! I got the car started a couple hours after this photo was taken. the only problem was I couldn't get up the driveway (it gets pretty steep beyond the view in the photo). I have chains but blew off my meeting and worked at home.

Lovecraft Commercial

Check this out. I think some friends of Lovecraft made this commercial. I don't think it actually runs on TV.

Pouring jelly into the tank

It has been pretty cold here, dipping below freezing at night and rising to the 40's and 50's during the day. As I filled my tank yesterday with wvo, as has happened repeatedly this winter, the bottom half of the cubie was kind of like jelly. New veg oil from Costco had the same consistency.

I have been using a 3 to 1 wvo to diesel mix and it has been performing very well. I have had no bogging lately. I don't have a tank heater, nor a heated fuel line from the tank. I do have a booster pump that draws the wvo forward from the tank, taking some of the strain off of my injector pump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I purchased that booster pump from LovecraftBiofuels in LA.

A couple hundred more miles on veg oil

I drove to the Bay Area yesterday - about 190 miles. I put 5 gallons of diesel on top of 13 gallons of wvo. The car ran great all the way. I had the injector line heaters on for a good portion of the trip. I don't know how to tell if they are doing any good but it still makes sense to me to heat the oil as close to the injectors as possible. My tank is showing slightly over half full now. I'm looking forward to the drive back home tomorrow.

Visor light

I finally figured out what was happening. Several times in the past year, my battery was largely drained and I couldn't start the car. My alternator did die last year and I had it replaced - twice. But I never figured out why at seemingly random times, my battery just drained while the car was parked.

Today, in the midst of a snowstorm, I got into the Mercedes and tried to start it up. It was no use. There was enough of a charge for the pre-glow light and other dashboard lights, but it just couldn't turn over. It was then that I noticed that the passenger seat visor was down. And to my astonishment, the mirror light was on!

My visors are both missing the door flap that covers the mirrors and lights and turns the lights on and off. In fact, in 18 months of owning the car, I had never seen either of the visor lights on at all. This is certainly the culprit. I think tomorrow morning I'll remove the bulbs from these lights so this can't happen again. Ever.