Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all! Thanks for reading my blog. I have really enjoyed writing this blog for the past couple of years, thanks mainly to all of you who read it!

I have some ideas that I hope will make the blog more informative. One involves opening it up to multiple contributors - all of you! I am looking at different software solutions that accommodate a collaborative or group blog. If you have any expertise in this area, please let me know. In the mean time, if you would like to submit any posts, email them to me and I will post them on the site. Your post can be about your vegcar, your desire for a vegcar, or some other aspect of alternative fueled vehicles.

May 2008 be a year of Peace and Happiness for all beings!

Vegtruck blog

As many of you may know, a couple years ago, I named this blog Vegcar because the domain was available. I had heard the term used a couple of times but it wasn't (and still isn't) part of the lexicon.
Today, I became acquainted with a blog called Vegtruck that started up at the end of May 2007. Clearly a cousin of this blog, it has some good information and stories. Kudos to its author Clayton (pictured in photo)!

Veg Oil Fuel in the Wilderness

As I have posted, I do worry about leaving my vegcar overnight in Yosemite.

Stickers for your vegcar

I get questions from time to time from people asking about where to get good decals for their vegcar. I never found the "right" stickers for me so I had a company make them for me. It wasn't too expensive and I got just what I wanted. For more information see this vegcar.net post from December 6, 2005.

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.

Fuse box connections

Like many 300D owners, I have experienced jealousy of the 300SD fuse box. The SD has a fuse box that allows very easy access to the underside, to connect wires for various components added to the car. In my 300D, a 1984 W123, accessing the underside of the box has been impossible so far. So, I have had to connect wires to the top. I have done so primarily by using a ring terminal and connecting it with a screw to one of the threaded holes beneath one of the fuses. It was necessary however, that the screw in that hole, from the underside be missing. I had a couple of these but not enough.

I saw this photo on the fattywagons site today and I think it is a brilliant solution. I never connecting them in this way. So simple. I am curious however, how they plan to replace the cover to the fuse box without pinching these wires. Any ideas out there?

$4 per Gallon

ABC News reports that gasoline prices in San Francisco topped $4.00 per gallon this week.

The article notes that,

Gas prices often shoot up in the spring, as refineries make the switch to summer-blend gasolines, creating glitches in supply. But the standoff with Iran has inflicted a double whammy on prices.

This is great news! Let's hope for $5 per gallon by the end of the year.

Watcha got in the truck?

Here is my truck (yes, it runs on gasoline!) full of cubies of wvo and a couple of new barrels. When I collect oil I do so in my vegcar. On this day my friends and I were divying up the 330 gallons of filtered wvo we purchased. I could haul more in the truck.

For those out there who haven't started collecting wvo from restaurants here are a couple of truths:

1. Unless you are incredibly fastidious, everything gets a little sticky and starts to smell like old, used cooking oil. I recommend having some clothes just for collecting oil and wearing rubber gloves.
2. Collecting oil is fun (at least I think so)
3. Be gracious to the restaurant staff
4. Leave the area as clean or cleaner than when you arrived

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.

The worst rental car ever

Yesterday I had the misfortune of renting a Chevy HHR from Avis in Southern California. The underwhelming 4-cylinder engine felt like I was riding on a large lawn mower. I can live with a weak engine, especially if it is a fuel efficient car (which the HHR isn't). I consider fuel efficient to be anything over 40mpg. The PR states that the car gets 30 mpg, which is in all likelihood fresh from a tune-up, going downhill with a strong tail-wind.

The fuselage of the car is large, nearly 15 feet long. Motortrend boasts, "[The HHR will] let you take your favorite eight-foot ladder wherever you go." And they mean inside the vehicle. Avis calls this a "mid-sized car". Chevy considers it an "SUV Crossover".

Frankly, I don't care that the design looks remarkably like the PT Cruiser. The worst part about this vessel, is the lack of visibility. It is as if the good people at Chevrolet have encased you in the lunar module and generously provided a couple of portholes in the back through which you can catch glimpses of earth. I am not sure what HHR stands for - and I can't think of a clever acronym at the moment. The car should be called the Chevy Blind Spot and should be avoided at all costs!

BTW: I have gotten into the habit recently, when renting a car, of asking if they have any Hybrids. We should all keep asking until the major agencies get a clue and start offering them.

330 Gallon Totes

We have started using 330 gallon "totes" to store and dispense wvo. Here I am with the 660 gallons we purchased a couple of months back. As the season warms up, I will likely get back to collecting and filtering my own. Filtering in the winter is just too slow with my current setup. I am still reluctant to put additional energy into heating the oil to facilitate filtering.

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.