By Scott Westerman
In 1979, I was a freshly graduated Michigan State University Spartan with a new wife and a baby on the way. I worked three jobs to fill our ice box with groceries and pushed our Amoco credit card to the limit to keep our Olds Delta 88 filled with gasoline. When the first gas crisis hit that year, I became painfully aware of our dependence on fossil fuel and began to contemplate alternatives. That’s when the words Renewable Energy first entered my vocabulary.
Search Google for the words Renewable Energy (RE) and you’ll find a ton of resources. Magazines like Home Power, chronicle the RE movement and as black-outs, wars and corporate intrigue continue to impact the availability of cheap, reliable energy, RE’s time is finally coming.
In the RE lexicon, four technologies contend: Wind, Water, Sunshine and the Earth. Windmills, hydro electric dams, and solar cells are part of every elementary curriculum, but the thought of growing your own gas was something new. For those who drive diesel powered vehicles, a bio fuel made from vegetable oil is available in some corners of the country as a direct replacement for petro-diesel. For those willing to make a few modifications, fuel for the tank is as close as your local fast food restaurant.
Justin Carven was just three years old when the gas crisis of ’79 hit and two decades later he would be part of the solution. As a student at Hampshire College he converted a 1984 VW Quantum Turbo Diesel to run on waste vegetable oil. Rudolph Diesel’s very first engine was designed to run on peanut oil and Justin discovered that if you could heat vegetable oil to the right temperature, today’s diesel’s would digest it with ease. After a transcontinental trip in a converted VW van, he started a company called Grease Car, to market a kit to make veggie fuel accessible to the masses.
And so it was that I came into contact with Justin in the summer of 2003. Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan gave me a particular awareness for the environmental benefits of RE, and as I watched gas prices rise at the pumps near my home in Jacksonville, Florida, I decided the time had come to join the bio-fuel movement. Grease Car is one of several purveyors of veggie oil conversion kits. But after working some due diligence, I determined that Justin’s system was the right fit.
But first I needed a suitable car. My son was nearing graduation at Florida State and decided that he would swap the 14 miles per gallon performance of his Dodge Ram pickup for my 29 MPG Toyota Camry. I sold the truck and used the proceeds to fund my conversion budget.
I picked up Josh Tickell’s From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank and used it’s rankings of diesel donor cars as a starting point. Some argue that older diesels that use pre-combustion chambers rather than direct injection are better suited for straight veggie oil (SVO), but Justin convinced me that the Grease Car system would work just fine in either iteration. The VW turbo diesel, with it’s enticing combination of fuel efficiency and reliability became my target. After a couple of weeks searching EBay Motors I found a 1997 Passat TDI in Fort Meyers. $7500.00 later, I had the black beauty newly tinted, tuned and ready for modifications.
Justin was extremely helpful with every step of the process. He emailed me photos of other VW conversions and walked me through the minutia of the plumbing, wiring and fuel procurement. I called my friend Larry Byrnes to enlist his automotive expertise. As the owner of a restored 1968 AMX, he had the experience and the confidence to tackle this unique project and he shared my fascination with tail pipes that smelled like French Fries.
Justin’s system uses radiator coolant to heat the veggie oil to the proper viscosity. It involves installing a separate fuel tank that is heated by a coil connected to the car’s heater core. The fuel line from the veggie tank hides within one of the coolant pipes, heating the oil as it makes the trip from the trunk to the injection pump by way of a heated fuel filter in the engine compartment. The whole process is controlled by a pair of electric fuel valves that allow you to switch to veggie when the engine temperature is just right.
I emailed Larry the installation manual and we prefabricated mounting hardware for the valves and filter. I left the VDub at his house on a Friday night so it would be cool for our Saturday morning work day.
The installation turned out to be much easier than I expected, thanks in good part a clear installation manual and Larry’s experienced hands. He found the right point under the back seat to drill the holes for the coolant and fuel lines and was able to choreograph the maze of piping so that everything went where it was supposed to go. I ran the electrical wiring to a pair of rocker switches on the dashboard and installed a second fuel gage to monitor the contents of the veggie tank.
We began at 9AM and by 6PM we were finished. Our particular layout required a couple of runs to the auto parts store for additional fuel lines, but the rest of the system installed with parts provided in my Grease Car deluxe kit. I dumped four gallons of canola oil into the veggie tank and pointed my newly named "VolksVegan" towards home.
By the time I hit I-295, I felt confident enough (and close enough to the house) to try the system. One of the risks of running on veggie is that the oil thickens as it cools. This can make it hard to start after a night in the garage. Justin’s design solved that problem with a unique back-flush feature that clears the lines of veggie oil before you finish your trip. The manual directs you to hit the back-flush button to prime the veggie fuel lines before your first use. I did what was directed and after a moment, flipped the tank switch from Main to Aux.
Sixty seconds later, I could sense the distinctive bouquet of a McDonalds at lunch hour, but I noticed no other change in the sound or performance of the engine. I was driving on vegetable oil! My son would later agree that the whole switch over was an "underwhelming experience". Only we in the car were aware of the magic taking place under the hood.
With both tanks full the VolksVegan has a range of 1,320 highway miles between fill-ups. And a couple of recycling relationships with the neighborhood Chinese restaurants will quench it’s thirst for next to nothing.
Pulling into the driveway, I savored a moment of liberation. I was at one with the bioneers who were making a difference in the quest to find a better alternative to fossil fuel, helping restaurants save on recycling costs and enjoying less expensive transportation along the way.
Veggie Fuel Resources
GreaseCar.com - Justin Carven’s website.
EbayMotors.com – A nationwide source for used diesel automobiles.
VeggieVan.com – Josh Tickell’s veggie fuel site.
HomePower.com – The magazine of renewable energy.
WVO as a diesel replacement fuel – A learned paper on veggie fuel.