What's up folks, long time no post. Still rolling daily in my 2002 with Greasecar conversion. 12 years today, I started driving on grease. 150,000 miles. 350,000 miles total on the truck. Over $25K in fuel costs saved. No fuel system problems. I still have about 600 gallons of WVo to burn then I will probably get out of the greasin' business. I'm retired now and just don't really need it.

I haven't heard from any of my old greasin' friends who used to get oil from me. Maybe there's not many of us left.

Hey SkySkiJason, i bought a camper!

Weekends I am rolling this beast

 

Any repairs or noted wear to motor from that many years of cooking oil?

 

no repairs related to grease

 

impressive.

 

Hi Kirk!!

Good to hear from you! I was just thinking of you the other day!! My mom tells me ‘your brother is trying to kill himself’ - turns out he bought a slack line and has it stretched across the yard... Did you and your kids ever master that?

Glad you’re still greasin’ and hope you are enjoying retirement. The car looks fun!!

My dually has 460k miles on it now and 270k miles on the high cholesterol fuel. But, I’ve only driven it 7k miles in the last 2yrs. Not racking up the miles like when I worked all over the country....

Y’all should come visit! Great camping all around me and I just finished building a bathhouse and will be building some ‘camping cabins’ down by the creek next! Leaf season will be kicking off here in a couple of weeks.

This is a sunset from my front yard the other day.

 

I started making biodiesel right around the same time you did Kirk. Still making it, but Covid temporarily put an end to my veg oil feedstock supply several months ago. I'm down to my last 100 gallons of bio, for now until restaurants fully open back up again.

Last time I checked my biodiesel processing log, I was right at around 6000 gallons. Most of the time I run B100 in both the 2001 PSD and my daily driver, the 1998 Mercedes E300 Turbodiesel.

In my mind and to my wife I justify that with the money I saved I could buy my latest toy.

 

Congrats on still going at it. Good to hear that some are still plugging away. Distilling a batch myself at present/

 

Nice car man!!! Love it.

Now I wish I hadn’t spent all my ‘savings’ on liquor and loose women....

 

Thanks! It's a blast to drive. I remember my younger days of sowing my wild oats, crazy chicks, debauchery, and excess, with no regrets. All that was a blast too! And if I could go back, I wouldn't change a thing....😎

 

I used to run cooking oil straight in my 99 7.3 and my backhoe I used to call it liquid gold.

 

Putting VO in the diesel tank is a bad idea. I’ve seen this end poorly many times. Yes, it ‘works fine’ until it doesn’t - then it’s too late...

My (and Kirk’s) long term success is due to using a 2-tank system. We start on diesel and ‘switch over’ to VO when the engine is warm - then switch back to dead dinosaurs and ‘purge’ all VO from the engine before shutting it down.

 

We use PTFE-lined SS braided hoses and SS hard lines to modify the fuel plumbing on the engine. Diesel is fed to the front of the heads through check valves (to prevent contaminating the diesel tank with VO). Then VO is fed to the rear of the heads. The Vegistroke V4 manifold is mounted under the truck and has a separate fuel pump, pressure regulator, filters, etc. The VO tank has a heated fuel pickup and the fuel lines, V4 manifold, etc are heated with engine coolant.



I like to use an F650 dash panel to install VO system switches, OLED monitor and fuel pressure and fuel level gauges.

 

Well at the time it did work great for me backhoe started up as soon as it cranked over, smelt like french fries then I would switch over to diesel for winter, and it never plugged my filters. Until one day after sitting for a long time the motor just pulled down and quit. So I now know that running on straight VO is not a good idea because after taking the engine apart i found that blow by from the pistons has coated the entire engine block with paraffin wax like varnish including the oil pick up screen which was almost completely blocked hence causing spun bearings locking up the motor. Additionally in my 7.3 at time of rebuild I find the injectors all gummed up very hard to clean and the nozzles are plugged still trying to clean them without good results even when using heated ultrasonic cleaner at 70c.

 

Yes, what you describe is the reason to start and stop on diesel only, and use heated vegetable oil once the engine is up to temp.

 

Separate fuel pumps? So when you switch valves you also switch pumps? What pump are you using for your VO?