![]() Essentially a refined form of vegetable oil, in which glycerine is removed from the oil through a chemical process, biodiesel can be poured straight into any diesel car, and mixed in any proportion with regular diesel. Biodiesel costs more than regular diesel or used restaurant oil, but it has the dual advantages of convenience and flexibility. In addition to the two-tank SVO system and the engine-modified WVO system, there’s a third system known as biodiesel. “I just think it smells like vegetable oil. “Some people say it smells like greasy Chinese food,” says Wong of his car. He lets it settle for a week or so, then pumps the stuff straight into his car. Now, every week or so, Wong goes to the restaurant and carts away a couple dozen gallons of used cooking oil in the back of his car. Since restaurants have to pay disposal services to haul away their used oil, Wong was welcomed with open arms. He approached a Japanese restaurant and cut a deal: I’ll take away some of your used cooking oil if you give it to me for free. Wong drove his new Mercedes from Seattle to Berkeley for a conversion workshop, installed all his new equipment in one day, and drove the car back up on vegetable oil.įinally, eager to make his car as cheap as possible, Wong decided to run the car on waste vegetable oil, or WVO. (“The instructions were all in German, so you kind of had to figure it out,” he laments.) He met a guy in an online forum who worked for Neoteric, a California-based biofuels company, and found out about an additional modification device called the VorMax. He ordered an engine-conversion kit for his car from Elsbett, a German company. Wong bought his car, a 1984 Mercedes, on eBay. Not exactly thrilled about a system that required a second tank and still relied on petroleum, Wong kept looking. Two-tank cars start up and cool down on the diesel tank, but switch over to the SVO tank while driving. He initially went to a Portland workshop on converting cars to a two-tank system, with a tank of regular diesel and a tank of straight vegetable oil, or SVO. When my high-school friend, Greg Wong, decided to try it more than a year ago, he spent a few months researching-and rejecting-his options. Second, in order to make the vegetable oil thin enough to use in a diesel engine, either the oil or the engine has to be modified. First, the car has to be a diesel car, because vegetable oil simply isn’t flammable enough to burn in gasoline engines. There’s actually more than one way to run a car on vegetable oil. This is the slow, sneaky appeal of the movement: If the neighbor down the street is doing it without much trouble, why not us? And in recent months, given the increasing instability in the Middle East and the steadily escalating gas prices in the U.S., the movement has begun to get more press and gain more adherents. They were thinking about buying a hybrid, but changed their minds and purchased a brand-new diesel Golf instead. Amy Beller and Kate MacQueen saw their neighbor driving a Volkswagen Golf with “Powered by Biodiesel” stickers on it. He’s since acquired two diesel cars, and shares his vegetable-based fuel with a friend. In Eugene, Oregon, Dan Gorman was listening to the National Public Radio show “Car Talk” when a woman called in to ask about it. And it wasn’t anything exotic or high-tech it was just a guy I knew, running an old diesel car on salad oil.įriends, neighbors, word of mouth-over the past few years, the “veggie car” movement has surged in popularity, driven by the good old-fashioned grapevine. I had heard of gas-electric hybrids, and all-electric cars, and solar-powered cars. “Oh, my car runs on vegetable oil,” he said. Curious, I asked about it my pal, after all, was a diehard bicyclist in high school, shunning automobiles entirely. The license plate on his station wagon read VEGPWRD. During the reunion picnic, I fell into conversation with an old friend, and walked him back to his car. Late last summer, I went up to Seattle for my high-school reunion. Drivers Climb on the Vegatable Powered Bandwagon
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