The Digg Crew wants to hear your thoughts!
Please take our short survey about Digg and potential feature ideas.
Learn how to convert a diesel car to run on vegetable oil.
ravenfamily.org — Learn how to convert a diesel car to run on vegetable oil. Really works! Save TONS on gas money.
missionjako- 955 diggs
- digg it
- en3r0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I've been looking to do this... Too bad I'm a n00b with cars.
___________
-en3r0
http://virtenu.com - anonymoustroll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm predicting peak grease in 3, 2...
- p3nguin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Why does the same crap get recycled over and over here lately?
- pillfred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They had something like this on Dirty Jobs where this guy took old fryer oil filtered it and added some ***** and uses it in his cars. it seemed fairly complex but not to difficult if one were somewhat knowledgeable with chemistry. Said his cost was like 40-60 cents per gal.
- earlycj5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Saves on gas? Duh, diesel cars use, yup, DIESEL not gas so of course you have no savings on gas, because there was nothing to save.
On a serious note, there's plenty of folks who have been doing this for some time now. It's nothing new. There's folks who have two fuel tanks, one for SVO and one for diesel for starting the car. Once started, flip a switch and switch over to SVO. Works well from what I hear. I was never brave enough to try it. I just used biodiesel (from the pump) in my VW TDI. - headswine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Saw this on g4 TV. Pretty cool...
http://www.gfx.com - kingofthegreens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is great! I think there needs to be a further guide about what engine modifications are necessary for every YMM that is compatible.
- deegin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"I'm predicting peak grease in 3, 2..."
lmao - cryptocom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0um...how does this save money?? i just spent 2.49 on a half gallon container of vegetable oil 2 days ago...that means it would be 5.00 a gallon to fill up my tank with vegetable oil, as opposed to 2 or 3.00 a gallon for gas.
- chozsun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Do we in the US have to pay duty for using veggie oil in our cars?
How in the hell do they bust you? "Sir, your VW/Ford/Benz smells like a chicken fryer... pay up!" - lsm2005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Got to love those innocent, naive Europeans. In the States, the article would have been filled with caveats. "Your own risk". "May void your warranty". "Could lead to engine seizure at high speeds and sudden death".
- loudwhisper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0yeah thats interesting
- GeorgeB, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0How... "hippie" of them :)
http://www.onlyriddles.com - teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've been looking for a car to test this on myself, but I'm sure theres a downside somewhere. Nothing is That easy.
- stevec5000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The part about having to pay tax on vegetable oil is pretty funny!
- wherley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Be careful, there is a reason BioDiesel exists. The conversion from vegetable oil to biodiesel (like they did on Trucks and Dirty Jobs) is done for reasons. The prime one being biodiesel is less viscous than vegetable oil by almost an order of magnitude.
People that want to run SVO (straight vegetable oil) in their diesels for any length of time usually get a conversion kit such as Elsbett, Greasecar, etc.
Chart on viscosity: http://www.brevardbiodiesel.org/viscosity.html - solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1But... how do you value your time?
The *economic* hallmark of civilization is the degree of "division of labor".
I write code, someone else makes diesel fuel. Each does what he does best, for max efficiency.
If you have time to make diesel fuel less efficiently than a (bio)diesel producer, go ahead. Otherwise, you're doing something *unsustainable*.
- D14BL0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is old news. My stepdad's been working on his car to do the same thing for a long time now. He's been too busy to actually get it running, but the concept of BIODIESEL has been around for a long, long time now. It's not news. No digg.
- hellb0y, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is there such a difference in price between vegetable oil and gas??
By checking my grocery site 3Litres of vegetable oil for 4.99$..
Gas this morning was 0.88$ a Litre and Diesel is even cheaper!
How do you save money by doing this?? - leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"How do you save money by doing this??"
Your grocery is charging you for packaging, and middleman mark up. How much is lamp fuel at your grocery? - hellb0y, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Your grocery is charging you for packaging, and middleman mark up. How much is lamp fuel at your grocery?"
Good question.. They dont have any on the website. Ill check tonight, I got do the groceries.
Still ain't worth the trouble of keeping a barrel of veggy oil in my garage.. lol - Nighthawke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They use old fast-food fry oil, filtered to .5 microns so that it would not foul the injectors. Add a few additives so that it would not coagulate in low temps, not to mention insulating the gas tank.
When a car running old fry oil driving by people say the exhaust "smells like peanuts". Which is a damm sight better than smelling the old diesel exhaust fumes, which nearly kill some folks. - EdLesMann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"How do you save money by doing this??"
Simple...McDonalds throws out their fry grease everynight...they just dump it into the dumpster. We supply a bucket for them to fill up....its not really anything extra for them to do and its not like they are losing out on anything...we then pick it up later in the week when we need to refill....
the down side of this is....too many people going after the grease and it becomes a demand so it wont be any cheaper and with fast food resturants cutting down on the greasy cooking it will mean less grease to throw out... - helicopterhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Using waste vegetable oil is an excellent way to go. I've a friend that does it (makes his own biodiesel from scratch) for ~ $0.52 a gallon. But all that takes time so even though you’ll save money at the pump you have to ask how much is your time worth. I’m not knocking saving the environment or loosening our reliance on foreign oil, I’m all for it but many of you are right on; ‘easy’ is relative. Making your biodiesel efficiently is the trick. BTW, that same friend powers his entire house by an ultra low rpm diesel engine (running the biodiesel he makes) and he’s never paid a single cent to the power company! He’s any engine/eco freak. =)
- sandwichpants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0McDonalds doesn't just throw away grease, well, probably, but lots of places collect it. Remember on the simpsons when Homer started the grease collection business? And he got muscled out of it? And the he tried to steal willie's retirement grease?
Anyway, any technology that makes car exhaust smell more like fried food is welcome to me. - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You save money because fuel is very expensive in the UK... It's about $1.60 a litre for diesel at the moment.
- bloodguard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Has anyone with a VW Jetta TDI tried this? I usually run my 2003 on commercial biodiesel but this looks kind of interesting. Being that I live in the SF Bay Area I could probably get away with running 50/50 year round.
- Malik112099, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0pretty cool....someone is gonna find out you can mix 50% water in the gas tanks of gasoline engines one day and we are all gonna look stupid
- dwightfrank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wouldn't cold temperatures affect the flow of oil?
- star, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Actually a car running on vegetable oil only smell a little like fresh baked buns, not like a chicken fryer.
- 3mta3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.freedomfuelamerica.com/
- anthonyb415, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is really that easy! I personally run my car on biodiesel, but Rudolf Diesel introduced the diesel engine with the emphasis on running it on vegtable oil during the World's Fair in 1900.
- eng69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I will be doing this when i get a house. If you want to clean up veggie oil from a restaurant, it takes quite a bit of space in drums and filters.
cold temps affect it, but with a svo kit it is heated in the engine before being injected. - SCscoutguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have friends that run their International Scout II's with Nissan SD-33T engines on straight SVO. You just have to filter it really well so it doesn't clog the fuel injectors and add chemicals to it so it wont go solid on you in the gas tank. They get their oil from local places like waffle house and huddle house. In the end it ends up costing like 38 cents a gallon and that isn't bad considering the Diesel Scout gets 30 mpg anyway.
- xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lots of his conclusions are blatantly false. Just because it's vegetable oil doesn't mean it doesn't pollute!
But yeah it's pretty cool to see such a thing. - mikesum32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've seen tv and read info about this.
AFAIK the diesel engine was designed to run on vegatable oil.
I think all you need is a filter and a heater to run off oil.
I don't think bio-diesel from oil needs any modification. - mikesum32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You can get used cooking oil from fast food restaurants for cheap or free.
- Synthetik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I prefer performance over not burning fossil fuels. Yes I know they'll run out eventually, bit till then I'll be the guy blowing past your VW van that smells like french fires!
- metamorphosis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Using waste cooking oil in your car is a good way reduce the use of regular diesel oil but what corporate agriculture wants to do is create more demand for it's products, if millions of people are driving their cars on soybean oil that will place a greater demand and increase the price, billions of people will have to pay more for their soybeans when the price goes up and many are already struggling to put food on the table, using bio-diesel on a large scale may create even more problems then it solves.
- mikesum32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0xutopia
Reduced emissions mean less polluting.
Another real plus for the environment is that the carbon dioxide and other things released from biodiesel are recycled by new plants.
So the CO2 was trapped by the plant and released in the car and trapped again in the plant.
Oil from dinosaur sludge or wherever had it's carbon trapped a long time ago and hasn't been in the atmosphere since, while plant's carbon was trapped much sooner.
Now time for bed.
Spell check doesn't work :-( - crazymexican05, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0nice joe... to bad your gay
- o0joshua0o, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Forget vegetable oil, guys. I've come up with a car that runs on caviar and Faberge' eggs!
- got-haggis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0if any of you have a VW TDI, be sure to hit up http://www.tdiclub.com, a great resource for TDI owners..and yes, they have an entire section dedicated to biodiesel.
- ZipGenius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Pretty old news: vegetable oils in place of diesel are already in use in Italy.
The big matter is... It's an illegal action. Using vegetable oils, you don't pay taxes that you normally pay when you buy regular diesel, so Italian financial police may take action against you :(- shilano, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I have a car that runs on vegetable oil, which is legal in the UK (with a few restrictions).
I want to take the car on holiday to Italy. Can you confirm that it is still illegal to use vegetable oil as a fuel in Italy?
If so, which specific law does it break?
- shilano, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I have a car that runs on vegetable oil, which is legal in the UK (with a few restrictions).
- cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"I've seen tv and read info about this.
AFAIK the diesel engine was designed to run on vegatable oil.
I think all you need is a filter and a heater to run off oil.
I don't think bio-diesel from oil needs any modification."
You have to change some of the fuel lines for bio-diesel as it breaks down some of the more common rubber line materials. - jodamiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The Pollution Prevention group at my lab has a truck running on vegetable oil and they make batches here. They try to refine the formula to give the maximum ratio between performance and by-products. It's pretty cool.
- triplegmax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lol
- fastfood15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i swear this is a dupe. I dont know, im too stupid
- brownb2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah unfortunately Blair's green government, trying to get you to use more public transport by hiking car taxes also makes it ILLEGAL for you to run your car on chip fat oil (they'll bust you if your car smells like a fish n chip shop). Talk about two faced government.
"You save money because fuel is very expensive in the UK... It's about $1.60 a litre for diesel at the moment." - brownb2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Forgot to mention, IIRC its petrol tax evasion they'll do you for..
"makes it ILLEGAL for you to run your car" -
Show 51 - 67 of 67 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is