New Site for GreaseMonkeys

Thanks to Green Options, I found out about a great new site for people running on veggie fuel that need help finding friendly restaurants with grease to spare. It is called 100th Grease Monkey, and the aim of the site is to create a database of restaurants offering grease for fuel to traveling “Grease Monkeys” like us! The database is just getting started, but I’m excited to see this project grow. It certainly would come in handy for a WVO-fueled road trip!

Here’s some info on the idea behind the 100th Grease Monkey site:

The story of the “Hundredth Monkey Effect” originated with Lyall Watson in his 1979 book Lifetide, in which he claimed to describe the observations of scientists studying macaques on the Japanese island of Koshima in 1952. Some of these monkeys learned to wash sweet potatoes, and gradually this new behavior spread through the younger generation of monkeys—in the usual fashion, through observation and repetition. However, according to Watson the researchers noted that once a critical number of monkeys was reached—the so-called hundredth monkey—this previously learned behaviour instantly spread across the water to monkeys on nearby islands.

What does all this have to do with veggie vehicles? Well, the hope of this website is to launch the “Hundredth Monkey Effect” in regards to veggie fuel. If enough people visit this website and enough restaurants choose to be included in our database, we hope to reach a level of awareness that changes society on a fundamental level. All we need is a few more grease monkeys to reach that critical point. So please, spread the word and help us reach that ever so important 100th Grease Monkey!

Go Grease Monkeys, go!

And as for an update on the bus, she’s running, but not too reliably. I drove her around town this weekend and she had trouble starting at first, but after one run she did just fine and started up each time I tried after that. We are planning to put in a new Turbo Diesel engine (or TDI) before we do any major trips. This ol’ engine just isn’t working well and we know we’ll need to upgrade eventually, so we might as well get a reliable engine in her sooner rather than later. It will be nice when we have an engine that is powerful enough for the size of the bus (the 1.6 L diesels just aren’t enough to move a big bus up hills), and we have a friend who will help with the installation, so now we just need to find a new engine that will last us a while. Drop me a line if you know of any good resources for finding newer TDs or TDIs!

 

Fellow Greasers

I was looking around online and ran across some fellow greasers. Some folks are so dedicated, they’ve made entire sites sharing their knowledge. They sound pretty darn smart to me, but then again I am not good with the mechanical/technical side of this stuff! Check out some fellow “greasers” and bio-fuel bio-neers!

Vegd VW: Learn how Dave converted his cars to run on Waste Vegetable Oil.

The Fry Guys show you how they converted their cars and have plenty of useful tips.

Dreamer Propulsion: learn how one greaser converted a Mercedes300D.

Veggie Caravan is a non-profit group who tours in veggie-fueled buses promoting alternative energy and sustainability.

David Henri tells the story of converting his 1981 VW Rabbit in this article.

I could go on listing quite a few groups and individuals who have converted their vehicles, and the internet is a main source of information for the bio-fuel community. Since WVO conversions are still rather “underground” and definitely a DIY-project, the free-speech zone of the Internet is a great place for individual greasers to share their stories and find information. Feel free to comment with other conversion stories or the sites of fellow greasers!

 

Maiden Voyage!

I will be making the maiden voyage in the newly-converted greasecar this weekend! I’m going down to McCall to show off the bus to my parents, who used to own a very similar one. It’s going to be about 400 miles round trip, and Seneca anticipates that I should be able to make the whole trip on one full grease tank, about 15 gallons. This will be a test to see if the miles per gallon on grease are better or worse than regular diesel, on which we get about 30 MPG. Most “greasers” say they get similar or slightly better mileage on grease, so we’ll see. I will be hitting some mean hills though, with the itty bitty 1.6L engine I’m sure it will be slow. But it’s a great way to test out the grease system. The only thing I’m nervous about is that Sen isn’t coming with me, so I just hope we have no car troubles. Send me & the Volksvegan some good vibes for a safe trip!

We have now secured 3 regular sources for waste oil. We also found out who our competition was, there are a number of locals who make bio-diesel out of wvo, and they have set up agreements with the biggest restaurants with the best grease. So that sucks, but maybe they can learn to share. Until then, we get about 5 gallons a week from each of our three sources, although the timing on 2 are a little irregular. That should more than cover our in-town driving, since we rarely drive and do most errands by bike. We really want to get a stockpile saved up for road trips though. We’re taking the bus to a barter fair September 9-10 and another much farther one the second weekend in October. I’m excited to finally be taking some veggie-fueled trips, and the bus is perfect for barter fairs since we can camp out in it and set up a canopy on one side of it to use as a booth. I sell and barter with handmade gemstone jewelry and herbal soap & massage oil at the fairs.

Tomorrow we collect more grease (I’ll try to get pictures this time) and take the bus into the shop to have the belts replaced and hopefully get our temperature gage fixed. The temperature gage stopped working, and it’s pretty important, so if they can’t fix it we might have to take our maiden voyage a week later.