Green Options

I recently joined a new web site, Green Options as a weekly blogger. The site is a great resource for all kinds of green living information, including a section of their Green Life Guide devoted to green transportation. The Green Options Blog has regular posts on bio-diesel and WVO transportation as well. I will be writing about green art, design, and culture, but there’s a fellow greaser who blogs on Green Options, so more information will be out there on bio-fuels. Yay!

 

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!

 

We Need a Garage

It sure would be nice to have a garage this time of year. Seneca has been working on the bus a little bit, but he can’t last long when his fingers freeze. A garage is definitely something we’re looking for in our next place, but in the meantime we’re hoping to set up a makeshift shelter for the bus so we can actually work on it during the winter. Seneca installed the new starter switch, but found out that the battery has died. It’s just one problem after another, and it’s pretty obvious that this bus sat for a long time and a lot of the parts need to be replaced. So we’re doing that one part at a time…

We hope to move in the spring, hopefully to Eugene, Oregon, or somewhere around there. It sure would be nice to get the bus running first though, and get a trailer hitch on it so we can move all our stuff (or what remains after a huge yard sale). The bus is kinda on hold until a warmer day in the meantime…

 

Stagnation

Not much news on the bus-front lately since it isn’t running at the moment. Sen & his dad spent lots of time on the injector pump and then found that the starter needs more work. Now we’re just waiting for paychecks and warm sunny days for working on the bus. A garage would come in pretty handy right now…

We made it to the Okanogan Family Faire, but the bus didn’t. It was still a fun trip and I can’t believe we packed all our stuff, Juneau, and a friend in the car on the way there. We had several friends from all over camp with us and I traded and sold lots of massage oil & soap, and a necklace. We even brought home 3 gallons or so of quite clean waste veggie oil from the curly fry booth near our booth!

I’ll update when there’s news, Seneca should be working on the bus tomorrow. Until then, we’re still regularly collecting grease and have quite a bit in our barrel. It’s much more difficult to work with now that it’s so cold though. It solidifies in the cubies that we leave it in to settle out the hydrogenated & animal oils, and sometimes we have to bring them inside by the heater (ew!). Once we get the grease in the big storage barrel we can just heat it with our little tank heater which goes inside the barrel, so pumping it into the car tank from there isn’t too difficult.

Well, I better get ready for our Halloween party & finish up some work - ciao for now!

 

Send good vibes!

The bus is temporarily out of commission, and we need all the good wishes we can get to get it back up & running by next weekend for the biggest, bestest barter fair ever! Seneca and his dad have been working on it the past week installing a new starter and rebuilding the injector pump. The injector pump was quite a project, and now it’s in the shop getting calibrated, then they have to install it and hopefully that will be the end of the leakage. On our last trip we went through way too much grease because of the injector pump leak, so hopefully this fixes it!

We are headed to the Okanogan Family Faire, the biggest and last one of the season, October 12-15. We are volunteering to be on “dog patrol” and will be running a booth out of the bus. Of course we’ll be making the trip on grease, which we have been collecting pretty regularly from a few of our sources.

The grease has had a harder time separating now that it’s getting colder, so we may need to move it into the garage and use a heat mat when we first bring it home and let it settle. We put baking soda in it when we first collect it which makes all the hydrogenated oil and animal fat fall to the bottom. Much of it settles out naturally as well, but when it’s cold the grease solidifies more easily and the separation doesn’t work as well. Starting the bus in the cold will require us to run on diesel a bit longer before the grease is warm enough to switch over as well, and cold starts are always interesting in diesels, so wish us luck for the cold season!

Good vibes are needed for a speedy calibration & installation of the injector pump. That should be the last repair we need to do for a while (at least until we replace the engine with a newer, more efficient, and more powerful turbo diesel one). Stay tuned for stories of the bus at the barter faire (hopefully it’s fixed in time)!

 

First Veg-fueled Trip!

We made our first veggie-oil fueled trip this weekend to the Santa Barter Fair. It’s about 60 miles North, not a very long trip but a perfect one for trying out the grease system. It ran great on the way there on veg oil, but on the way back we lost power as we were going up a hill. We had to switch to diesel and it ran fine the rest of the way home as long as we stayed on the diesel. When we got home we discovered the veggie oil fuel tank was almost empty and that’s why we lost power. It’s pretty crazy cuz Sen filled it up with about 10 gallons before we left!

We have discovered the culprit though. At the shop last week the mechanic said that our injector pump is leaking and needs rebuilt. Ugh. So that’s what’s leaking, apparently it leaks more on veggie oil than diesel. We haven’t replaced our hoses & gaskets with non-rubber ones yet and we’re pretty sure that’s the problem. We did use some bio-diesel blends like B20 and it’s best to replace all the rubber if you’re using any bio-diesel because it will erode. So we kinda figured we’d have to do it sometime. Now Seneca is trying to decide whether we should fix the injector pump, replace it and all the rubber hoses/gaskets, or just get a new turbo engine. All options are going to be a bit spendy. I was warned that VW ownership meant one project/problem after another… I guess we should’ve expected it.

Here’s Seneca driving on the way to Santa. We had a great time at the barter fair. We’ve been going to it for about 4 years now, it’s a small fair but a lot of Moscow people go since it’s so close and so we always know a lot of people. I actually sold and/or traded quite a bit of soap and massage oil, and a couple pieces of jewelry as well! I handed out lots of PETA stickers, too. There was a potluck on Saturday night and a drum circle as always. I have some pictures up on My Flickr Page of the trip. Our next big adventure is planned for the second weekend in October, the Okanogan Family Faire near Tonasket, WA. It’ll be a 5 hour drive, so we may actually be packing extra grease, and we’ll be staying a bit longer. It’s a huge faire, and we’ll have a booth, so I gotta get busy with my crafting! Hopefully we can promote sustainable transportation and maybe even get some grease from the food booths at the faire!

 

Grease Collecting Pictures

So as promised, here are some grease collection photos of our quickest collection ever. We collect grease at the Breakfast Club every Friday, and they are nice enough to leave out the hot fryer oil in a big bucket so we can come get it before it solidifies. Seneca has to prime the pump (by sucking on the end of the hose, ewwww!) to get the grease flowing. Sometimes we hook up the pump to 3 filters so the grease can go right into the tank, but this time we opted to filter it at home so we just pumped it straight from the bucket into a container.

With a little cooperation, we got the grease in record time. Our friend Crystal works at the Breakfast Club, so she unlocks it and we plug in the pump, then pump it from the bucket into a container. It usually takes 2 people (one at each end of the hose) to collect grease, but on this trip we had 4 just for good measure. I held the hose in the “cubie” container and took the picture at the same time, Crystal unlocked the door and plugged in the pump, Seneca primed the pump and held the hose into the bucket, and Andy helped hook up the electrical cord and generally supervised the edeavor. That’s what I call teamwork.

Seneca filled up the tank for our maiden grease voyage to the Santa Barter Fair (about 60 miles away). But that’s a story for another post…

 

OK, so the maiden voyage was postponed

Well, we didn’t get to take our maiden voyage this weekend. The bus is still in the shop, due to a couple other parts that needed replaced. It should be done tomorrow, so we’ll be taking our maiden voyage this coming weekend to the Santa barter fair (it’s only about an hour away). So sadly my parents didn’t get to check out the grease bus, but Sen & I will get to take our first grease-fueled trip in it together, and we’ll be able to camp in it all weekend. Joy!

I did take some grease-collecting pictures and will try to get those up soon. We’re getting pretty quick at it due to a fancy-pants filtration system that Sen & Andy set up to pump the grease out and through three filters so it’s ready to go in the tank. Now that we have 5 sources of grease, our exhaust will smell like a mix of Mexican food, Chinese food, greasy bar food, and hashbrowns!

 

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.

 

Grease Collecting

We’ve been on a mission to collect as much grease as possible lately. We now have two regular sources, a local breakfast restaurant and a bar & grill. Still not a lot of grease though. We’ve tried talking to several restaurant managers and are finding that many of the larger places have collection companies contracted to take their grease. Many companies have started paying people for it, and are turning it into bio-diesel. The bio-fuel craze is here!

I went on my first collection run this weekend with Andy. The bio-brothers have quite the filtration set up! We use a long tube connected to a pump and 3 filters to suck the grease out of the bin, through the filters, and into a collection container. Then it’s all ready to put in the tank. We got a big bin to collect filtered grease in the garage, so we’re slowly building up a stockpile. I’m hoping to have enough to make it down to McCall to visit my parents this weekend. The bus needs a good bath before then, too…