I don’t know if I’m ready to stand on a stage with Al Gore and talk about the ice caps, but I’m certainly greener than I used to be. My Green Mercedes is ready to be picked up from the mechanic (the heater was stuck on and it didn’t always turn off when I took the key out), and this video seems to make more and more sense to me. I am unapologetically a Capitalist, but I believe VERY strongly in ethical capitalism.
I just thought I’d share, that and I didn’t like seeing my post on Disneyland being the last post on here.
This morning as I was getting ready to go to work I remembered that I was low on fuel in my new Mercedes. Luckily, we had some in the pantry. What? Don’t you keep you automotive fuel in your pantry?
Since I just got the car last week I haven’t had a chance to line up oil suppliers, so I may actually have to buy diesel… but not for long. The Black Beauty gets dropped off at the mechanic tomorrow to have a check up and by the time she’s back I plan on having the whole system sorted out. A friend of mine is donating a couple of 55 gal barrels but I’ll need a pump and some 5 micron filters (let me know if you have any of those gathering dust).
In case people didn’t catch it in the last post, I am running my ‘new’ Mercedes on WVO (Waste Vegatable Oil). I haven’t set it all up yet, since I didn’t want 200 gallons of old fry oil in my garage until I actually had a car. I’ve had a LOT of questions about how this works, and whether or not I need to install some sort of conversion. Here’s a video showing that this works. It is from a British show, so you’ll need to replace some of the terms like ‘chips’ with French Fries.
There are people that make Biodiesel which is basically a pH balanced and additive rich version of WVO but there are questions as to the emmissions emitted due to the additives. The bottom line is most diesel’s (pre 2007 for the most part, but don’t quote me and ruin your motor) can run right off of vegatable oil. Wolfgang Diesel, the inventor of the Diesel engine designed his invention to run on peanut oil, but big business has worked to help us forget that these were designed to run organically.
Here’s the problem. I love my new car and I want more. This one is really a simple and fun commuter, but isn’t nice enough to take to meet clients. I’m looking for a late 90’s E or S class diesel and a G wagen. Then I’ll have my ‘sports’ car, my SUV and luxury car and never pay for fuel in any of them.
I was going to post the video of the Mythbusters episode where they prove the myth that this works, but it became unavailable from youtube. They showed a large diesel mercedes getting 30mpg on pure WVO with no modifications.
