Quick Start Guide for a
Single Tank Veggie Car
1. Buy a 1980-1985 Mercedes Diesel.
2. Take the car to Lovecraft Biofuels for the veg oil
conversion.
3. Buy a large bottle of Gatorade and drink it. Keep the
bottle and cut off the bottom end. The threads on the top
fit in your Mercedes gas tank and make it easy to fill up.
4. Break in the car with new vegetable oil. Buy cubies of
100% soybean oil from Smart & Final or Costco and run
the car for the first 600 miles.
5. Once you use the oil, keep some of the cubies for future
use.
Obtaining used oil for your
car
1. Purchase a 55 gallon drum filtering station from
Lovecraft. Or buy a barrel, barrel pump and filters and
make your own. (see the links section for sources)
2. Talk to Asian restaurants and find a few that will give
you their used oil. When the restaurants pour their oil
back into cubies, that's the easiest way to pick it up.
Otherwise you need to buy a pump to get the oil out of
their oil bin/dumpster and into some of your empty cubies.
3. Let the oil sit undisturbed in the cubies for 2 weeks.
This allows all sediment to settle to the bottom.
4. Pour the oil into your drum, through a 5 micron filter.
As soon as you see bits of sediment in the oil, stop
pouring. If your oil source is good and you've let it
settle properly, you should be down to the final inch of
the oil. If you only get 1/3 to 1/2 into your cubie and
start seeing sediment, look for oil from a different
source.
5. Pump oil from the drum back into a clean cubie & use
it to fill your car. Or pump it straight from the barrel
into your tank.
For more in-depth information on filtering oil, purchase
the DVD's from Golden Fuel Systems.
An alternate to filtering
your own oil
In the Los Angeles area, you can contact veggifuel.org and buy used/filtered
oil from them. You can arrange to pick it up or have
them drop it off.