I have a cousin who is one of those guys who is always doing some sort of crazy project so when he told me recently that he was going to run a car on vegetable oil I thought he was insane. Turns out he’s crazy for sure, crazy like a fox (ok ok no more cliches).

Sure enough, last week we went up wakeboarding with him, his brother and our significant others he showed up with a new Mercedes Benz. Now, when I say new, I mean new to him. It is without a doubt the ugliest mercedes I have seen since I saw a mercedes garbage truck in Europe. As I approached the car I got a nice whiff of something frying. Not the pleasant french fry smell you get from those biodiesel buses but something that smelled like a kitchen fire. In any case, he did it and is now paying absolutely ZERO for gas…and here is how it works:

Step 1) He bought an old diesel engine car. In this case a mercedes benz from the mid 80s that was beat all to hell. Any diesel engine will do, though apparently you should avoid buying one that has rubber in the fuel system because vegetable oil tends to corrode it after a while. Total Cost: $1500
Step 2) Build a centrifuge. He build one in his garage out of an old riding lawnmower engine and spare metal parts from a junkyard. More on this later. Total cost $350.

Step 3) Find restaurants to give you used fryer grease. Total cost $0.00

How it all works:

As it turns out good old Rudolf Diesel introduced his signature engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he said his new engine ran on, get this, Peanut oil. He’d designed his engine so farmers could grow their own fuel. Most diesel engines were indeed run on vegetable oil until the 1920s, when it was disovered that the byproduct of gasoline (what we call Diesel) could be used instead. The irony being that now with clean air laws, diesel is actually MORE costly to produce than gasoline…but I digress.

The fryer oil is brought home and put in the centrifuge. There is a hole in the top that the oil runs out of and into a holding cell, while the dirt particles collect in the sides. It is then poured through a filter and into his gas tank. Pretty simple.

Ill try and get some pictures and write more on it later.

Where has Jesse been?
I didn’t want to write an entire article on it, but the truth of the matter is that I have been simple to busy to blog. I apologize to my regular readers and to everyone else stumbling on my page. Rest assured I am rested, work has died down a bit, and Im dedicated to bringing back TPS better than ever.

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