THE BEGINNING

Our veggie adventure has begun! 1350 miles on half a gallon of diesel fuel and free oil...

It all started on Memorial Day weekend when Jeremy and Murray (Jeremy's Dad) diligently installed our Greasecar veggie conversion kit. Our Greasecar kit was specifically made for our 2003 Jetta Wagon, and we were greatly assisted by watching their DVD of a Jetta conversion done by a greasecar mechanic.

The round 13 gallon veggie oil tank fits snuggly into the car's spare wheel well. Connected to the tank is a hose-within-a-hose fuel line that uses an exterior hose of hot coolant to warm the interior hose of veggie oil. The fuel line was strung from the rear wheel well underneath the car and up into a veggie filter warmed with a copper coil filled with coolant. The heater line was tapped into to keep the veggie filter hot.


The most crucial part of this system is flushing the veggie oil out of all the lines with diesel so that the oil doesn't clog up once cooled. Also, the oil needs a few minutes with the car running on diesel in order to warm to a safe temperature for the engine to accept it without clogging. A switch was installed that controls two solenoids, one which operates the veggie oil and the other the diesel fuel. We can transfer from diesel to oil or oil to diesel on the fly with the switch placed on the car's dash.

The whole conversion took 3 casual days of work. We are thankful to Murray whose electrical skills saved us from a world of confusion.

Now that the conversion was complete, next on the list was to find our oil. We went to St. Simons Island and had lunch at our favorite mexican food restuarant, Bubba Garcias. We figured Bubba's would be the ideal grease provider since they only fry chips and chimichongas, no dairy. The eatery is a little more gourmet than traditional mexican resturants, therefore they don't use hydrogenized oil or reuse their oil. Also, the family owned restuarant has another eatery - Gnat's Landing - across the street that we could obtain additional oil from. Part of the way through our meal we asked our server if we could talk to the manager. The owners sister Josolin came over and within seconds of mentioning "oil" she knew exactly what we were asking for. Both restuarants were very cooperative with providing us with as much oil as we need. And when we return from our travels we hope to continue using their oil.

To harvest the oil we ciphened it out of the drums behind the restuarant with a marine pump charged by the car's battery and hoses connected to either end of the pump. One hose went into the drum and the other dipped into a 10 micron filter that sat on top of our plastic containers. We have enough containers to hold 27 gallons of oil and at 45 MPG (fully loaded car) we can travel 1200 miles before needing to go to another restuarant for more oil. This means we can comfortably make it to our next destination to harvest again.

We've already traveled over 1350 miles on veggie (500 miles to and from Orlando & 850 miles to Hot Springs, AR), Presently we are hanging with Nikki's parents in AR. Tonight we go to Osaka Japanese Steakhouse and ask for more oil to get us to Jackson, WY. We'll let everyone know how it goes.