Mon 21 Aug 2006
She’s Officially a Greasecar!
Posted by megan under alternative & bio-fuels , conversion , greasecar , photos[4] Comments
Well, we have a greasecar! Seneca finished up the greasecar kit installation on Friday. Here is the converted engine… the main additions are 2 valves and a fuel filter for the grease, and of course the hoses carrying grease from the tank. The wiring is a bit shoddy at this point because the wire that came with the kit was too short, so we gotta call greasecar to get a longer wire and re-do the wiring. I’m sure it’ll look much better since the wire we got is a single insulated wire, and it will be hidden under everything up to the front of the bus.
Before running on grease, we had to warm up the engine and time how long it took to purge veggie oil from the tank. When we stop the car, we’ll have to purge it first, so it’s good to know how long before we turn off the car we need to flip the grease switch off. We have a buzzer that warns us if we shut down without purging the lines, as well, but we still need to install it once we get the longer wire. Our purge time is pretty quick at about 40 seconds. In the picture, Seneca watches the veggie oil tank and waits for diesel fuel to start flowing back in, indicating the purge is complete.
We took our first test drive in the greasecar at last! We ran it on pure veggie oil instead of waste veggie oil for the first run, and just did a quick trip out to the park. She drove perfectly, and Sen says the engine sounds a bit quieter on grease. We even stopped to smell the exhaust to make sure it was truly on grease. The exhaust on grease smelled very mild and almost like nothing, it’s a bit more of a french-fry smell with used oil, but it sure beats diesel exhaust!
We’re quite excited about finally being up and running on grease! It was much easier than we thought to convert the bus, and hopefully we’ll have many veggie-fueled travels from now on. We’re not quite ready for a road trip yet, we need to get the wiring for the kit done properly, mount the gages a bit better, and get new tires and wheels put on the bus. Then, let the grease collection commence!
August 21st, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Congratulations! I’d love to get my 93 Nissan to run on veggie oil, but at the very least, I’m comforted in the fact that I never really drive it anymore – most places I go are accessible and more convenient by public transportation.
August 21st, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Public transportation would be nice, but there are very few cities in the US that has decent public transport. Count yourself lucky!
Actually we don’t plan to drive the bus much except for on long trips, grease is better for that. For anything in town, I usually take a bike with a trailer on the back. Unless, of course, it’s raining. 
That’s when public transporation would come in handy.
Thanks for commenting!
October 21st, 2009 at 8:38 am
Hi, I am planning on converting a vanagon to veggie and wanted to see who you used for a resource and parts. Thanks and nice work on the van hope its still rollin.
Tyson
October 21st, 2009 at 9:12 am
Hi Tyson – we first started with a diesel vanagon, which are rare and hard to find, but it definitely makes the conversion MUCH easier. If you start with a gas, you’ll have to put in a diesel engine first, and convert everything over into diesel before you can add the grease system. We got our grease system & parts from Greasecar: http://www.greasecar.com/
However, we are no longer running on waste veggie oil, after lots of trial & error and research, we decided to use bio-diesel instead (which is made from wvo and is less experimental and more reliable). Most new diesel engines can already run on bio-diesel just fine, and for older engines you just need to replace any natural rubber seals with synthetic ones.
Good luck with your conversion!