Four Wheels, or Two?

The dreaded scenario happened: two old immobile diesels.

Last week the Mercedes sprung a leak near the injector pump. Since fixing the Audi has been on the back burner, I was left with no drivable vehicles and a lot of work to do.

We've been without a working car many times before and it's generally not a big deal. I hardly ever drive to work anyway. Getting the family to church on Sunday morning is about the only time we need a ride.

What's worse than the dreaded scenario? My bike broke halfway through the week. Man, was that hard. I was left with walking or busing to work. I chose to walk. Getting groceries became painful, literally. (and it bugs the heck out of me when people say "literally" and it isn't literal. My hand actually hurt after carrying the heavy bag of food back from the Co-op.) Life without a car was manageable, but life without a bike felt like a real hardship.

On a recommendation from a coworker, I took my good bike to Express Bike Shop. I always modify my bikes to use just a single speed by taking off all the derailleurs, cables, and whatnot, and shortening the chain to accommodate two gears I find to be a useful ratio. Since I'm an urban year-round biker I don't need a lot of gears and having just one means there's far less stuff to go wrong. I had the folks at Express do it the "right" way and actually remove the extraneous cogs and add a special tensioner to the chain (see photo). Since it was the Fourth of July week, I had to wait extra long for it to be done.
All of the walking, besides being good for my prayer life, gave me time to realize what my main vehicle really is. I'd been feeling for a while like I should maybe break down and get a "normal" car like a Camry or something that would be completely boring and dependable (as well as expensive bloody gas consuming). Some might call this responsible, while others would consider it "selling out." It feels more like the latter to me. In any case, realizing that the bike is my main vehicle and cars are only secondary/occasional transportation put a lot of things in perspective. I once told an old bike-guy-friend-coworker from Amore, "I want to have an old car I can work on and basically never drive." I don't think he had any idea what I was talking about, but maybe you do after reading a bit of this post. I love working on cars, but I'm not so big on driving them every day.

Oh, I think I did fix the leak on the Mercedes too. It was a neat little thing by the injector pump that lets you prime the system by hand! (what a cool idea.) It had a worn out rubber seal. I got something from the hardware store that seems to work. I also have a replacement for the little unit if that doesn't do it. The reason why I only "think" I fixed it is I haven't really driven it anywhere since I worked on it, just idled it and looked for dripping. I've been too busy biking to drive it anywhere.

Midwest Renewable Energy Fair

A week after we went to the cabin we took a trip with Willington to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair near Stephen's Point, Wisconsin. We were tipped-off to this event by our friends at the Solar Oven Society. They've had a booth at the fair for several years running and highly recommended we go. Willington was most exited about the chance to learn about renewable technology that would be useful in his Ugandan homeland. Traveling with him was pretty fun, too, because he'd never seen American farmland before. He was really into all the cows and large farms and marveled that all of the rural places we passed by had electricity and running water.

Although the main purpose of our trip was to learn more about technologies that would be appropriate to Uganda, I also got a chance to visit the alternative energy car show. Pictured above is a whole row of vegetable oil burning diesels. A wide range of conversion systems were represented, ranging from the $350 do-it-yourself (which seemed to involve a generous amount of duct tape) to the fancy single tank Elsbett system.

Since I already have a converted car, what I mostly wanted to know about was waste vegetable oil filtration.  I've read a lot of somewhat conflicting information on the Internet about what works and doesn't work.  I thought that maybe talking to some real people would help me figure things out.  

What I came up with wasn't necessarily the technical information I had hoped for, though I got some good ideas.  My main realization was that there is a wide spectrum of opinion and practice when it comes to collecting and filtering WVO for vehicles.  What one person considers normal would be completely unacceptable to another.  For example, one man I talked to said of the professional Greasecar certified mechanic that installed his system, "well, he's not so careful about what he puts in his tank."  

I think this perspective on WVO opinions is more valuable than a few technical tips.  On the spectrum of WVO filtering I think I want to be a little more careful than center.  I don't exactly know what that works out to yet, but at least I have a better framework for listening to what others have to say about it.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me...

a grease-eating 1972 Mercedes-Benz 220D!
How'd this happen? Am I crazy? Isn't one old weird diesel enough?!
Apparently not.
Most of you know that Libby and I have been slowly moving toward owning a car that can run on waste vegetable oil (abbreviated WVO). That's why we bought our '82 Audi almost a year ago. I've done a bunch of things with the Audi since then but have not yet converted it to run on grease. Right now I'm trying to save it from destroying itself via what's likely is a broken valve spring. (I think I've pretty well narrowed that down now... we'll see when I have a broken spring in hand.) So after going without a vehicle for the last month I decided to look on Craig's List for a second vehicle. Not that we'd be a "two car family," but that we'd not be without something to drive during my frequent tinkerings.
I searched for used diesel sedans under $3000 thinking that I'd find another old VW or something. Instead I come up with this Mercedes on the top of the list. It was the only diesel Mercedes I'd ever seen in our meager price range, and it already had the Greasecar WVO conversion kit installed on it (a $1000 value, labor aside).

Still, I was skeptical. In fact, I didn't even think much of it at first. Sure, I know that Mercedes is what most greasers shoot for. Sure, I've known someone who drove a '70's Mercedes diesel with over 500,000 on the clock. But aren't parts going to be impossible to find and more impossible to pay for? And anyway, who buys a car from the '70's that they actually intend to drive?

Libby was excited, though. So I decided to go take a look. It drove pretty well, had more power than the Audi, and had no noticeable difference running on grease compared to diesel. The only thing that felt a little odd were the brakes, which worked fine if you just applied a little more pressure that one's used to doing today. In truth, the brakes felt like they do on my '73 Beetle.

Next came the agony. I agonise sometimes about buying a pen. You can imagine how much worse this was. I did some research to soothe myself. I looked at autopartswarehouse.com to see just how expensive and rare these parts are. To my great surprise, they weren't bad at all! Just look at that long list of parts available.

As I happened to be thinking about the Mercedes vs. VW issue one morning, it occurred to me how much more well suited for grease the Mercedes is. It's all in the diesel injection pump. The VW Bosch pump (which I disassembled last fall and should have gotten a picture of all the tiny little intricate parts!) has nothing more that the fuel itself to lubricate it's precision machinery. This old Mercedes pump (which I remember seeing on an historical time line in a Bosch textbook) has its own dedicated oil supply and is in general much simpler and less dependent on the exact fluid qualities of what's going through it.

After these two considerations were taken care of, I bought it. I still feel a little crazy, but here's some pictures:
Above is the 15 gal. grease tank in the trunk. It's high-tech, but you can't tell because it's covered in insulation - a nice touch from the previous owner. The key to the grease system is keeping the vegetable oil hot.
These are the grease controls. On the left is a gage that gives you line pressure before the injector pump. That way you know everything's flowing OK. The other gage is fuel level in the grease tank. In the middle is the three way switch for Veggie, Diesel, or Purge. You start on diesel until the engine reaches operating temperature, switch to veggie for the duration of your ride, and purge the system with diesel before shutting off the engine.

My current main concern after buying the car is the fact that it consumes a certain amount of oil. I haven't driven it enough to know just how much. The previous owner said he added about every 6 weeks. One reason why this didn't deter me more is that my Audi owners manual states that some oil consumption is expected from the diesel. The Mercedes manual apparently says the same thing. Here's a discussion about it I found today.

Aside from the mechanical stuff, I like driving it. The interior is mint, and since you can't see any of the rust spots from the inside, it feels like luxury. Plus, it smells a little like my dad's 1956 Buick Special. Maybe that has to do with what the dash and seats are made of, I don't know, but it's a good association.
All I need now is a source for grease and a filtration system.