It's Alive, It's Alive!

So the Merzola was alive before, but since we last talked, I took the life out of it, then brought it back again. And it works!

It took me the better part of 2 days, but that's mainly because I have no mechanical background whatsoever. I have replaced a battery, changed a tire, and even replaced break pads. But I've never attempted anything like this. I must say the greasecar.com guys have their act together. They provided step-by-step instructions and even included a photo CD that was specific to my model of car.

Last weekend, I thought I would take on the first of 3 phases. In phase 1, which was by far the most time consuming, I installed my secondary tank, fuel valves, veggie filter, and ran 2 lengths of heater hose under the chassis (wow, I am even speaking mechanic lingo...chassis...I'm so cool). Then I spliced into the car's coolant lines. The basic idea is to take coolant as it exits from the engine (it's hot now) and send that back to the veggie tank. The hot liquid circulates inside the coils of the tank to heat the veggie oil, then returns to the radiator to be cooled down again and then recirculate. After I finished, the big test was to drive the car for about 20 minutes until the engine heated up. My main goal was for the car to not overheat. It didn't...congratulations, you are 1/3 of the way complete.

At this point, I was in a groove. Cocky, if you will. I had the perverbial 'big head', so I attempted phase 2...the fuel system. In this phase, you splice into the fuel lines and run lines from the diesel tank and the veggie tank into the fuel valves. Then you run lines from the fuel valves back into the fuel pump. The big test here as that the car will actually run when you are finished. So I cranked it and nothing...turns out, there was a little air in the fuel lines so by the time the air was out, it ran like a champ.

Today, I decided to take on the wiring. With my veggie kit, I purchased the optional "Copilot" which is a gps-sized computer unit that monitors temperatures, veggie level, and switch-over. In manual mode, an alarm sounds when the engine reaches the optimum temperature. Then all you have to do is press a button and the computer signals the valves to switch so that the fuel pump pulls fuel from the veggie tank instead of the diesel. Just before you turn the car off, you press the button again and purge the veggie oil out of the fuel lines and then switch back to diesel. This was the most daunting of the tasks for me. Wiring usually requires patience, more than anything else...and that's one thing I don't have. Again, this turned out to be easier than expected...primarily because of the detailed instructions. The big test here was to start the car on diesel, then switch it to purge mode. The goal of this test is to time how long it takes for diesel to start flowing into the veggie tank. This is recorded as the purge time. The aforementioned onboard computer is then set with this purge time so Copilot knows how long to purge at the end of a ride. 12 seconds...but more importantly, it worked!

After some tidying up, I drove to Costco and bought about 70 lbs of soybean oil. You should've seen some of the looks I was getting pouring the oil into the tank in the parking lot. I cranked it up, drove a few miles and prepared for my big moment. I double-checked all of the guages one last time and pressed the button on Copilot to switch from diesel to veggie. The engine didn't stop, but pressing the gas pedal didn't do anything. Uh oh...as I began to decellerate, the fuel started to hit the engine and it took off. Was it really running on veggie oil? Or did I screw something up? When I stopped at the red light, I knew it was right...I could smell the hot oil coming from the exhaust. It didn't smell great, but it sure beat the smell of diesel...and no CO2! It's alive! It's Alive! IT'S ALIVE!

I will probably drive it everywhere now just to smell the grease. I love it! Next thing on the agenda...create my home filtering system so I can really drive for free!