Merzola Video Shoot, Take 27...And...Action!

A few weeks ago, I told you about a video shoot we did in conjunction with the Mother Nature Network.  They did their best to make us look cool, but somehow, when you see yourself on video, there is nothing to prepare you for how much of a loser you really are.  Two questions:  1) Is my nose really that big? and 2) What happened to my hair!?!

At least Conor looks cool with his retro Star Wars t-shirt.  

You can see the video by going to MNN.com and scrolling to the very bottom of the screen.  You can launch the video from there, or by clicking here.

Ok, so a bonus prize if you can comment back to this blog with the most popular (or most irritating) word used in the video...

You can almost smell the tempura!

My Fifteen Minutes

A few things to catch up on. In my last blog, I made a few statements that I would like to follow up on. 1) my promise to interview Obama and McCain, and 2) my promise to actually collect free oil from my local sushi restaurant.

As for the first, I left messages for Mr. McCain. His assistant has not yet called me back to schedule some time, but I am hopeful. President Obama did return my call. Here is an exerpt from our recent phone interview:

Me: Mr. President, 1st of all, congratulations on your historic election.
Obama: Thank you. It was a hard fought victory and now I need to get to the business of the American people.

Me: Speaking of that, Mr. President, you recently promised a "New Era" of Energy. How do you plan to achieve that?
Obama: I'm glad you asked about that. I hope to pass legislation that will promote clean, renewable energy sources and lower America's dependence on foreign oil. And since it's just you and I talking, mano et mano, I thought maybe you could share some of your ideas...

Me: I'd love to. But first, I have a few questions: just how much oil does the White House kitchen staff go through on a weekly basis?
Obama: Well, I'm not exactly sure. I could have my...

Me: Would you classify the oil as 100% vegetable?
Obama: Uh...

Me: What's wrong, Mr. President? Would you prefer that I gave you these questions ahead of time and allowed the use of multiple tele-prompters during our interview? Hmm?

[Muffled noise in the background] Eric, did you brush your teeth yet? You better not be on that internets again. You've got school tomorrow!

Obama: Uh, I better go. Hillary wants to brief me on North Korea.

So that was my interview with Barack Obama. Well, at least he said he was Barack Obama...

As for the 2nd item, I have officially begun collecting free oil. As long as I am willing, and they are in business, I can get approximately 10 gallons of very high quality veggie oil from my local sushi restaurant every week. It's close by, and easy to filter, so it should be minimum effort to fuel the wagon.

On another note, the Mother Nature Network (mnn.com) heard about the Merzola and will be running a short video on their site in a few weeks. They taped an interview with us and shot some "b-roll" footage (stuff like us driving past a gas station and waving, pouring oil into the Merzola, filtering oil, etc.) to mix in. The only draw back is that they did it in 1080, so you will probably see every imperfection I have in HD! We did have to apply some "powder" to my forehead because apparently the glare was out of control. Go check out MNN and see what they are all about. They are pretty new (I think they started up in January) and a good source of information. I'll post a link to the video when it goes up. Stay tuned.

1.21 Giga-Watts

1.21 giga-watts! Great Scott! Apparently that is what it will take for my "flux capacitor" to start in cold weather. And my battery doesn't quite have enough juice to accomplish that. In fact, I tested it and it came up just shy of 1.21 giga-watts. At least I figured this out on Sunday and not at 6am on Monday morning when I had to leave for the airport.

On another note, I forgot to mention a few other recent happenings. Several days after I replaced the glow-plugs, I went out one morning to start the car and nothing. Bupkus. It wouldn't even turn over. It was almost as if someone had disconnected the battery. I checked everything I could check and decided that the starter must be bad. So I called AAA and they towed it to my local Benz mechanic a few miles away. The next day, he called me and gave me the perverbial "I have good news and bad news" comment. Gulp (again)! Of course I asked for the bad news first, cuz I'm such an optimistic guy. He said the bad news was that they had to work on the car right there in the parking lot because they couldn't get it into the shop without hooking up some tow chains. Okkkkk.....The good news? They checked the glow-plug relay and it was good. They checked the starter and it was good. In fact, everything checked out good. It turns out that a ground wire on the starter had come unhooked. A simple reconnection and that was it! Wow, it never works out like that.

To top it all off, he told me that he had been looking for some seats from a junker to replace the seats in my car. If I didn't mention it, my seats were 25 years old. And apparently some 300 pound "little" old lady had been driving it that whole time and bouncing up and down in it. Not only that, but her best friend was also 300 pounds and whenever they drove to their weekly hair appointment, they both bounced the whole way. After 25 years of that, the springs were shot, the cushions were shot, and there were a few tears in the leather. Back to the point...he found some seats that were in great shape and they were mine (at cost) if I wanted them. Yesssssssss! That makes for a much better drive, trust me. I can actually see over the steering wheel now. Oh, and did I mention that I replaced the seats myself? Yet another notch on my "budding mechanic" belt of honor.

So what's next? Several people have told me recently that they actually read this blog, and all have asked me why I haven't written in a while. I guess the answer to that is now that I have the thing working, what do I really have to say? I suppose by creating a blog specifically about the Merzola, I have painted myself into a corner where I can only write about the car, or things having something to do with the car. If you thought that, then you are dead wrong. In addition to occasional updates about the Merzola, I shall now write about random things and make futile attempts to link that randomness to the yellow grease wagon. Maybe next week I will interview John McCain and Barack Obama and post their responses to a variety of environmental-related questions, such as (you guessed it) alternative fuel. I am sending a meeting invite to them now.

Shine Little Glow Plug, Glimmer, Glimmer

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I suppose it's been a while since I've had anything to post about. It took longer than expected to get the parts in from Germany, so after a full month with no Merzola, I finally got it back.
I picked it up on Friday afternoon. It had a little trouble starting, but I wrote that off to not being driven for so long. The next morning, I tried to start it and nothing. It turned over, but wouldn't crank. I slept on it and had a thought. It's turning over, and I can smell diesel in the exhaust so maybe it's the glow plugs.
For you folks who aren't familiar with diesel engines, glow plugs look like spark plugs, but instead of creating a spark to ignite fuel/air mixture (like in a gas engine), glow plugs get super hot and heat up the combustion chamber to assist with cold starts. The diesel engine compresses air, heating up the chamber, then fuel is injected and combustion occurs. When it's cold (like at startup), it needs a little help heating up and that's where the glow plugs come in. Spark plugs spark repeatedly, but glow plugs are only used at startup. Make sense? Well, it did to me. It cranked fine when it was warm, but the next morning, it wouldn't. So I decided to replace the glow plugs myself.
I called the local parts stores but no one had them on hand. Luckily, they could order them and have them by 8am the next day. So I spent a few hours taking out glow plugs. It would normally be an easy task, but they are not easy to get to. In fact, I could only get to 3 of the 5. So I replaced those 3 and took a chance. If the bad glow plugs just happened to be the ones I replaced, then it would work. If not, I'd have to figure out how to get Merzola back to the shop and let them do it.
After reconnecting the battery cables, I gave it a crank...and to my surprise, it fired right up. Wow, that was lucky. My mechanical genius never ceases to amaze me (ok, so I'm easily amazed).
Now, after a month apart, Merzola and I have reunited and I can once again smell the sweet burn of veggie oil. Now back to my sushi lady...

Factoid of the Blog (courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com):
Compression
When working on his calculations, Rudolf Diesel theorized that higher compression leads to higher efficiency and more power. This happens because when the piston squeezes air with the cylinder, the air becomes concentrated. Diesel fuel has a high energy content, so the likelihood of diesel reacting with the concentrated air is greater. Another way to think of it is when air molecules are packed so close together, fuel has a better chance of reacting with as many oxygen molecules as possible. Rudolf turned out to be right -- a gasoline engine compresses at a ratio of 8:1 to 12:1, while a diesel engine compresses at a ratio of 14:1 to as high as 25:1.

Domo Arigato

As it turns out, my earlier thought of visiting a local sushi restaurant was a good idea. While sitting around this evening wondering what we would do for dinner, we decided on sushi. Our neighborhood restaurant has been a long time favorite of ours, so we loaded up and headed over.

After dinner, the owner happened to walk by so we called her over to the table. We, of course, mentioned that we have been eating there for a number of years, and then asked boldly what they did with the vegetable oil that they use for their tempura. To my surprise, she said they change the fryers once per week and they fill up between 3 and 4 of the 4.5 gallon jugs normally. She said that a company was supposed to bring them a container to put the oil in so it could be disposed of, but they never brought it. She didn't say so, but I suspect that they were just throwing the jugs of oil in the dumpster. I think maybe she was afraid to say that because it's probably illegal.

Anyway, she asked what I wanted to do with the oil. When I told her, she got this perplexed look on her face and asked "Are you sure you can do that?". I wasn't quite sure how to answer her. Did she mean "is it legal" or did she mean "are you sure your car can run on veggie oil". I suspected the latter, so I explained to her about the conversion of the Merzola and that I was looking to recycle veggie oil to "help the environment". Of course that is my primary motivation, duh.

Getting down to details, she wasn't quite sure which day they emptied the fryer so we agreed that I should call her on Wednesday to discuss. Man, I gotta tell ya, if this works out, 15 gallons of pretty clean tempura oil each week will be more than enough to support my normal driving habits and probably enough to slowly begin to stockpile oil to accommodate my next road trip. This is kind of like getting a grant to do research. Does that make me a scientist?

Disaster Strikes Merzola!

Ok, so I am exaggerating a little bit, but the headline is quite catchy, isn't it? Last week, in preparation for a Thursday to Tuesday trip to the beach, I took the Merzola in to have an oil leak diagnosed and repaired. It turns out it was the rear main seal which means they had to take the transmission out to replace the gasket. Wednesday at 5pm, the shop called to tell me there was no way they could finish the work by end of day so I would have to make alternate travel arrangements. I still have my suv, so no biggie, right? Wrong. As I mentioned in my last blog, Atlanta is currently in the midst of a gas crisis. One in fifteen stations actually have gas and you have to wait about 45 minutes in line just to get your chance. Ridiculous! So Wednesday evening, I spent about 2 hours driving around to get $50 in gas (that's the pump limit). Luckily, outside of Atlanta, there is plenty of fuel to be had.

The trip was fine apart from not being able to drive the Merzola and get some free mileage. It would make the perfect beach car, too. Nobody drives fast at the beach except when they are first coming in.

On Monday, I got an email from the shop...the infamous "good news and bad news":

"When we were removing the engine mounts and getting ready to remove the engine to inspect/replace the head gasket, the mounts broke and we no longer had supporting structure to hold the engine while we attached the chain to lift from the car.

The good news is the steel rods which insert through the motor mounts only cost $11.65 each. The bad news is there are no parts here in the US so we have to order them from Germany. It will take 7-10 days to get the parts shipped in."

One word...Ugh! I was actually kind of relieved when I read the description. When I first saw "good news and bad news" in the subject line, I thought for sure the bad news = lots of $$$. I suppose I can live without the Merzola for a week or so. It just means I will have to limit my driving (i.e. work from home). I guess the bright side is I will have a few weeks to stockpile some veggie oil.

Road Trip!

As some of you know, I had my annual charity bike ride in Callaway Gardens. It's a 2 hour drive so I figured what better way to break in the Merzola than a road trip!

So Thursday evening, I spent a few hours pouring oil through my filter. I don't have a complete setup for filtering just yet, so I used a slightly more time consuming method called gravity. Basically, I pour the oil from my 4.5 gallon collection jugs through a 5 micron bag filter and let it drain into a bucket. Once it drained, I would pour it from the bucket into my veggie tank. The only hard part of this process is keeping the dog from licking the oil...I'm guessing it tastes like fried chicken or something similar.

Yes, this was my first attempt at filtering WVO, or waste vegetable oil. It was fairly easy, but a little time consuming with my current setup. But I suppose 2 hours of effort and a little bit of mess is worth $75 (15 gallons @ almost $5/gallon).

With a full veggie tank, we did a preliminary run to the Braves game that night. It ran as expected...like butter...melted butter.

Friday after work, we loaded up the Merzola with bikes and camping gear and headed south. Don't get me wrong...I think the Merzola looks cool by itself, but when you throw a couple bikes on the roof rack, it really looks cool. And even with the veggie tank in the back, there is still tons of room for gear. We cruised all the way down on veggie oil...and back.

I suppose it's a testament to it being a classic car that everyone wants to come up and talk to you about it. And that's even before they find out it's a veggie wagon. It's kind of like seeing an old friend that you haven't seen in a long time. The Merzola definitely ignites a feeling of nostalgia. People my age remember riding around in these things as kids...well some people do. We never had one...in fact, in 1984, this car was sold for $36,500! That's a lot of dough in 1984. Definitely too much for my folks.

When we got back to Atlanta on Sunday, it felt like the world was ending. Most gas stations were out of fuel and the ones that had it were charging an arm-and-a-leg and had dozens of cars waiting to fill up. Oh my gosh! There may be a fuel shortage so let's all run out and fill up everything we can so we actually create a fuel shortage. Personally, I hope Atlanta completely runs out of gas. There will probably still be diesel fuel available and tons of veggie oil. That sure would make for a nice commute!

So the grand total for the weekend of driving...270 miles on veggie oil. Free veggie oil, that is. A savings of about $60 (22mpg @ $5/gallon). Multiply that out over the course of a year and that's a significant savings.