Holy Kamoly!! When I first saw that, I nearly jumped off my chair when the first stroke of the maul!

I guess familiarity with the way that works would help, but I just cannot see myself using such a contraption!! Just the thought of an axe head spinning around in my direction gives me the shivers...not to mention how close his hands are to the action!!

When I first started this hobby (burning wood) I did it all by hand. Yep, a small and light splitting axe (6 pounds, I think) and using my best aikido bokken swing on it could get me through tons of wood in no time. Until I met the one that would not spilt. Then a friend lent me his log-splitter, and the rest is history...never went back to the axe.

I guess...WVO could be something like this eh.

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1987 300TD
1984 300D
755,000 KM and going strong
BC Canada

zu,

I know where you're coming from. Growing up near metro boston my family cut, stacked and split 6 cords of wood a year to heat our home for 20 years. After I went to college Id go back home to help my dad out with it.

I throw the monetary/time facts out right away for folks looking into WVO because it is not necessarily the best bang for the buck. You have to enjoy it. It is not easy to do long term, neatly (as in your garage and car don't smell like grease pits) and correctly, IMHO. Some people would say otherwise.

My in-vehicle rig in my 85 300D is essentially a stock Frybrid 3-valve system. I added to that a ISSPRO temperature gauge right before the IP inlet so I could monitor the temperature of the fuel. The frybrid site has a good explanation of the basic plumbing of the system and the reasoning behind it.

I also added a shut off valve for the system. This means if I do not intend to use the 2nd tank, I cut coolant off to it with a valve (in this case a simple ball valve). This means you don't heat the WVO on short trips - important to do to keep the fuel from polymerizing in the system (BAD).

My fuel tank is 21 gallons, and sits right behind the stock tank - I like that arrangement better than replacing the spare tire with the 15 gallon tank that is popular with grease car kits.

Why 3 valves? The third valve is a purge valve - it allows you to purge the fuel system in 15 seconds or so at 1000 RPM. This means you don't need to 'burn off' all the fuel in your IP and it also makes sure that no WVO goes to your diesel tank.

The system is automatic - theres a controller that monitors the coolant temp and turns the system on automatically. You push a button to purge the VO and the controller automatically purges for a set amount of time. The automation is nice and allows me to give the vehicle to anyone and send them on there way. All they have to do is push one button.

So in practice it takes me about 4 miles to heat the system up to temperature on a fall or spring day. If I am not going more than 10 miles I leave the system off.

Fuel temperature in operation is about 175F-180F. In the winter, I block the radiator with a piece of plastic (ironically, a for sale sign) to maintain this temperature. I have a stock 80 degree thermostat. For purge, I purge about 22 seconds. It is a little more than I have to do, but I like to ensure that Im totally free of VO in the fuel system.

So no-no's for VO use:
- not generally a good idea to idle for a long time. This encourages carbon build up on the cylinder walls using VO. (It should be noted idling for a long time on diesel isn't good either)
- not a good idea to heat the oil up and down repeatedly if its not being used. as I mentioned before...
- don't use biodiesel in the main tank! this sounds like heresy, but petrodiesel is much more stable and since the main tank doesn't get used much it's better this way. also, you can verify switchover of the fuel purely via exhaust smell between the petrodiesel and the WVO.
- dont depend on your in vehicle filter. i filter my VO outside the car to 2 microns, even though the vehicle fuel filter is 10 microns. I don't want to be on the side of the road changing filters.

That's all for now on the vehicle side of it.

And by the way, this seems like a Frybrid love letter, but it is hardly. I would not encourage anyone to buy from them if they want to be running WVO this decade. If you have the skills you can fab your own kit easily. I should have.

The preceding is all from my experience running VO for three years and 40k miles. Opinions will vary.

HTH,
dd

PM me anytime, Im happy to share what I know.

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'85 300D, 'Lance',250k, ... winter beater (100k on franken-Frybrid 3 Valve Kit)
'82 300D, 'Tex', 228k body / 170k engine ... summer car
'83 300TD Cali Wagon 210k, wife's car

I "cook" in the summer time taking advantage of the summer heat, I filter the oil down to 100microns and agitator mix with my methanol/KOH for a half hour in a cover container and let it settle for a couple of days. drain the glycerin off, use direct sunlight to evap the rest of the methanol off and filter thru a 1micron filter into a 55gallon drum. been using it in my trucks and now the 93MB. In short, time, warmth and gravity are your friends in this rare case

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1993 MB 300D 245K died.

The $1000 I spend on a Centrifuge seemed like a lot of money at the time. But local greasers would come buy when they had problems with there cars and it usually was they needed better filtered oil. Now I have a few word of mouth customers that purchase clean WVO from me. It covers the cost of the electricity and the purchasing of the equipment.

I use two 30 gallon water heaters. I have changed out about 20 water heaters in the last ten years to tankless and I keep the old ones a few times. The 30 gallon tanks are on the top shelf of a restaurant storage shelf---Free from where I get most of my oil. I have a transfer pump---Free from the dumpster area near that restaurant that was being discarded because it did not work. (it had a piece of debris in the gears.) The middle shelf holds the Centrifuge and I have two 30 gallon buckets below the centrifuge.

Water heater #1 heats the oil until hot about 4 hours then it gets passed to the CF and into the white bucket#1 under it. Then it gets pumped into water heater #2. It goes thought the centrifuge again for about 4 hours to empty into the same white bucket below bucket #1. Then the timer turns on the pump and pumps it back into water heater #2. It does this three times until I turn a ball valve and it runs into bucket #2 and that is the ready to go stuff that gets transferred to the ready to go 200 gallon container off the back of my carport. I find this is the best way to get the oil really clean. Probably less than 1 micron. and water free. Electricity works out to about 4 cents per gallon.

I have two greasecars one the 2005 Mercedes and the second a 2006 Jeep Liberty. I change the motor oil and veg filters on both every 5000 miles. Works out great and never clog a filter, ever.