The respect we grant the holder (his/her person) of an opinion, the right to hold an opinion and the respect an opinion deserves are three entirely different things. The degree to which we tend to conflate these, to our detriment, is reflected in the degree to which
has become the conversational go-to platitude in this culture.

The respect an opinion deserves should vary with the quality of the evidence that supports it, i.e. how well it tracks with the facts, i.e. reality.
Certain opinions, like those that lead to, say, bigotry for example, no one should be entitled to hold much less promulgate, at all.

This, in my opinion (my highlight):
is what should become recognized as the consensus. Then we can ignore the blanket WVO demonizing irruptions, which almost never fail to pop up on this type of thread, recognizing them for what they are: concern trolling.

jh_5000 sorry to off topic filibuster your thread. To your topic: Consider there's perhaps at least 1 OM617 sitting in a (junk)yard near you for parts whereas the OM603 engine in the 87 300 TD (even more so the car) is much more rare, though on the plus side the car itself delivers a much more modern ride than the 123.

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'83 SD, 2x '85 SD
You are entitled to your own opinions, you are not entitled to your own facts.

My personal opinion is that if you're not looking for a big project, go buy a new car.

Your VW is the devil you know, and very supported by Greasecar. That's their vehicle of choice, honestly.

A W123 with 90k and a greasecar kit sounds very odd. Why does it only have 90k on it? While I appreciate that there are super condition ones with 90k on them, I'd be shocked to find one that's been babied to 90k and then had a greasecar kit installed in it. There's gotta be more to the story.

I can't speak to the later wagon.

I can speak on my 3 W123 Diesels. I have over 70k on vegetable oil between 3 cars, all of them are still in great running condition, but the rust is taking over, day by day. I have not looked for any 'creampuffs' for this as I do think it'd be a bit terrible to learn on a vehicle in superb condition.

I believe I am the rarity of the vegetable oil conversion world. I don't do it for the $$ savings, but the tinkering. I built a centrifuge in my garage to do the filtering. I've put about $3000 in that setup alone.

I heartily recommend a w123 to anyone. It's an amazing classic car that can be daily driven, but that comes at the cost of maintenance and caring that I am willing to put on the table. It's not for everyone. It's dirty. It's about reading. It's about fixing things BEFORE they're an issue.

The one big thing I'd say is - find a local greaser. Go meet them. Learn how much headache you're about to step into. I was -shocked- at how hard it was to even GET vegetable oil in my area. Ask yourself if you're ready to try to clean up 10-20gallons of vegetable oil off the floor.

Dave aka Ghan

I'm going to check out a 1982 300TD this weekend. Really looking forward to it. Still on the fence about WVO...part of me thinks that investing the amount of money that a WVO kit would cost into a quality biodiesel processing set up might be more worthwhile. Still researching those angles...in the meantime, want to get a quality wagon and get it as close to 100% as I can...and then keep it there.