This is a status update of where I am:

Purchased my 83 300SD in Sep 2006 with 242,350 on the odometer.

No evidence of the car running anything but diesel prior to my ownership.

The first 8,000 miles I put on were all homebrew B100.

The next 22,000 were WVO/RUG blend. The WVO is filtered to 5 micron. The percentage of RUG varied from 15-20% in the cold winter months (single digit temps) to about 5% in the hot summer months.

I get roughly 25mpg in a mix of city/hwy driving.

On cold startup, I keep my foot lightly on the throttle for about 10-20 seconds to keep it from stalling back. After about 20 seconds it smoothes and it's fine on it's own.

I continue to brew B100, but use it strictly for the home furnace. My method is to pour the good oil off the top of the collected WVO jugs into my filter system for the MB, when I get down to the sludge, I pour the rest of the jug into the biodiesel reactor.

The cost of the WVO blend is a function of the cost of RUG plus a little for the whole house filter cartridges. I estimate about $0.30 for a finished gallon.

The cost of BD is a function of Methanol price and Sodium Hydroxide price. The Methanol I pay a little over $4 per gallon right now, and the sodium hydrdoxide about $2 per lb. The cost of a finished gallon of BD is about $0.90.

The Methanol gets delivered to my house in 55gal drum, the sodium hydroxide is mail-order, the WVO is left outside of 6 restaurants that I stop by on my way home from work on various days during the week.

My time spent on the blend weekly is about 1hr (maybe 1/2 hr filtering and blending, and maybe 1/2 hr picking up oil).

My time spent on BD weekly is more like 5 hrs (brew Fri night, wash it on Sat., dry it on Sun). It takes maybe 4 hrs (intermittently) brewing and about an hour (intermittently) washing. drying takes no effort at all...just compressed air.

I rolled 272,350 miles yesterday and still going strong. I have a spare set of injectors, but haven't felt the need to swap them out yet, so sorry...no photos of my injectors yet.

Most importantly...I've consumed 1200 gallons of fuel in the last year to get me to work, take kids to soccer, buy groceries. 1200 gallons that did not come from the ground in the Middle East.

Doing my best to quietly shift alternative fuels from lunatic fringe to mainstream.

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Mark in MA
05 MB E320CDI 402k Granite Grey Metallic
05 MB E320CDI 267k Black
05 MB E320CDI 232k White
05 MB E320CDI 209k Tectite Grey
99 Dodge 2500 Cummins 5sp 148k
62 Jeep CJ-6 120k