Viola's Solar Canola Rolla (Vegie Car)

[Viola]

I thought I had better do a big post on what I have done to my '91 Toyota (Diesel) Surf to modify it to run on Waste vegie oil so you can all replicate this experiment at home.

Background. I am not gifted with tools. I had never changed an oil filter. Didn't know anything about anything which I am now going to explain to you. I went into this knowing that I would need to learn about cars from scratch. I had just finished my degree (Nursing) And I just had the desire to learn about something new and I was fascinated with this process. I do a lot of traveling as well, so I'v gotta admit. Free fuel was appealing.

So, the process:
Buying the car. In retrospect I bought the worst type of car for this conversion. The location of the turbo booster was shocking. I did select this car because I wanted something easy to drive (like a car) but the pickings are slim in diesel. I love that I can sleep in this. I do feel embarrassed to be in a 4WD though.

Converting the car:
There are countless ways you can convert a car to vegie oil. The mind boggles and I learn more every day. The principles of using waste vegie oil (WVO) are you have to do a proper initial filtrations (I'll cover this later) you need to filter the fuel in the vehicle (well, I think you do. I'm sure you don't REALLY) and you need to heat the fuel. Heating is the important part. If it's not at 70 degree's before it hits you injector pump then the viscosity of the fuel is wrong and your pump will clap out (I'd say this is the most common problem for people who convert and don't do it properly)

So what I have done.
My oil starts it's journey in old detergent bottles in the boot of my car. They are industrial detergent bottles each holding 25 litres. They're see through and plastic.
From there I have piping leading towards my Davco filter. Davco are the king of all vegie oil filters. They filter the oil down to about 7 microns and they are a heated filtration unit. (The oil needs heating before it goes through the filter or it will clog up with any kind of lard that's in there) They also take out the suspended water (very important. I'll cover that later too) My Davco cost me about $500 plus about $100 in plumbing. But I love it so much...I sometimes pop the bonnet just to stare at it LOL. I only installed it the other week. Before then I was using a glow plug heater and a delphi 5micron (A glow plug heater uses glow plugs which work kinda like heater elements in the toaster to heat up the engine block of a diesel engine prior to ignition. My glow plug heater used these glow plugs in a small chamber which the oil would pass through so it would be hot when it hit the filter)

After the filter I have a fuel pump. This is probably not necessary, but I'm sure it's helpful and I am trying to keep the strain off my injector pump so I am happy to use what is semi redundant material. The pump is hooked up to a pollack valve which is the valve which is what I use to change from vegie oil to diesel. (I have a switch installed on the dash)

After that there is a non return valve. Basically, in most cars the fuel is in constant circulation the fuel comes to the engine, the engine uses what it uses and then the rest is returned to the tank. This means that the tank is constantly moving and any air bubbles which may occur in the system are flushed back into the tank. With WVO. Once you have that oil heated, you have put energy into it. Also. The fuel return is still returning to the diesel tank in my car, so if I had that valve open, my vegie oil would be coming to the engine and the excess would be going into the diesel tank (which isn't the end of the world. But can lead to some issues which I'll discuss later)

For this reason, I have another valve on the car called a non return valve. It means that the fuel that would have returned to the fuel tank is now returning to circulation around the engine.

Following that is the injector pump (IP). (This I didn't install. All cars need them) the IP supplies fuel to the injectors. You know how I said earlier that if your oil wasn't hot enough you would stuff it up? I have installed electric line heaters on the fuel line just before the IP. These electric heaters go on before I turn on the engine and mean the fuel inside the lines heats up. If I didn't have these I would need to switch back to dielsel before switching off the engine every time because the oil would be cold and not move through the engine and the engine just wouldn't start (Or would and kill the injector pump)
I then have line heaters before each injector. It's a 4 cylinder motor which means I installed 4 heaters. The line heaters are another luxury. They were expensive, but it's really cool that if I forget to prime back to diesel. The car will still start (Begrudgingly) My line heaters have lights on the dash board and a switch to turn them on. I switch them on before I start the car, wait for the lights to go green (one light for IP and one for injectors) and then I'm good to go.

That's basically the car set up! (Wow, it was hard to describe, I havn't posted this for so long because the task daunted me. i'm going to post this incase it gets lost)

[Viola]

So the next part to describe is my filtration set up (Or my fuel station) I am working on this with my x-boyfriend (which makes it a mine field as we dated for a few months when he wasn't with his current girlfriend. I collect my oil from a few pubs in my area. I collect it for both of us as it's reaaaally easy where I live and I love chatting to the chef's. I spend about an hour a fortnight doing my collection. We are filtering on the back of a trailer he bought (He buys the equipment, I supply the oil) I then empty it into 200L drums. When one of these is full, we close it and leave it undisturbed for 3 weeks. This allows a setteling to occur of any suspended water (When chips are cooked, they let out tiny particles of water, this is detremental for your engine as it is quite acidic. The davco filter I bought in theory gets the suspended water out)

After 3 weeks of setteling we pump the cold oil through a 5 micron filter (the davco is a 7 micron filter. But getting out crud down to that 5 microns means I am extending the life of my filter) We leave the bottom couple of inches of the oil and that is discarded.

I have recently been traveling. As I didn't want to haul all the oil with me (used 200L) I rigged up a traveling filtration system. It didn't eliminate the suspended water issue but basically I put a 5 micron filter bag into one of those big water jugs and filtered straight into my 25L tanks. It worked pretty well.

I need to go do mum stuff but shall come back to this later.

Please ask heaps of questions. I know this is kinda difficult to get your head around.

Vi

[moneypenny]

Man that is great!!!!!
One question, can I bring a car down to you to convert? Only half joking, I would love to do it......

[hanabi]

...so you can all replicate this experiment at home.

I wish! But I'll enjoy the journey vicariously through you Vi. Thank you for explaining the process. I can now see why you enjoy the challenge.

When we came back and bought our car, necessarily an 8 seat people mover, we toyed with the idea of buying a diesel car for this purpose but put it in the 'too hard' basket.

[mammadyl]

Wow Viola, you rock!!! What an exciting process! Sounds fabulously interesting...yes, where are you? Can you put "Mobile Conversions" on the side of the rolla when you are travelling??!!

[Viola]

LOL. No, I can't convert anyone else's car. It wouldn't work. I didn't do my whole conversion on my car. I did have help (the x bf)

But you need to know all about it. Last week I was out the back of Nimbin (between protestor falls and The Channon for those who know it) and I got an air bubble in the fuel line. I was broken down for about 50 minutes because I wanted to work out where the bubble got in order to confirm it was a bubble and then I needed to fix it. I had to suck a lot of diesel...ick.
When it wouldn't start though I asked a passer by to call NRMA and I asked her not to mention the conversion. She did mention it and when I got it working again and called NRMA to cancel, they said that they didn't think that NRMA covered vegie oil cars. So you really really need to have faith in your ability to fix things if you go vegie oil.

Vi

[mammadyl]

Your kids will learn soon enough too!!

Look forward to more updates!

[Char]

you are a legend this should have it's own webpage!

[Craig&Kel]

Woah! Nice work Viola!
There is a company up here in Byron who do all the filtration and hard work for you, and you can just buy drums of it ready to fill your tank. It's about the same same price as normal diesel though (I think, haven't looked into it for a while now) so you don't save that much, but much better for the environment!
It's such a shame that more people don't do it..... hopefully you will inspire a few to make the change

[Jakaluma]

Good on ya Viola! And thanks for the "how to" - very inspiring.