Chapter 5 - Its Not What You Know, It's Who

In order to convert a diesel van to run on straight vegetable oil you must know more about mechanics and auto electrics than I do.

The basic theory is pretty easy. Set up the car/van to have two fuel tanks, one for vege oil, one for diesel (or biodiesel). Divert the radiator fluid through a heat exchanger in the vege oil tank (so the oil can get hot and flow more easily) and have a solenoid (switching device) to swap from one fuel to another.

Then there are a couple of extra little tricks. First, make sure your engine does not run on vege oil when it is cold or the oil is cold. Second, always drive the last 10 or so minutes of your trip on diesel or biodiesel to flush the vege oil out of the fuel lines. And finally make sure you are feeding your engine good oil. If it has too much water in it, is too acidic or alkaline or has not been filtered properly then you will trash your motor pretty quickly.

There is stacks of info out there on this stuff. The best book I found was Josh Tickell's "From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank". Plus the websites like Greasecar (www.greasecar.com) have links to everything you need to know.

This aside, it would take me years to learn all the skills necessary to manufacture all the bits I needed and then a few more years to work out how to install them. That's where friends come in. You gotta love friends.

Richard used to be a bus mechanic and now runs a team of guys designing and constructing mining machinery. He was definitely the man for the job. I called him up and after laughing at me for a while he eventually realised I was serious and said to leave it with him to do some research.

I knew I had sparked his curiosity and since I would be funding this folly I felt sure he would be happy to have a tinker.

A month later and he was ready to have a look at the van and figure out exactly what needed to be done.