Biodiesel

As promised, my 1983 Mercedes diesel station wagon is now powered by pure vegetable oil. What’s so amazing is that you’d never know it. If anything my car now runs better than before. And even buying new vegetable oil I’m saving about a dollar a gallon over diesel. We’re still working on setting up the filtering system that will allow me to run on recycled (i.e. used) oil. At 30 miles to the gallon it emits about 25% of the CO2 of a Prius.

The average American drives 12,100 miles per year. By switching from a car that burns gasoline and gets 22 mpg to one that burns vegetable oil (directly), a driver would save 550 gallons of gasoline, and avoid releasing 6,500 pounds (3.2 tons) of carbon dioxide into the air!

I actually feel proud every time I sit behind the wheel.

The conversion was done by Gilead Garage in Randolph, Vermont at a cost of about $1,700 including parts and labor. They did an amazing job and I recommend them highly!

Well, the first leg of the journey is complete. I recently purchased a 1983 Mercedes Diesel station Wagon with somewhere over 128,000 miles on it.

While the next step is the biofuel conversion, just the change to this car has been pretty significant. When you sit in the driver’s seat you feel as if you’re slipping into an antique arm chair. You sink into the depth of something that someone else has been sitting in for much of their life.