Project Grease-Mobile Has Commenced
Ok so I’m known to do things quite randomly that sometimes involve large expenditures of money without really thinking it through. Starting a gym for example. The next incarnation of my incredibly irresponsible decision making has been this new project. It originated when Evan said “hey, did you know you can buy an old mercedes on craigs list for like a thousand dollars and convert it to run on veggie oil and not have to pay for gas?”
“Really? Lets do it.” I said. And it was so. Working together me and Evan managed to find a nice vehicle listed on CL for around 2100$. Thanks to my sparkling charm and friendly personality I was able to negotiate the purchase down to 1600$ and project Veg was officially underway. Sure the car leaked a bunch of oil, but for the most part it seemed mechanically sound. It was also convenient in that my other two cars are either 1) in detention or 2) in the shop getting fixed from me driving the piss out of it.
It’s actually quite satisfying driving around a 27 year old car when you know you could afford something much nicer. Its pretty much like driving a couch around and you never have to really worry about hitting things or speeding because the car is a ridiculously slow tank with no monetary value. We began with the goal to simply make a car that will run off of the used vegetable oil that we could acquire from restaurants for free. We did our research and found the conversion kit we liked. Essentially all it needed to do was heat up the oil coming from the gas tank to 150 degrees Farenheit before entering the engine. Simple enough. The kit is in the mail so we’ll see how hard that is to install.
The other part was figuring out where to source the oil and how to filter it. We researched filtering old vegetable oil, quite a simple process really, I’ll be keeping a large plastic drum in my garage with a pump attached, sort of a makeshift gas station if you will. The filtering process will have two stages we decided. The oil will first be filtered with a more coarse 50 micron filter, the passed through a more fine 5 micron filter to remove any food material or impurities before the grease even enters the gas tank.
Veggie oil is much thicker than traditional diesel gasoline but once it is at 150 degrees it begins to act like diesel fuel and as such it can run the car just fine. I managed to talk to the owner of the Chinese restaurant I go to with my Dad a few times a week and they would be more than happy to give us their old vegetable oil after they are done using it. Normally they would have to pay to have it disposed of so this is a good deal for them as well.
There are a few interesting legal implications to a project like this. Its not really illegal to do the modification to the car, but it is slightly illegal to run a car off of vegetable oil for several reasons. First, the government doesn’t like you getting out of paying fuel taxes, so in reality you are supposed to pay them a 2500 dollar fee to run a vehicle like this. Futhermore, to collect the oil like we are planning on doing you should have a certificate from the people… who… give certificates to handle food and waste and such. Also, you’re supposed to have a permit to burn vegetable oil, which we obviously don’t have. So basically our plan is just to not advertize what we are doing by putting something like “I DON”T PAY FOR GAS” on the car anywhere. I thought maybe just a vinyl decal of brocoli on the gas door would be subtle enough that THE MAN wouldn’t catch on.
Beyond the vegetable aspect Evan and I also decided that this would be a great car to slap tons of religiously offensive stuff on since, if someone banged the car up because they were fanatical Christian idiots, it wouldn’t really be that big of a loss. So, we went online and bought enough religiously hilarious bumper stickers to cover the whole rear bumper.
That wasn’t enough though. We definitely needed to take this a step further. Initially we had thought that if the car continued to run well we’d pay to have it painted a flat black, we thought that’d look quite nice. Instead though we thought it’d be much more interesting to let someone tag up the car with spray cans, make it into a sort of art car with an anti-religion theme. Some of our ideas included a bloody pentagram on the roof or hood. Blood red 666 racing numbers on the door, and Karl Marx quotations like “Religion is the opiate of the masses” written on the car.
We thought this would all be fun and potentially result in me having to get into fights in public which is always a plus. My favorite part about this project is it’s a very obvious way to show how little I take my life seriously. I mean I guess I could be driving around a 2009 Mercedes SLK AMG 49234020 but…. why? I totally enjoy driving around this old piece of crap knowing that I have two beautiful cars that I love sitting at home safe in my garage. Beyond that I truly believe that getting used to having nice things is a weakness. I feel bad for people who wouldn’t be comfortable driving around my 1982 Mercedes everyday because they are so used to their cushy life, you’ll never be able to travel around the world with next to nothing, sleeping on the floor, meeting strange people or eating food that makes you constantly sick. Sucks for you, enjoy your boring life. I’m gonna go drive my smoking/incredibly offensive vehicle.
I’m sure that this will be the first of many blog posts on this subject. Stay tuned.
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden
1982 Mercedes 300D WVO Project Car
