The Greasel Diesel

Several years back I saw a segment on the local news (Springfield, MO) about a local company that converted diesel vehicles to run on waste vegetable oil. The name of the company was Greasel.com and I thought it was really neat. Recently they changed their name to Golden Fuel Systems (golden as in nice clean used waste vegetable oil). I looked at their website and did quite a bit of research on the internet and decided that I would really like to try converting a diesel to run on grease. However, I had two problems. First I didn't have a diesel vehicle to convert, second, I was only driving about 15 miles to work so it wasn't really an ideal situation for getting the most of a greasel conversion anyway.

Fast forward about 5 years to 2004 and I'm living outside of St. Louis, MO and driving 108 miles a day round trip to work. So, I thought it was the perfect time to try a greasel conversion. My wife and I started shopping around and found a cheap 1994 Ford F-250 diesel truck that seemed like the perfect vehicle to take a chance with. So, we spent just over $3,600 for the truck and $1,100 for a kit to convert one of the two fuel tanks and started looking for good sources of waste vegetable oil.

Although I've never thought of myself as incredibly mechanical I was able to install the kit from Greasel without any real problems. After messing up a few fuel filters because I got bad grease or didn't let it sit long enough for the water to separate out of the oil I was going strong. I installed the kit and started really using waste vegetable oil as fuel in May of 2005 and by August of 2005 I had saved enough money to pay for the conversion kit and all the filters that I had messed up during what I like to call the "learning phase".

When I bought that old Ford it had 201,000 miles on it. Now I have over 270,000 miles on it (probably 95% of those miles driven with waste vegetable oil as fuel). I started out keeping a spreadsheet of how much grease we gathered and what the cost of diesel was on that day and after less than a year I had paid for the kit, all my fuel and grease filters, a couple new batteries, a new starter and a new motor for the windshield wipers. Over the last 3-4 years I've put a lot of money into the old truck for maintenance but I've saved even more. Unfortuneately, the "Greasel diesel" is now sitting behind the house waiting for a new injection pump to be installed.

Because of the age of the truck and the high miles it has stranded me a time or two so I'm thinking about giving it up and getting another diesel vehicle to convert. I love having a big truck but Volkswagens that get almost 50 mpg and Mercedes that get around 35 mpg (and are great candidates for coverting to run on waste vegetable oil) look pretty enticing as well.

References:
General information about waste vegetable oil as fuel
Journey to forever
Other companies that sell vegetable oil conversion kits that I have looked at (but I have no personal experience with).
Greasecar
DieselConversions
DinoFuels Alternative -- Veggiestroke system