Ok to swap diesel tranny and engine for gas in cabriolet/rab

Post by **Briano1234** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 11:38 pm

yep you keep the tank and transfer pump, you take out the spare and put a nother tank in it. you can then get a heater core and run hot water heat to keep it from gelling after the car is warm.

BIO diesel is free if you know how to use it.

go to every chinese resturant and scavange thier old cooking oil then filter it about 5 times and seperate the water.

then burn baby burn....

Post by **kuklaki** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:32 am

There was a Canadian member here who belonged to a bio-deisel club in Canada, the thread is still to be found. You might find some of his links helpful...

viewtopic.php?t=39&highlight=filling+burgers+fries

pdaoust · Post by **pdaoust** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:54 am

Briano1234: sorry, I hafta ask again:

you take out the spare and put another tank in it.

I take out the spare tank from which vehicle? am I putting another smaller tank inside my tank?

anyway, I'm not gonna worry about the heater core 'cuz I'm not gonna go straight veggie oil. Too much hassle for Canadians, even with the heater.

gull · Post by **gull** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:00 am

I think he meant take out the spare tire, and put the extra tank there, for a "two-tank" SVO system.

Post by **Briano1234** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:32 am

gull wrote:I think he meant take out the spare tire, and put the extra tank there, for a "two-tank" SVO system.

Yes that is what I ment, where the spare tire woudl normally go I see where most folks place a seperate tank there.

I didn't think that untill the engine would get up to temp it would burn the veggie oil, that is why there is the need for dual tanks, but then again I have been mistaken before.

gull · Post by **gull** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 1:49 pm

I've heard of people blending vegetable oil with diesel or kerosene to thin it, and using a single tank that way, but that's probably not a good idea. A dual tank system seems to be the "right way" to do it.

If the goal is to burn biodiesel, though, a single tank is fine. I've run blends of 75% or more biodiesel on my Mercedes 300D Turbo without any modifications, although I've heard it would be a good idea to change the rubber fuel lines. Carry a spare fuel filter when you first start, though -- biodiesel is a solvent and will clean out your tank like nobody's business. Within a couple weeks of filling up with B100, my intermittent fuel gauge had come back to life and my prefilter had plugged almost completely with black crud.

pdaoust · Post by **pdaoust** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 4:23 pm

duhhhh, yeah, spare tire! I shoulda figured that's what you meant. I'm not firing on all four cylinders this week; let's blame it on daylight savings time.

Anyway, I'm buying all the bits and pieces necessary to make my first batch of biodiesel... graduated cylinder, blender, methanol, pipettes, etc. It's really exciting! Now I'm just hoping that my gas engine dies so I won't have any excuse not to do an engine swap!!!

thingmon · Post by **thingmon** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 1:52 am

Doesn't "cowagulate" mean it gets milky? (alittle late in the game, but , sorry, I couldn't resist...)

Sounds like a great project. With the price of gasl rocketting so bad, I've been thinking about it too. A writeup in Popular Mechanics (I think...) had the VW TDI getting very similar mileage to the hybrids in "real world" driving. Here, diesel is higher than gas so there's not that great a savings. But, even at $0.30/gal, a switch to bio would be a quick pay off.

I saw $2.75/gal, here in SE Houston today. Can't believe there's so little outcry about it. We're being hosed.

gull · Post by **gull** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:31 am

I think it's gotten high enough for people to complain about, but not high enough to really cause serious pain. Adjusted for inflation, it's nowhere near the peak prices hit in the mid 80s.

thingmon · Post by **thingmon** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:49 am

We dropped below $0.70/gal here not all that long ago. Then mergers, Bush & Co. (friendly reg. climate), storms, etc...

I'm just surprised there's not more complaining. The Democrats and media seem to both be quietly missing the boat. Where's Geraldo when you need him!! He could actually do something useful for a change.

Last year, for once, I actually followed my gut. I bought a minivan instead of the SUV's and trucks I had been looking at. So far, it seems to be the better of the choices.

gull · Post by **gull** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:57 am

The Democrats have made a few symbolic gestures, like calling for price-fixing investigations. I think the reason they don't make a bigger stink is that they know there's not a lot they can do about it either. The problem is the price of crude oil, which is largely outside the U.S. government's control.

Post by **Briano1234** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 4:53 am

gull wrote:The Democrats have made a few symbolic gestures, like calling for price-fixing investigations. I think the reason they don't make a bigger stink is that they know there's not a lot they can do about it either. The problem is the price of crude oil, which is largely outside the U.S. government's control.

the reason they don't do a thing about it is because the oil companies are in thier pockets too. I know that they is about 41 cents per gallon profit.

If there wasn't any gouging then why did exon beat walmart?

gull · Post by **gull** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 5:22 am

Well, for one thing, volume. Demand for oil is at record highs. If you sell a record amount of your product, and don't make record profits, you're doing something wrong. Now, I'm not going to say that there isn't some sandbagging going on. And I'm sure they're taking full advantage of the situation, because that's how markets work. But I don't think browbeating the oil companies is going to get the price down. The problem is tight supply, and speculators that are gambling that it's going to get tighter. Right now there's a premium being priced in by traders that think we're going to bomb Iran.

I do think that we need to stop giving subsidies and tax breaks to industries that are fabulously profitable on their own, however. This includes oil companies and professional sports, among others.

pdaoust · Post by **pdaoust** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:55 pm

you know, much as I hate spending $150 a month just to go back and forth between home, work, and church, I sorta think the high fuel prices are a good thing. We consume far too much petrol, and it's good that something is putting the squeeze on us, forcing us to either reduce our crazy consumption or look for a cheaper alternative, which will invariably be more environmentally friendly too (e.g., hybrid electric, homemade biodiesel).

And I'm allowed to say stuff like this, because we've got it worse than you -- fuel is an average of $3.80 - $4.00 per gal up here in Canada. However, the price gap between us and you isn't that huge anymore: a few years ago, our prices were twice what yours were.

gull · Post by **gull** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:22 pm

That's because fuel taxes are higher where you are. As the price of oil has climbed, taxes have become a smaller proportion of the price of fuel, so the gap has narrowed.

I tend to agree with you -- if prices had stayed low, we'd just have been setting ourselves up for a bigger shock later. The evidence is mounting that we've passed the oil production peak, and it's all downhill from here.