Luke's Truck's Conversion

Over the past couple days I've had the pleasure of converting my second vehicle to run on Vegetable Oil! Ok, it wasn't MY second vehicle, it was my SECOND vehicle to convert, but it was actually my third conversion! :) Confused yet? Nevermind...

This past Tuesday I went over to my friend Luke's house to work on converting his Diesel truck to run on Vegetable Oil! Here are some pictures from the week...

The main 'workbench' over at his house on tuesday

Part of the conversion at the end of Tuesday... Far from complete, but we made a lot of progress! :)

On Thursday (yesterday) he brought his truck over, and we spent the afternoon and evening trying to wrap things up. In this picture Luke is soldering the 'T's onto the ends of the heated fuel lines.

In this picture I believe Luke is trying to route the heated fuel lines up from the darkness beneath.

Waiting for another wire to pop through the firewall...

...from Ethan my faithful companion electrician. Thanks Ethan for volunteering your help! It was GREATLY appreciated.

Not sure exactly what is happening here, but there is Luke, his truck, myself, and the open door to my blazer (which served as a make-shift tool shelf).

We weren't able to finish completely last night, but they spent the night and after an hour or so of work this morning it's almost done! The only thing left to do is fabricate the fuel tank in Luke's toolbox, and patch into the fuel lines!

This is going to be one sweet ride once it's done, especially after Luke gets the part fixed that makes it go. :P

210000 miles and going strong!

Also, I will now continue to be updating my little "Amount Saved By Converting My Diesel To W.V.O." meter on the lower right column of my blog. So stay tuned!

More Cool Stuff

Here are a few videos that I took yesterday in relation to my WVO (waste vegetable oil) stuff:


The 'user' view of my conversion.


My filtration setup


The speed of warm vegetable oil

I hope this picture didn't scare you too badly! I still have my truck, and I'm not planning on getting rid of it (sorry if you were interested). There's a story behind this one though...

Part 1: Lately I've been looking for an older s10 blazer to convert to a gas/water hybrid. I wanted to start experimenting on something cheap, but was having a hard time finding a cheap enough blazer with a good engine. So a few days ago I decided to quit the hunt for now, and wait until the time was right.
Part 2: Yesterday a guy came into DeCraenes Service Center (where I work) and told me that he decided to junk his s10 blazer that we were working on. I said not a problem, and he proceeded to ask me if there were any junk yards in the area that would come pick it up... :) I was suddenly thrilled to hear that he didn't have someone on the way yet! So I offered him the going junk-car rate, and got the blazer for $175!

I'm excited to see what will come of this, although I'm a little bit suspicious of this Blazer still :)

This post is more for my pleasure looking back years from now

Today I worked on my truck, connecting the turbo boost/vac gauge. I love the sound of my truck!



Here it is running without the intake manifold. I had to remove the manifold so that I could drill and tap a hole in the side without getting metal filings in the engine. While it was off I had to start it up...


I love Diesel engines! Watch how this thing shakes when it shuts off. It means one thing... it's a high compression diesel engine :)

This post is for my personal enjoyment, but don't be embarrassed if you find it extremely thrilling as well... It's ok, normal, and expected to feel chills when operating or observing a Diesel vehicle.

Changing by the minute!

Last night Joseph and I dropped the two top gauges into the truck. The one on the left reads fuel pressure, and the one on the right is a Turbo Boost/Vacuum gauge. I installed the fuel pressure gauge so that I can monitor the pressure that my veggie oil system is delivering to the engine, and I installed to turbo boost gauge so I can tune up the turbo of course! :)

Supposedly the 6.5L Turbo Diesel that I have is designed to handle up to 17psi boost pressure, but the stock pressure on my system is only set at 3-5psi! I am definitely going to be raising that! I'm thinking of targeting the 10-12psi range. No sense blowing an engine over a little fun! haha...

A New Conversion!

Hey Everyone, I know it's been a long time since I've said anything on here, but I was out in Washington for about a week (post about that coming once I get pictures back) and since then I've been working a lot on my truck. I just 'finished' it last night, and thought I'd get some pictures up here of it!

There I am, perched happily under the hood of my gorgeous truck!
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I thought I'd do a little before and after :)

Here is what the engine compartment looked like about a year ago when I finished converting it for the first time!

Here it is as of a half hour ago! :) Much more classy! I owe a HUGE thank you to my Dad who specifically helped me with the design of the new mounting plates/locations, to Mr. Hirst who generously offered the services of his machine shop to make the mounting plates, to Nathan DeLadurantey who got me started on this in the first place, hahaha! ...and to my whole family for enduring the mess I've made with oil, tools, and parts everywhere!

Here is what my dash looked like one year ago (although I did have a vent cover for that dash section, I just couldn't find it in a picture).

And lastly, here is my dash now! Again, I owe a big thanks to Dad for lending me his design expertise!

---Oh and as a side note, a couple days ago our local Wal-Mart had a 50% off moving sale! So I was able to pick up some nice electronics very cheaply including the CD player shown in the picture, and the camera that took the picture!

Well, that's pretty much it for now! Once Jessica gets back in town I am planning on getting some pictures from the Washington trip up, so stay tuned!