Odyssey of a Realtor and his french fry car

The french fry car can be a bit of a misnomer, but I drive a mercedes 300 sd that runs on waste vegetable oil or (WVO) for short. In the business of real estate we spend untold amounts of time and money showing and previewing property with plenty of driving involved, so finding a car that is both economical and enviormentally friendly was of the utmost importance to me.

  2 months ago while showing a client some property he mentioned to me that the next time we went out that he would drive since he didn't pay for gas. When he first said that my immediate thought were 1. this guys got some crazy hook-up at a gas station or 2. he's stealing gas from somewhere. Needless to say I had no desire to be driving around in a vehicle containing stolen property so I inquired further. As it turns out both my guesses were way off the mark, as my clients a pretty stand up guy. He didn't give me any real info until he showed up at my office in his 84' mercedes and said "Lets go". As we drove he filled me in on how it was that he filled up his gas tank for free.

He proceeded to tell me that Diesel engines when invented in 1901 by Rudolf Diesel were intended to run on Peanut Oil. However, with the onset of WWI gasoline became a cheaper alternative to oil and diesel fuel is basicly a byproduct of the gasoline refining process. Thus until the recent increase in gas prices most WVO conversions weren't really cost effective. In the last few years companies like lovecraft http://www.lovecraftbiofuels.com/ and grease car http://www.greasecar.com/  have made conversion kits more accessible and affordable making running your car strictly on WVO a more viable option. After some extensive research I decided to sell my gas guzzling Mustang and purchase my own 84' mercedes 300SD which looks almost identical to my clients. I know it's a little creepy, but we call them the twins. The conversion process took about 45 minutes (my clients also a mechanic) and the car was ready to go. However, there have been some minor hiccups along the way which I'll detail in the future with some pics to accompany it. Stay tuned.