Archive for January 2010
Before i get to Portland there are a few necessary fixes and a few performance modifications that Green Drop Garage will be performing on the truck.
Known issues when purchased include the front brakes and the front main seal also discovered during the in depth diagnostic they performed is the need to put in new glow plugs. Otherwise she is good to go. I chose two performance modifications:
Between the two modifications I should see more than 15 extra horsepower and a little bit better mileage per gallon of what ever i am driving on.
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. . buy a pick up, take it down to LA . . .
0 Comments | Posted by ccis2cunning in WVO Preparation
I had just watched the last Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Neil Young did a great number which inspired me to play a random assortment of his music while i bought my one way flight to Portland. First line of the first song (Out on the Weekend) “I think I’ll pack it in, and buy a pick up, take it down to LA . . . .” Thank you Neil.
I am flying up to Portland on Wednesday, February 3rd for two and a half days of Vegistroke installation and then driving back on the weekend. Although the guys at Green Drop Garage have been busy checking out and buying the truck, ordering parts and such, I finely feel like i am crossing the border from planning to doing!
Like collection equipment, it is possible to go very slick with the machinery of filtration, centrifuging, flash evaporation and such. Most WVO folks will tell you that heat and time are your friend. With both of these you can defeat the twin foes of WVO as Fuel: Particulate matter and water. Centrifuging and fancy piping and filters will save you time. If i had lots of oil coming in and heavy use in my immediate future (a good problem to have) I would consider jumping right into a centrifuge set up.
My plan involves metal barrels with band heaters, hoses and filters. The image above is more of a logical construction than the physical plan. For instance Mist washing and de-watering, as they both require heating the oil, are likely to happen in the same barrel. Also the filters in the diagram suggest house filter casings with plumbing, it may be the case that I use sock filters and my collection pump to move the oil around. The pre-filtration unit may be a 5 gallon bucket with window screen and old sheets or a 55 gallon drum top filter. The idea at this stage is to understand what steps need to be taken to take fryer fresh oil and prepare it for the fuel tank.
I have chosen not to suck.
After some great email and phone conversations with Farhad at the Green Drop Garage, I am going to hold off on the super sucker plans. While it is still the system to aspire to, I think i am going to work up to it. Regardless of what systems for collection and modifications to make to your vehicle, it is always good to have someone to bounce your ideas off of. Farhad built his own wvo vehicle mods back in his Berkley days before getting behind the Vegistroke products and in his day collected 5000 gallons per month of WVO.
Above is the picture of the Sotera diaphragm pump, a little pricier than i was planning on, but it is the Cadillac of pumps. It is a 12v pump so we can modify the cord to plug into the trucks trailer adapter. House it in a nice Rubbermaid tote and it won’t be too much work to load and unload. Additionally having the collection be more portable allows a greater collection range form the truck . . . 15 ft cord + 15 ft collection hose doubles the range.
Planning, planning . . . can’t wait for doing, doing . . .
As in the best method to collect the yellow gold . . .
One could scoop, pump or suck WVO from barrels, using a vacuum appears to have the most benefits. It is the fastest (especially on a newly vacuated vessel), it won’t choke on chunks, and is quietest.
A 30 gallon tank with a 27″Hg vacuum in it will draw in 10 gallons very quickly if a large enough hose is used (I like 1.5″ “spa” or suction hose) the next 10 gallons will take about twice as long as the first since the vacuum is reduced to around 22″Hg and the lower the vacuum the slower the flow. Given enough time and low enough viscosity VO a 30 gallon tank will eventually fill to about 95%.
Another bonus is that a “super sucker” collection unit has no valuable parts so leaving it in the back of your truck presents no temptations. It is typically constructed of a pressurized tank (water pressure tank, hot water heater tank, propane tank, compressor tank . . ) fitted with a small ball or needle valve from which the air is drawn out to create vacuum or pumped in to push out the collected oil. The additional modification to the collection tank is the opening for oil to be drawn in or be pushed out. This portal is a 1.5″ pipe welded so its interior opening is at the lowest point in the tank. Attached to it is a ball valve (make sure the inside diameter of the valve is not smaller than 1″) and then connected to enough hose to reach from your truck to the barrels. Get fancy with detachable tips (clear, filtered with a shower drain cover, electrically heated for winter collection), male and female hydraulic quick couplers, clear tubing to see what you are gathering, pin striping . . .
An internet search of “WVO Super Sucker” will provide hours of educational reading, plans and completed units for sale.
Here is the extra tank for the Powerstroke that will hold the WVO. It was ordered today. Essentially you get two choices, a tool box style tank that goes in the bed or the one above which fits under the truck instead of a spare tire. This tank includes DFA Designed heat exchanger built inside, feed port, return port, rollover check valve, and venting port.
I spent my holidays searching craigslist posts in Portland OR for the right truck using these terms “(diesel|powerstroke|7.3) (f250|f-250|f350|f-350) -dually -manual -crew” limited by my price range. Translate this to english by replacing | with OR, space with AND, – with NOT and you get ads using the term diesel or powerstroke or 7.3 and f250 OR f-250 . . . . you get the idea. Every now and then a check for just “Ford F250″ cause some folks don’t give a lot of info in the ad.
Initially i picked the trucks i liked and had the guys at Green Drop Garage do all contact with the sellers, but given the holidays and them running a business it wasn’t the most efficient way to get things done. I took over and started doing the preliminary contact with the sellers and get answers on:
- Confirm my basics: 7.3L, Auto, ext cab, 4×4,
- What mods to truck?
- What is history of Truck? Off-road? Towing?
- What repairs/Maintenacne? Have Records?
- Why selling, Flexible on price?
If it passes, i would perform a carfax and have Green Drop Garage do an inspection on the car. We had dealers that would pre-warm the cars and then not let them off the lot for full inspection, some good but not great trucks and then THE ONE.
This truck had great carfax, regular maintenance (with lots of records) and was like new inside. I own it and I can’t wait to see it!
This is the system ordered that will go in my Powerstroke diesel. I have been getting a lot of questions on how it works and thought i would summerize some info from the manufacturers site here:
- This system has undergone 3 years of development and very rigorous testing to become the most reliable, intuitive and clean installation available for the Ford Powerstroke in the world today.
- This is the only system on the market capable of being fully 100% automatic, or manual with the simple flip of a quality rocker switch.
- Not one drop of vegetable oil ever touches anything in the OEM diesel system except the injectors.
- The truck will start on the stock fuel system until the engine reaches operating temperature and V3 Manifold is over 140. Then the WVO pump comes on and starts building pressure. Once the fuel pressure exceeds 55psi(OEM spec) a pressure switch shuts off the diesel pump and the truck continues to run on WVO, and an indicator light on the system control switch on the dash lights up. Should anything at all happen to cause the fuel pressure to drop below the minimum threshold for the engine, the diesel pump kicks back on to ensure that the engine never loses pressure.
- The system is fully automated. You simply get in drive, and shut the key off. The only way the trucks differs from stock is that if you have been running WVO the truck will continue to run for up to 60 seconds after you turn the key off, kind of like a turbo timer. The purge and shutdown are all timed from us to ensure that all the WVO is purged from the fuel rails, and diesel is run back through the injectors.
- The V3 Manifold is the envy of the industry. This Billet aluminum manifold was designed specifically for this truck. Combined into one modular unit is the WVO pump, prefilter(to protect the pump), adjustable pressure regulator, air separation, Main Filter(2 micron Donaldson), pressure switch, temperature switch, Purge solenoid, and pressure test port. With the air separation there is no need to purge new filters, or worry about trapped air, it is purged automatically. Change your filter and go! And to top it off, this whole manifold has internal coolant passages and is heated with engine coolant, so besides everything else, it is a heat exchanger too.
Learn more about it on the Dino Fuel Site
