CAT | WVO Vehicle
I made it home in about 19 hours and about 1 gallon of diesel, tired but happy.
I left with a full tank of diesel and a full tank of veggie oil as well as 50 gallons of veggie oil in one of the barrels i was bringing home. I drove from about 5 pm to midnight to a rest stop in northern California just as the veggie tank went dry. Luckily the temperatures where in the 40s and it was raining instead of snowing as i came over the mountains.
I took a five hour break, slept in the back of the cab, refilled the veggie tank and headed south again. Heading up the Grapevine pass the fuel pressure started to flick back and forth and the green light indicating i was running on veggie started to flicker. As i still had half a tank of veggie oil, this indicated that the pressure in the veggie system was blocked. It is expected that the first filter on the V3 system will last for just over one tank of veggie as all the dust and crap in the tank are cleaned out. I made it home by running on diesel on the uphills and veggie on the flats and down hills.
The truck is unloaded, the filter is changed and i am running smoothly on my last 20 gallons of veggie while i build out my home filtration system and get some local oil. See pictures of the whole trip here.
Jason and James from Dino Fuel Alternatives came by in the morning and pitched right in on the final tasks to get me on the road south. Preping barrels for my filtration system, electrical connections on my sotera pump, no job too small. These guys have a great product and they stand behind it. The actual fix of a minor wiring issues on the unit took under 15 minutes and then we were test driving.
Within 5 miles the system switched over to veggie oil and we did two laps around Portland. There is no noticeable difference between driving on diesel and veggie oil other than the very bright green light on the fuel switch. Time to load the truck and head south.
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.
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
Essentially I am torn between 2 types of F250 for my budget and while I know it is a matter of personal choice, I would appreciate any words of wisdom from any readers with first hand experience. Essentially, I am finding ‘95/’96 trucks with many extras (New Rancho Shocks, Leveling Kit, New Glow Plug Relay, New Rancho Shocks, New heavy duty starter, Optima Red Top batteries, New water pump, New alternator, Banks 125 hp chip, 4″ mbrp exhaust, Rebuilt trans, K&N cold air intake) OR I am finding ‘99/’00 stock trucks with higher miles.
Aesthetics and the variability of how a vehicle was treated over it history aside, what are the pros/cons of these two types of vehicles. Any generalizations that can be made other than the style change that happened in ‘98 and the fuel pump upgrade required on the earlier years is appreciated.
In all my research, I gather that the miles is more a concern for the tranny rather than the engine, and the impact of those miles is a product of engine temp usually impacted by towing loads. Is it the case that an inspection can reliably rate the quality of the transmission?
As i may have mentioned in a previous post, i am book smart and experience poor in the WVO arena. Couple that with my god-given skill to research a project to death until i have enough information to talk myself out of actually executing anything and you have a nightmare of a potential client (ask, pester, confer, ask more, inquire . . . disappear).
I have come to know that there are two types of communicators in this world and it boils down to ‘bullet points’ vs ’stories’. If you send an email and get back stories or visa-versa, prepare for communication problems. When i sent my bullet-point email to Green Drop Garage, i got back sub-bullet points. So far so good!
I was pretty confident that if they were listed on the Dino Fuels website, they would have the installation chops, my two big qualifiers were their ability and willingness to put up with my questions and to help with local vehicle inspection. The most difficult part of buying a used vehicle remotely, is getting the mechanical inspection and getting an accurate read on the seller as he tells his ownership/ “why i am selling” story (ie, the all important ’seller vibe’).
After a handful if emails back and forth, these guys look like they are the ones for me. They are ready willing and able to act as my “agent” to make sure i am getting a solid truck, their quotes for service and products seem fair to and are in line with what I have seen around and we traded bullets for bullets.
I spent about 5 hours today searching craigslist for F250 trucks. To search the whole US of A at once, i used www.allofcraigs.com which returns results from all of the craigslist cities. The site allows some search filters including a range, but this is not easily applied to the price and seems to key in on mileage, Gross weight numbers as well. In the end, i used the brute force method and powered through.
It looks like $9k will get me the low end of a 1999 F250, i may have to consider getting an in-bed tank instead of the custom, under-bed tank so i can put the $$ towards a better vehicle.
One trend i am noticing about the type of trucks is that near urban centers (LA, Dallas, NJ/NY etc) many of the vehicles tend to be ex-fleet vehicles while less urban areas appear to be primarily from individual tradesmen. The latter is preferable as it is human nature to take care of your own toys, while the company vehicle is more often than not mis-treated.
I am also targeting a truck that has wintered out of the snow regions and is not bordering the hurricane states. This puts me up the west coast, east to Dallas. When i overlay the available installers for Veggistroke, Portland OR seems to come out on the top of my list. Oddly enough, given the high marks for customer service, the Dino Fuels folks never replied to my email request for information about installers that could also help inspect vehicles for a remote buyer.
Time to check out the guys at the Green Drop Garage.
Using the Dino Fuels website, it looks like the closest installers are near Phoenix AZ or San Francisco CA, both of which are pretty big drives from Los Angeles.
As there are no V3 Vegistroke installers (and while mechanically inclined, I am not qualified) in my local area (Los Angeles CA) it appears that i will be traveling for the install. And if i am traveling for the install, i may as well consider widening my vehicle search as well to get me the best deal or at least the best vehicle for my budget.
The most difficult part of buying a used vehicle remotely, is getting the mechanical inspection and getting an accurate read on the seller as he tells his ownership/ “why i am selling” story (ie, the all important ’seller vibe’). So i guess I will have to add that to my installer criteria.
First i need to see how my Ford Powerstrokes are pricing across the US.
