Hey Mike---Is this for real?

[ReformedLiberal]

I just saw an episode of Trucks on Spike! TV about making your own bio-deisel. The guy mixed filtered, used vegetable oil and methanol with some lye as a catalyst and said it cost about 70 cents/gal and he roasted the tires in a 2001 Dodge/Cummins. I tried to find the website named at the end of the show where you can buy the mixing station with manuals and a test kit to know how much lye needed for each batch, but couldn't find it. I did find this, though:

www.dieselsecret.com/?OVRAW=freedom%20fuel&OVKEY=biodiesel%20freedom%20fuel&OVMTC=advanced

Is this stuff for real? It seems too good to be true, and you know what they say about that...

[toejam]

Yeah, it's for real.

We are experimenting with running biodiesel in on of the company trucks (diesel, of course!), generators, and one of the guys runs it in his personal vehicle, a Mercedes.

I heard that the city of Nashville is going to a biodiesel/diesel blend.

The problem with biodiesel is that it's not as readily available as diesel fuel but that will probably change as the price of oil goes up. I haven't checked on the economics since the price of oil started going up but for a while unless you could make fuel from used vegetable oil (like from a McDonald's or something) it wasn't economical.

Since oil has gone up even making biodiesel from virgin vegetable oil is probably looking better from an economic standpoint, but the real beauty is that it reduces pollution, too.

If we want to keep our internal combustion engines this is the way to go.

I haven't heard of any long term problems running biodiesel in diesel cars.

My next vehicle will be a diesel, and I will probably have a biodiesel reactor in my garage!!!