Adrian Boggs made every car a custom mounting bracket for the heat exchanger and fuel filter/heating element. I hope everyone appreciates what a good job he did for them.
Photos and crude web site by Mark
Puckett. (Or as Kent knows me, the guy in the red shirt.)
You can email me at mark@veggiediesel.org
10/23/2005
A big Thank You to Rachel Burton for organizing a very successful Elsbett Conversion Workshop at CCCC in Pittsboro, NC.
Und Vielen Dank zu Alexander Noack
von
Elsbett für kommen, uns zu helfen.
(And Many Thanks to Alexander Noack
from
Elsbett for coming to help us.)
Adrian Boggs made every car a
custom mounting bracket for the heat exchanger and fuel
filter/heating element. I hope everyone appreciates what a good job
he did for them.
A new, larger fuel line runs from
the existing fuel tank to the engine compartment. (Elsbett's design
uses your existing fuel tank in a one tank system. Starts on
vegetable oil, runs on vegetable oil, shuts down on vegetable oil, no
switching tanks.)
CCCC was a terrific place to do
this. Three service bays with lifts, tools, compressed air,
classrooms, lunchroom, coffee and good food nearby, (We were running on coffee and sandwiches from
The General Store Cafe'
and pizza from Elizabeth's Pizza. ), and great weather too. Thanks for lunch Rachel.
Pete and Rachel get ready to connect the new, larger fuel line.
We don't know yet if diesels can run on beer. Our engineers keep testing, and testing, and testing...
(Jim, Kent, Don, Alexander and Rachel I don't know what they were really discussing.)
Don
finished his turbodiesel VW Vanagon camper first and after a short
test drive, went to work helping others with their conversions.
Frank from
Ninth St. Bakery brought his biodiesel powered Mercedes Bus. "Sure we can convert it, but it will cost a lot of bread."
Jack tried to convince him to get rid of this monster and volunteered to take it off his hands.
But if you keep it, there's enough room in the back that we can heat it with compost!
Eric's thinking, "You should get some T-shirts." T.S. Designs
Eric's VW TDI Conversion at last year's workshop
Kent's thinking, "A heat exchanger is kind of like a thermos. Keeps hot things hot and cold things cold,
but how do it know?" (I know that's what he's thinking because he told me this joke.)
Don's Vanagon, I'm thinking, "I want one of those!"
Andy's wagon is on the left, Mimi's wagon is on the right, Pete's wagon is in the middle.
Rachel and Seth started on their wagons Sunday.
Mimi works fast and finished her installation Sunday morning.
Bye, Mimi
Kent finished his Jetta TDI wagon just after lunch Sunday.
Alexander checks in with Don. Corrine's car is almost finished.
10:00
pm Sunday night and Todd is filling up with Canola.
My mind drifts back to the 70's, sitting in line for gas on Merrimon Ave, fast forwards to last month sitting in line
for diesel, and imagines the future, standing in line at Ingle's, cart full of vegetable oil,
"Hey, can we get another register open?"
With
a lot of help from Don, Corrine got her 76 300D finished late Sunday
night. When it didn't start on the first try, Alexander quickly
spotted that the ground wire from the glow plug relay was missing and
two minutes later, it fired right up and settled into a steady idle.
We closed up the shop just before midnight.
I've been curious about running my car on vegetable oil for a while now, but it took $3.50/gallon diesel and dry pumps to get me serious about it. At Rachel Burton's Elsbett Conversion Workshop I saw 7 cars drive off running on Canola oil and now, I BELIEVE! (Rachel and Seth still had the electrical work to do on their 300TD wagons when I left, so there were 9 cars converted at the workshop and a 10th was scheduled and didn't arrive.) I found out about the workshop too late to order a kit and convert my '85 MB 300D, but it will get converted soon.
For information, parts and advice on Mercedes diesels, these sites and people have helped me.
But one of the people that has been the biggest help to me is no longer with us. I can just see Clarence goading me with an incredulous look and asking, “You're gonna run your car on VEGETABLES ?!?” (At the same time he's already got half of the work mapped out in his head and can't wait to get hold of Robert and Raeford so they can all make fun of me while we order two more kits to convert their Mercedes 300SD diesels and then he'd end up building and hosting our WVO filtering operation.) Clarence, we miss you every day and keep you in our hearts. You would have loved this project. (Or maybe you have had a hand in this already? After all, this workshop kept getting rescheduled until I found out about it.)