Randall Williams: How an Indie Musician Bootstrapped Tours on Veggie Fuel and why he let it go – Creative Strings Podcast Ep. 2

The conversion cost about three grand, and I did it alongside a team of mechanics in Denver, Go Green Early. The van is a 2006 Dodge Sprinter. Later-model Sprinters won’t let you convert to veggie because the engine computers register a malfunction if the exhaust isn’t pure diesel and they shut the van down. This conversion is a secondary (heated) fuel tank and a set of switches between them. It’s a WVO (Waste Veggie Oil) system, so I pump right from a grease dumpster into the veggie fuel tank, going through three filters, then there are four more before the fuel gets to the engine. As far as I can tell, I get about the same mileage on veggie as I do on diesel. Yes, it smells like french fries, and yes, it’s free. With a veggie oil system, you can’t leave the veggie oil in the engine when you shut down, so you need to start on diesel, then switch tanks, then you need to switch back over to diesel about five minutes before shutting down, to make sure all the veggie oil is out of the engine.

It’s very cool. I did once have an incident where I didn’t pre-filter the oil – it caused all five of my injectors and my high-pressure pump to fail, to the tune of five grand in repairs, and ten days in a rental car touring New Jersey. Despite that, I’m not deterred – figuring out how to get off of fossil fuels is worth the risk. And the conversion and injector replacement are covered by the fuel savings, anyway.