A while back, I converted my 1994 Ford E-350 van to run on vegetable oil. I never took really good notes on what I did to convert the van, but I had all kinds of scribble-sketches hanging around all the time. Some of them are here.
A month ago or so, my friend JT and I ripped out the system and installed some of it in his new (old) school bus. The van is now gone and I’m probably going to convert my 1984 Mercedes 300TD wagon next.
The van conversion was done “from scratch” – meaning, I did everything from plumbing parts, stuff that I welded and soldered, and also some plans that I bought from Dana Linscott (google him). In other words, I didn’t buy a kit. It was a long and oily road for a few reasons: The van had some problems of its own, a van is a real pain to convert because it’s REALLY tight under the hood, and in the end the biggest hassle was the fact that I took a really complex and over-engineered approach instead of just doing the minimum amount of work needed to get it going. Of course, the real minimum amount of work is to just buy a kit.. but what fun is that? After all the cursing, leaks, and money, it was an excellent learning experience and the process gave me enough knowledge to help a few people converting their vehicles since then.
On to the scribbles. Of course they’re not meant to show you how it’s done, exactly. It’s more like documentation of an obsessed mind. Pay attention.
Contact Dana Linscott about the details of this collection/filtering setup. It worked great…
My van used a “hose-in-hose” setup for the fuel lines. The vegetable oil was in copper tubing, which was surrounded by moving engine coolant. One thing I learned was that I should have used teflon paste instead of teflon tape on all of these joints. The fitting gets put together something like this…
A “simple” diagram of the system all all the gauges I had installed…
The entire electrical layout. I really planned it out well and the wiring still looked like a huge rat’s nest in the end…
This is how relays work. Both drawings show the same thing – having two glow plugs heat oil in the filter. They go on when the thermostat says so. There’s also an override switch to keep them off even if the thermostat says go…
The bad part about converting the van was the fact that there’s no room under the hood. These were my 4-dimensional renderings of how I might route hoses in the engine compartment…
The fuel pump could be turned on with a switch and it also had a safety that kept it from running with no oil pressure (ie: without the engine running). It’s not shown in this sketch, but the switch was actually “smart” and would operate the appropriate pump, depending on if you were in diesel or veggie mode. Fancy…
I think this was supposed to remind me how to wire LED indicators into my setup. In the end, I bought toggle switches with LEDs built in. It was easier and they lent an air of classiness..
A couple early versions of the system…
I fabricated the fuel tank, complete with a heated fuel pickup, fill tube, vent, baffle, and a fuel gauge sender. If I did it again, I would remember to install a drain, a shutoff valve on the outside of the tank, and put the baffle in the right direction…
Some lists, including some notes about what I should remember when documenting the system. Unfortunately, I don’t know what all of these chicken scratches mean anymore…
