Gone but not forgotten

From the start I wanted a TDI wagon but in 2006 when I started down the WVO road they were even more expensive than now. I also didn't want to spend a fortune on an "experiment" so I opted for the lesser expensive sedan.

There are two big reasons & one small one I recently purchased a wagon.

1.) It's better for work. In my line of business I sometimes need to bring some equipment with me.
2.) It's an automatic so my wife feels more comfortable driving it.
3.) All TDI wagons are made in Germany, my Jetta sedan, which runs great is made in Mexico.

So now that I am happy with the results I purchased a 2002 Jetta TDI I found on craigslist agragator foobert's TDI hunt. The car was outside Philly and I had it trucked to CA. In hindsight it was purchased at the worst time - gas prices where on their way down (it took a couple months to negotiate the price and work things out) and TDI's finally being let into California .

My initial plan was to sell the original kungpao jetta and drive the new wagon until the summer when I get my annual hiatus from work. That hasn't worked well, with gas becoming cheap and the kungpao not selling I decided to pull the VO kit off the car and try and sell it as a straight diesel. That didn't work either because as mentioned above the new clean diesels were entering the state and as I noticed on Craigslist a lot of sellers where selling their current TDI to get a new clean TDI. Then there's the economy and to be quite honest other than putting it in Craigslist a few times I haven't tried very hard to sell it because of my work schedule.

I am going to start the process again and document it from the beginning as opposed to starting the blog afterward. It will be a slow initial process as I will only have the weekends until the end of April and I have other things in life that keep me busy.

Although it will be more Plantdrive specific the concept will be universal and the parts are easily exchangeable. I have the advantage of doing this once before.

Hopefully by the end it will be a good instuction manual for anyone looking for a how to and perhaps even a video out of it.

141k and all is well - Latest Oil report

Latest oil report shows everything is good.

Oil had 4000 miles on it when changed. I made sure to purchase the oil with the exact spec as per the owners manual.

First Long drive on Veggie - LA to San Fran

Just did my first long drive on the car since it was converted. Drove a total of 770 miles driving from LA to SF. A couple notes:

• Averaged low to mid 40's MPG which includes some city driving in San Fran and some serious sitting in traffic on the 101 (2hours) in stop and go crawling traffic. 770 miles on 18g
• Oil temp on road was 210ºF when idling on freeway in 80ºF plus temps. Freeway temp was 180º with VegTherm and injection line heater on. 165º when electric heat was off
• Checked engine oil before leaving and checked when returned and no oil burning as far as I can tell.

On a side note I have noticed a quicker rise to temperature since adding the 2nd relay. There is less loss of energy since the power is only traveling to the Vegtherm /ILHs from the relay and not traveling along 25' of 10g wire to the dashboard through a switch and then to the Vegtherm/ILH and in the proces losing some of it's energy through heat (especially at the switch). Of course ambient temperature plays a factor.

What is this stuff in the Vormax?

Car is running good - hence no new posts.

One thing that has been around for a few months now is this stuff at the bottom of the Vormax. It's not the same stuff as I mentioned before as this looks different and does appear to be going anywhere. The only thing I can think of what it might be is is dissolved solids - now obviously undissolved.

Because I heat the oil when filtering, to get it to flow better, I'm thinking that there must be some things that dissolve in the process then re solidify when the oil cools.

The strange thing is that I don't remember placing any hot/warm oil in the tank recently. In the past I have filled the tank while filtering (after checking for water) but now I realize it's best to let the oil settle. Besides I need to log whenever I add oil to the car for tax purposes.

Vormax sediment from Joe B on Vimeo.

I have not noticed any sediment in the bottom of the filtered oil cubees. I do feel it is safe to assume that this same sediment is on the bottom of my OEM tank, unless this stuff settles out as the Vormax cools.

For the time being I'm not concerned because the system is always purged back to diesel so I don't think stuff has had a chance to settle in the shared parts of the fuel system. I can always open the drain valve on the Vormax or remove the clear jar and inspect. The stuff in the main fuel tank (if any) would be another matter

The Racor filter has the same sediment though seems to be much less. Perhaps a long hot drive might clear things up.

Cost of SVO rises too

I went to Costco today and while there checked the price of new soybean oil in a 35lb cubee - $26.89.

$26.89
$3.36 (sales taxes - CA 8.25%)

= $30.25
divided by 4.5G

= $6.72 per gallon
+ ¢ 24.4 per gallon federal road tax
+ ¢ 18 per gallon state road tax

$7.144 per gallon for new unused SVO. And that's not even high-test (canola)

OUCH!