Manx Club

http://www.ravenfamily.org/andyg/vegoil.htm Or move to USA

The recycle trucks in Berkeley ran on bio deisel. They smelled like doughnuts when the went by....Propane is looking more affordable at $2.14 a gallon too. I don't know if it would work with an air cooled engine unless you could figure out how to pre heat the mixer unit.???????????But if you could T - off the fuel line and cook burgers...........

Fubar, Bob Hoover (from RAMVA) was working on a propane conversion for the VW last I knew. There were some special problems to address, but it sounded very do-able. I don't know if he ever finished it, as he has been more involved with airplanes in more recent times.

I worked with a local Community College to build a CNG (compressed natural gas) fueled sandrail. The engine I built for it is a 1914 with 13.5:1 compression to take advantage of the 130 equivilent octane rating. I'm not up on propane but I know the company that built the fuel controller said it wouldn't run unless we heated the regulator to 180 deg, h2o cooled engines use a heater hose hooked to the regulator. I thought I would try it without heat otherwise we would run an oil line to it, it runs great without heat, even ay 20 degrees. I froze my but off at 20 deg I don't plan on driving it in weather any colder. Here are some pics of the buggy... http://www.manxgallery.org/gallery/Mort ... eled-buggy

That is a neat looking project car. 130 octane sounds like something that could use a turbo or supercharger.

It wont be long before our government slaps BIG TAXes on Propane Jerry i like the work you do,, nice rail

Awesome Buggy Jerry. Man very nice welding work!!!

[QUOTE="fubar"]That is a neat looking project car. 130 octane sounds like something that could use a turbo or supercharger.[/QUOTE] It's funny you should mention a supercharger...We were just talking about possibly installing a supercharger to make more of an impression on the High School kids. The school uses the buggy as a tool to get the High School kids interested in joining the automotive programs at the Community College after they graduate High School.

[QUOTE="mel hubbard"]It wont be long before our government slaps BIG TAXes on Propane Jerry i like the work you do,, nice rail [/QUOTE] Thanks for the kind words... Here in the States there are some appealing tax incentives if you drive an "alternative fuel vehicle". The problem is, if you drive an 'alternative fuel vehicle", you had better know how to work on it, because the dealers really try to nail you with the repair costs. I think it's because they are afraid to work on them.

I think CNG is a much better way to go. If you get a Phil system by Fuelmaker, you can fuel up at home for way under $2 per gallon. The only drawback with CNG is the bulky high pressure tank and lower energy per volume, but with a high mileage vehicle, its much less an issue. http://www.cngmotors.com/wst_page2.html

The fuel tank that takes up the entire rear seat area of the buggy, only holds the equivelent of 4 to 5 gallons of gasoline. The tank is virtually bulletproof and needs to be because of the high pressure.

I have friends who are making bio diesel. It ends up $0.40 a gallon. They've "refined' (Pardon the pun) the process and it's very efficiently done. You can use the used oil from restaurants, but if it has too much fat in it, there's a lot of waste, and it takes more time to clarify. You can burn the stuff as it comes out of the restaurants' fryer, but you need to filter it a bunch and heat it a little, so it will keep the right viscosity. I also understand that it's hard to start on raw, used, fryer oil. The Bio-Diesel works just like diesel. I've also heard that the Diesel engine was originally designed to run on vegetable oil. True? I dunno. My friends all have the Chevy trucks witht the Isuzu Diesel in it, but for the most part they've gone out and bought a few old Rabbit Diesel trucks that have no power, but get a million miles to the gallon. They're havin' a ball "Stickin' it to the man". (So to speak). C-Ya,