He Converted His Pickup To Run On Veggie Oil

He Converted His Pickup To Run On Veggie Oil PICKUPS Miscellaneous 28-6-10 After our story on conversion kits that run cars and trucks on vegetable oil (Vol. 28, No. 5), Chris Kornkven, Helenville, Wis., emailed us to say he recently converted his 1997 Dodge pickup, equipped with a Cummins diesel, to run on veggie oil. He used a Greasel convesion kit (Greasel Conversions, Inc., HC 73, Box 157D, Drury, Mo. 65638 ph 866 473-2735; email: charlie@grease1.com; website: www.grease1.com). Such kits allow mechanically injected diesel vehicles to run on straight vegetable oil. You can fuel your vehicle with filtered frying oil that's collected from local restaurants. But the vehicle's existing diesel circuit is left in place, so you can still run normally on diesel fuel. Overall, he says the conversion was a successful one although he did have to make some modifications. "I was disappointed in the company's installation instructions which consisted only of some general instructions on their website. But after a lot of thinking and planning, I managed to come up with a way to get the job done," says Kornkven. The kit came with an 18-gal. veggie oil tank, which he installed in the pickup bed, The fuel delivery system consists of three lines - one for oil, and two that are plumbed into the heater hoses under the hood. These additional coolant lines allow coolant to circulate down the fuel line and through the fuel tank, heating the oil. He added an in-line pump coming out of the tank to pump oil to a large Racor filter that has a bowl heater on it. From the filter, the oil then goes to the fuel solenoid. The output of the solenoid goes into the main supply line of the injector pump. To convert the diesel fuel line, some replumbing had to be done in order to keep oil from being sucked back to the stock diesel tank or filter. A mini return line also had to be replumbed. "The original fuel system on my Dodge pickup sent fuel from the tank to the lift pump, then to the filter and finally to the injection pump," says Kornkven. "After the conversion, the fuel now goes from the tank and through the stock filter, then to the solenoid, lift pump and injector pump. The main fuel return line is plumbed back into the supply line, as is the mini return line coming off the injectors." He starts the engine on diesel and switches over to veggie oil. "At first, I couldn't tell if the engine was running on oil or diesel fuel, so I had to add two clear fuel lines on the input to the solenoid," he says. He says his wife was rather skeptical of the conversion since she uses the pickup to pull a 19-ft. Featherlite horse trailer. But he says she hasn't noticed any drop in power and mileage empty on the highway is 20 to 21 mpg, similar to what they get on diesel. "We also use the pickup to pull a 26-ft. camper, and we haven't noticed a drop in power while pulling it on veggie oil," says Kornkven, who's driven 2,500 miles so far on veggie oil with no problems. He gets the oil from a local restaurant that saves all its waste cooking oil. "I pick up between 10 and 20 gallons a week. The owner changes his cooking oil once a week so it's already fairly clean when I get it. I let the containers set in the sun for a week to allow some of the contaminants to settle out. Then I pump oil from the containers into a barrel. I have a screen on the intake and a screen filter on the output. I pump the oil from that barrel into another barrel through a water sediment filter that filters it down to 10 microns. When I pump it out of that barrel into the pickup, it goes one last time through a filter that's normally used for hydraulic oil, so it's pretty clean by the time we start burning it." Ultimately, Kornkven says he'd like to set up a growing/refining co-op to produce Canola oil. "Diesel engines seem to burn Canola oil rather well. I'd rather pay a farmer for Canola oil than see so much money go overseas for foreign oil," he notes. Total cost of the project was about $900. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Chris Kornkven, N6280 County P, Helenville, Wis. 531

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