By Daniel Johnson, Sports Editor
When ACU alumnus Zane Williams (’99) searched for a cheap way to travel around the country, he thought he found his answer in a Chevy van and a pile of old cooking oil.
The Nashville musician and songwriter bought a 1983 Chevy G20 van, paid to get the diesel engine converted to run on vegetable oil and went on tour in his newly converted “veggie van.” What ensued was an up-and-down battle to find an effective alternative to filling up at the gas station.
“The best it ever worked for me was kind of so-so,” Williams said.
Williams bought the van in the fall of 2005 and had it converted soon after. The oil, which had to be filtered, needed to be heated up to more than 200 degrees before Williams could switch from the diesel fuel to the vegetable oil. The heating element ran on AC power, so a power inverter was mounted behind the power seat to convert the van’s battery power to heat the oil. A “veggie fuel gage” was installed on the dashboard along with a thermostat that kept the temperature of the oil.
“You start on diesel, you warm it up for about five to 10 minutes; there was a heater that heated up the veggie oil and when the oil gets up to temperature you switch over on veggie oil,” Williams said. “Then you run on veggie oil.”
But the process wasn’t as easy as the people Williams paid to install it said it would be. Williams said the oil would not heat up properly and the fuel filter that he was told was for the diesel fuel and the oil, clogged up so much, it had to be constantly replaced.
“I’m trying to help the environment, and here I am throwing away a fuel filter every three days,” Williams said. “They charged me too much, and their system was just really bad.”
Finding fuel was just as hard as getting his van to work. Williams said he sometimes spent hours looking for a restaurant, and when he did find a restaurant willing to part with their dirty oil, he said it was often too dirty.
“Just that right there sort of knocked down my plan of just being able to be on the road and being able to fill up at any restaurant in any town,” Williams said.
When the restaurant veggie oil well ran dry, Williams found places to fill up his more than 50-gallon tank online at various Web sites and online forums. There he said he found free oil or sometimes paid for the oil. But Williams’ experience with alternative fuels wasn’t all bad, and if he could do it all over again, he said he would be sure to find a legitimate installer.
“When it worked it was freaking awesome,” Williams said. “This thing still kills me to this day. Just because these people installed a bad system; I had this bad experience.”
When his van was running in prime position – with his laptop plugged in, a GPS system running and the car getting 70 to 80 miles to the gallon and running well – the veggie van was three cars wrapped into one.
It gave me all the cargo space of a Suburban, the gas mileage of a Prius and had the onboard GPS system of a Hummer,” Williams said.
It is that side of Williams’ experience with his veggie van that Steve Parker said his customer’s often cite as the reason they are happy with their decision to convert their cars to run on vegetable oil. Parker’s company, Deep Fried Rides, converts diesel engines to run on grease and old vegetable oil, and he said switching over is not for everybody. It costs up to $5,000 to convert a car’s engine, the environmental and economical benefits come with a strong personal devotion and you cannot be afraid to get your hands dirty, Parker said.
“It’s nasty, and it’s icky,” Parker said. “I don’t see it ever being a situation as far as the future goes where you can pull up to a pump and fill up with grease.”
But regardless of the mess vegetable oil cars have been shown to help the environment. According to a study done by Greasecar.com, the brand that Parker’s company installs, cars running on vegetable oil emits 26 percent less carbon monoxide into the environment than regular diesel fuel.
After pouring money into his veggie van, Williams’ eventually sold the van in 2007. He said that the “shoddy” work cost him about $6,000 dollars, but his messy experience did not stop him from remembering the good times and what initially drove him to try out driving a “veggie van.”
“Whenever I was driving on veggie oil, everything was right with the world,” Williams said. “I was in a good mood, it smelled kind of good and it was just such a neat feeling to know you’re driving down the road with oil that was used to fry chips, french fries and was in the trash a few days before.”
