Gas price blues? Let your car eat veggies
Two convert engines to run on cooking oil
On evenings and weekends, a schoolteacher and a city council campaign manager are working on a quiet revolution in their backyard parking areas.
Their work can't be heard or seen, as much as it can be smelled; when they're done, you might notice a whiff of deep fat fryer as they drive by.
Jamie Merkle of Newton, a Bedford schoolteacher, and Patrick Keaney of JP, who runs City Councilor Felix Arroyo's reelection campaign, moonlight as the owners of Green Grease Monkey. Their company offers to help Bostonians beat high gas prices and help the environment by powering their cars with used vegetable oil.
With gas prices in the $3-a-gallon range, it's becoming a popular idea.
The two say they haven't noticed an increase in calls from recent gas prices, because they are such a small company, but a Western Massachusetts outfit called Greasecar has. ''Business here is through the roof," said Lee Briante, a Greasecar spokesman. ''For the last 18 months, every month is bigger than the last, and the last eight weeks have been overwhelming."
Greasecar is focused on making kits for people to convert their diesel cars to cars that can use vegetable oil. But for city motorists without technical know-how, or who don't want to spend time collecting used vegetable oil, the Grease Monkeys often provide a helping hand. New oil would work, too, of course -- it just isn't free.
Last weekend, in between running a line from the radiator to a red Ford F250 truck's second fuel tank under its flat bed (the vegetable oil will be heated by hot coolant to make it thin enough to ignite), Merkle explained that his inspiration was ''From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank," by Joshua Tickell. He read the book in 1998, and ''I was so excited," he said. ''I had to do it."
Unbeknownst to Merkle, Keaney was getting turned on to the idea of using veggie oil as a fuel about the same time. He eventually took a class at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont, where he converted his diesel-engine VW Rabbit. Any vehicle with a diesel engine can be converted.
He was so excited by the idea that he went out to buy another diesel immediately. He answered a posting on Craigslist by Merkle, and they realized their common passion. ''We basically dropped everything, and started buying, converting, and selling cars," said Keaney. ''We are trying to make it as accessible as possible."
They even collect fuel for their customers, from local restaurants. About a year ago, Keaney approached Joe Greene, an owner of the Eat Drink Laugh restaurant group. ''I was skeptical at first," said Greene. ''I thought [Keaney] might show up for a few weeks, and then disappear. He hasn't." Every week, Keaney picks up about 20 gallons of used oil from each of the group's five restaurants, including West on Centre in West Roxbury. Cooks pour the used oil out of fryers into plastic ''cube" containers for Keaney.
In a little over a year, the Green Grease Monkeys have converted 22 vehicles, charging about $1,200 including labor, which compares to $795 for Greasecar's basic kit, uninstalled. Grease Monkeys have done everything from cars to school buses, which get the same mileage on the oil as they do on diesel gas, according to Greasecar's website. The two have yet to meet a mechanical problem they can't overcome, and are quick to dispel the idea that everyone driving vegetable oil cars is a diehard environmentalist. For many customers, it's more about the bottom line. ''It's empowering to people because they can get their own fuel, for free," said Merkle.
The only problem is finding diesel cars in good enough shape to fix up and convert, he added. Diesel cars were more common here from the late '70s to the mid-'80s, then dropped out of favor. Among new models, more trucks are being built with diesels, and
As Merkle used a saw to cut into the fuel tank and shoved a roll of copper tubing into it, customer Ethan Sewall hovered nearby. He said he plans to use the truck for his nonprofit, which takes Boston children to islands in Maine. He'd rather spend his money on his programs than gasoline, he said, and likes the reduced emissions. Vegetable oil ''should be a major alternative" to gasoline, he said. ''People might not care about the environment, but the bottom line is, it can be free."
