goolsbee.org, serving useless content from an undisclosed location since 1997
I don’t usually highlight contemporary automobiles, but I had to post this. The big news arrives at about 4:40 in the video.
500 HP, 737, ft-lbs or torque (1000Nm), and 23 MPG.
Gotta love it.
Now Audi, hurry up and ship the thing so you can get around to building my TDI TT Convertible please!
Yes, this is post #500 since the changeover from the old goolsbee.org site!
This time in the Detroit News. Read it here. (Scroll to the very end of the article.)
Mind you it is a throwaway quote… I talked to the guy for a long time about Diesel technology, the cars I’ve owned, etc. Of all things he picked that one. Oh well.
I’d always heard that BioDiesel had a tendency to clear out the accumulated crud in your fuel tank and system. Now I know it for a fact. Last weekend Sue called me from Skagit county complaining of a significant loss of power. I’ve had her Jeep Liberty CRD running on about a max-B20 mixture for a while. I had noticed my B50/B90ish VW Jetta TDI hesitate now and then as well. I considered the possibilities. Clogged filter? Or have I brewed up a batch of crap?
I drove up to Skagit in the TDI and took her car home to experience it for myself. The car started and ran fine, but when you really got on the throttle, merging onto a freeway for example, it just bogged down and just… would… not… go… Very frustrating. I got off the freeway and went the rest of the way home on back roads so as not to cause an incident. I noted that if I gradually accelerated it would be fine, up to whatever speed I wanted. But if I laid into it, or climbed a steep hill it acted as if it was towing a huge load. I parked the Jeep in the garage and went into town later to the NAPA store to buy a new fuel filter cannister. Being a Diesel it uses a big honkin’ filter combined with a water separator. In fact it has all sorts of sensors attached and even had a “water in fuel” idiot light on the dash to tell you to drain it. The NAPA didn’t have one and in fact it had to be shipped from out of state. They said 3 days – in the end it took a week. They did have one for the Jetta so I grabbed one of those, just in case.
I look like a genius in hindsight because later in the week I went to start up the Jetta and it took some serious cranking to get going. It also bogged a bit a couple of times when underway at freeway speeds. The “check engine” light also illuminated. Great.
So the Jeep filter finally arrived today and I started the process to change it. The Mopar Morons routed a power steering hose and several electrical wires all around the filter cannister so it was a royal PITA to get off. The water sensor disconnect can only be reached from directly underneath so I ended up soaking my arm in Diesel while trying to get it off from under the car. Grrr. If I had miniature hands I could have done it from above I guess, but being born with Y chromosomes I have big meaty mitts that could only get to it from below at full arm extension. =\
Car designers should have to work on the cars they make!
The one bit of forethought they put into it was a handy spring pump on the housing and bleeder nipple to prime the filter with fuel without a mess. Too bad I was already soaked in Diesel anyway!
Sue of course took off in the Jetta before I was done wrestling with her Jeep. Sure enough she calls me from Stanwood. The Jetta conked out on her while on the freeway. The Jeep unfinished, I jumped in the old pickup truck we keep in the barn for lumber and hay hauling duties (retired from trailering when she sold the horse trailer) and drove up there to rescue her. The Jetta drives fine for me all the way home but I figure I’ll swap its filter too.
I finish the Jeep and take it out for a test drive. It runs like a top. Lots of acceleration and no hesitation whatsoever. I take it out on the freeway just to be sure and decide to drop it off for Sue at the horse place and take the pickup home. I then swap the Jetta’s filter, which is an under-5-minute job, unlike the Jeep’s. No priming pump, so it is a tad messy, but I already reek of Diesel so who cares. Fire the Jetta up in the garage. Starts right up and no check engine light anymore.
Just out of curiosity I take the filters out to the barn, grab a hacksaw and open them up:
Here is the Jeep’s filter. It started out as a very light beige color (you can see a little bit of untainted filter element at the top right.) As you can see it is filthy.
Above is the Jetta’s filter. It was even worse than the Jeep’s. It has big gloppy sludgy bits in it.
I guess I’ll buy another pair, or maybe four of them to keep on hand as the tanks clear out their accumulated sludge.
My advice: read the questions very carefully. Literally observe the illustrations. Take your time.
The terminology with regards to directions is relative to position, so LITERAL observation of the illustrations is required. Don’t overthink them as that is how I screwed up. 😉
Let me know how you do in the comments.
Above is my very first batch of actual BioDiesel. It is still settling, and I photographed it at dusk pointing east, so trust me whan I say it looks better than this. Much lighter colored. The gunk at the bottom (fatty acids and lye) is thick and black. Kinda cool.
The purpose of this test batch was to check the recipe for my veggie oil. As soon as I can source some methanol (I’ll need ~6 gallons) I’ll cook up a real batch for the car.
Update: Sunday afternoon. The sun came out for a bit, so I grabbed a better lit photo:
I love having interesting friends with knowledge about stuff I’m clueless about. Tonight I was provided with a Chem 101 class via iChat. My good friend, occasional comment provider here, and real live trained professional Chemist, Dan O. was the professor and I the student. Over the course of three hours I learned more than I ever have about a handful of chemicals I NEED to know about if I ever want to achieve some measure of energy independence.
The conversation started when I mentioned my initial test of a batch of veggie oil in preparation for making BioDiesel. I was having trouble doing the tests. The primers on BioDiesel prep were not written in a way that I was comprehending very well, and there was some inconsistencies from one write-up to another. Dan cleared it all up for me. His intimate knowledge of all the elements, processes, and reactions involved allowed him to explain it to me in terms I could grasp.
He also filled me in on some safety procedures, storage strategies, and other bigger picture items sorely lacking from the reading I’ve done to date. I started the evening a bit frustrated, and finished it feeling more confident and motivated to start again.
Thanks Dan!
I finally finished all the barn project work. I have this processor seen above, a dual-tank wash system, and new this weekend – a bottom draining settling tank. With a stop at my Diesel buddy John’s house on my way home Friday night I picked up enough WVO to finally finish calibrating the processor. It turned out to be a lot of work. However, as of about 10pm tonight I know that it all functions properly. The pump works. The heating element works. The plumbing doesn’t leak. The settling tank works. The mist washer works. I’m ready to go B100! Reduce the Goolsbee family’s dependance on petroleum to near zero. (The Jaguar will still need gasoline, but I don’t drive it as much as even I’d like to!)
I was hoping to get an initial batch made, but that will have to wait. But I’m happy to have all the construction work done. I’ll likely make a few more settling tanks at some point… mostly to replace the filtration system I was using before. The steel barrels can just be used for storage after that. I have a source now for free poly barrels and this bottom draining system is a lot better than the siphoning I was doing before. Faster, cleaner… way better overall.
Here is how it works. The barrel is fitted with two drains in the bungs. One flush with the bottom, but the other with a six inch pipe extending up into the tank. Both drains come out of the bungs and bend 90-degrees, then out a foot long pipe to a ball valve. I cut a hole in the bottom of the barrel, which is now the top, and place a funnel in it to pour the oil into the barrel. The water and crud settles to the bottom of the oil naturally. The pipe with the six inch extension goes up above the water and crud. That way you can drain the clean oil out of the barrel above the level of the water and crud. Very handy. Once the accumulated crud reaches six inches (visible through the translucent poly barrel) you drain it off into a bucket from the other ball valve.
Before I settled in two poly tanks (now my washing system) and would siphon as low as I could from them into my filter barrels. It was easy to see the water at the bottom, but as it accumulated the system got harder to use. When I retired the first barrel to make it my wash tank it had easily 20 gallons of cruddy watery gunk at the bottom. It was a pain in the ass to get down from the platform and out of the barn. Now I’ll never accumulate more that about 5 gallons of water. I can drain it off as it settles.
I’ll post pictures of the whole thing soon.