She'll fly 'erself apart captain!

After a couple tanks of veggie oil we noticed that the Mercedes was losing power, especially driving uphill. Initially we thought the oil we got was too thick for the engine, so we thinned it down with some diesel and that seemed to solve the problem. The third batch of oil we got from Lubbock, TX was excellent, so when we hit the highway and still had problems we decided to do some problem solving. The engine was acting like it wasn't getting enough fuel, and it seemed to run fine on a thinner diesel/oil mix, so we suspected that either the fuel pump wasn't maintaining pressure in the line or a fuel filter was clogged. We unplugged the auxiliary pump to isolate the main fuel pump and the car still ran. We decided the problem was probably that the primary fuel filter was clogged, so we decided to rig a bypass.



The veggie oil conversion kit George installed has 4 inline fuel filters, including a large primary filter with a water separator. We unplugged the fuel lines from the primary filter and hooked them up to the factory filter. The cartridge on the stock filter is smaller, but we figured that the first batch of oil we got might have been dirty, so we were hoping that the new filter would be clean. The work went smoothly with a little help from the local sheriff, after about 40 minutes we were ready to roll.



Luckily our guess was right! The engine started up, purring smoothly on the clean veggie oil and we drove on into the hot Texas night. Generally the engine runs more smoothly on the veggie oil because it burns cleaner than diesel, so with a new filter we cruised on into Dallas.



Today we took off the oil kit filter to rinse it out with gasoline. We figured we might be able to clean out the filter, just in case. We found a nice surprise waiting for us.



Turns out the hot oil was cleaning out 25 years worth of gunk built up in the combustion chambers. Our second sweet surprise was garlic mashed potatoes and steak. Now the car is fueled up and so are we. Tomorrow: on to Memphis.