Posted on 05/29/2005 9:49:01 AM PDT by Graybeard58
WINSTED -- Larry Joy decided to help the environment by fueling his compact car with used vegetable oil pumped from restaurant fry vats. He never figured the scent of french fries would attract a hungry bear with a yen for fast food.
That's what happened two weeks ago, when Joy walked outside his house and found the evidence: muddy paw prints caked around a shattered car window, a plastic fuel tank tipped on its side, gnawed hoses and pool of cooking oil on the rear floorboard.
"I knew what it was after," said Joy, smiling as he pointed to the still-visible prints smudged on the driver's side of his 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit. "I think it's cool that bears do whatever they want."
Joy's Grantville Road house is smack in the middle of bear country, a rural outpost tucked away in the woods on a winding road about a mile from Winchester Center's green.
Bears tipping over garbage cans? A routine event.
But a bear smashing into a hatchback for its clam strip-flavored fuel? Well, that doesn't happen too often.
"We've had cases where bears were interested in the contents of a car," said Paul Rego, a biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection's wildlife division, "but cars that have used cooking oils are not very common."
From the outside, there's nothing special about Joy's pewter-colored car. It looks its age. There's an assortment of dents and missing ornaments, though none so glaring as to brand the car junkyard material. And there's nothing special about the inside, either. The car has roots in Florida: much of its once maroon interior is now faded orange, bleached by the sun's harsh rays.
"The car always looks this bad," said Joy, his 6-foot 4-inch frame wedged between the steering wheel and driver's seat. Soiled by the bear's romp, the backseat is missing. It's been replaced by sofa cushions. "I love this car. I try to get out in it every day."
Joy's automotive love affair rests not with his Rabbit's appearance, but with its collection of hoses and gauges packed beneath the hood. With its coiled copper tubing and sensors, the engine resembles a mad scientist's laboratory.
That tangled web of metal and rubber, however, is what makes this car unusual. Joy paid $600 for the car nearly two years ago. It ran on diesel, the prerequisite for converting to cooking oil. With help from New Hartford resident David Henri -- Henri retrofitted his own Rabbit to run on cooking oil -- Joy implemented his dual-tank fuel system for less than the car's sticker price.
"If it blows up or something, $600 is worth a shot," he said.
Vegetable oil is too thick for a car's engine to handle, unless it's thinned by intense heat. When Joy fires up his Rabbit, he starts with diesel. It looks a bit futuristic for this car, but there's a digital gauge near the steering wheel that provides the temperature of the engine coolant. When it hits 90 degrees, Joy flicks a simple, silver switch to change tanks.
"To the right is right," said Joy, a 53-year-old electrician and burgeoning environmentalist. "When it gets up around 150 degrees, it just smells sweet. My neighbor said it smells like cheeseburgers."
It smelled so sweet, that Rego sent two biologists to review Joy's predicament. "Used vegetable oil, I'd say, would be a very high attractant for a bear," he said. Though not the best solution, Rego recommended a balloon filled with water and ammonia, covered in cooking oil to bait the bear. If the animal bites the balloon, it would get a taste nasty enough to discourage a return trip, he said.
But one thing is for certain: Joy has no intention of ditching his grease-powered car. He's fashioning a 40-gallon tank from an oil drum. It would replace his small tank, which he thinks holds six or seven gallons. It would be visible from the rear window.
Joy's car averages about 44 miles per gallon, both on diesel and cooking oil. Though his primary vehicle is a Ford Ranger, Joy figured it would cost him 60 cents per day if he drove the Rabbit regularly. It packs as much power as a gasoline-powered car, he said.
The Rabbit rumbles down the highway, its quirks no different from other 24-year-old cars. Joy switches back to diesel a few minutes before stopping, flushing the grease back into its tank. That prevents oil from congealing inside the engine after it cools.
"It's great, you can wave at the gas stations as you go by," said Deb Kuszaj, who, with her husband, Mike, owns Blue Sky Foods in New Hartford. It's one of Joy's favorite fueling depots. He takes about 35 gallons a trip. And Kuszaj likes to see Joy come around, too. Ordinarily, the couple pays a company more than $50 to haul away discarded cooking oil. "It's great for us," she said.
Joy prefers the used oil because it's free. A gallon of pure vegetable oil from the grocery store costs upwards of $7. Joy and Henri say the vegetable oil revolution has gained serious momentum. "When I first looked into it, there were eight Web sites that sold kits," Joy said. "Now there's a million of them."
Folks at the West Hartford-based Connecticut Public Interest Research Group, an advocate for cleaner cars and efficient energy, say they are uncertain about the number of grease-powered cars on state roads. But Joy's efforts are evidence that the popularity of biodiesel as a viable fuel source has indeed grown, a spokesman said.
Converting a Ford F-150 pickup truck with a diesel engine is Joy's dream project. But if the bear continues to run roughshod on the Rabbit, that project's start date could come sooner rather than later.
And Joy cannot follow through on Rego's best advice to avoid future bear encounters: "I don't have a garage," he said.
ping
Great article!
Conneticut? Florida? Winsted
Conneticut
Connecticut
Kill the Wabbit, kill the Wabbit!
"I killed da wabbit ... poor widdle bun-kneee ..."
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