[taxed2death]

The Humvee has the GM diesel engine in it. Out of several engines to choose from...Navistar, Cummins, Gm, of course the US picked the worst of the three, the GM diesel. Only the Cummins is rated as a medium duty diesel engine, the other two are rated as light duty diesel engines. The Cummins is a $4000.00 option on Ford 550's while the cheesy navistar comes as the bottom of the barrel pick. The Cummins has 40% more main bearing surface than either the GM or the Navistar / Powerstroke. The Cummins is an inline six design, like 95% of all OTR diesel 18 wheelers. My point being, we now have the capability in the VERY near future, to run engines on 100% pure veggie oil, with minor retooling of the Cummins and minor tweaking of the fuel.


There was a test performed by a midwestern college a few years back in which they did some rather extensive long term, hi-engine life hours expirements on a Cummins 24 valve diesel engine. The test concluded that these engines could run well into their useful service range of 350,000 miles before major overhaul, on vegtable oil. Not bio diesel, but pure vegtable oil.

Talk about renewable energy! Why subsudize farmers, they could be growing our fuel right now. The only problem they havn't licked was the fact that the vegtable oil solidifies at lower temps. You want to really scew the Saudis' try this route!

There are a few cool web sites to check out
veggievan.com
turbodieselregister.com
Check out some of the links.

[dennisw]

Talk about renewable energy! Why subsudize farmers, they could be growing our fuel right now. The only problem they havn't licked was the fact that the vegtable oil solidifies at lower temps. You want to really scew the Saudis' try this route! 

Only problem are the vast petroleum inputs in modern American agriculture. Used to make the farm fertilizer and the fuel for tractors and other machinery. More efficient to take that petrol and put it directly in your tank. Cut out the middleman farmer.

It just doesn't compute to have a farmer grow crops that end up as ethanol for gas engines or vegetable oil to power diesel engines.