Everything you need to know to drive on Grease

There's only one rule on the Grease to Greece. - No Fossil Fuels. Apart from that anything goes.

There's a lot of confusion between chip fat and biodiesel:
Biodiesel is a fuel that is made from vegetable oil, and when made properly can be used in any diesel engine without modifications.

Modifying an engine means it can also run on "straight vegetable oil" (SVO) - the stuff you buy in the supermarket, and "Waste Vegetable oil" (WVO) - the stuff that chip shops throw out but WVO has to be cleaned up before it can be used.

For the Grease To Greece, teams can convert thier car to run on nothing but vegetable oil, using a clever kit like the one SmartVeg make, - some engines don't even need converting to run on vegetable oil. Check out your car here.

SmartVeg are offering a discount on their conversion system for everyone taking part in the challenge.

There are different types of conversions, a dual tank system is relatively cheap and easy to do yourself if you know one end of a spanner from the other (see here). With a dual tank conversion you start and stop the engine on fossil diesel (or biodiesel on the rally) and run on veg oil while the engine is warm.

Single tank conversions are more expensive but make life really easy. Chuck everything and anything in past the filler cap and off you go.

Whatever system you use, it's really important to have clean Waste Veg Oil (WVO), so if you're sucking it out of a Bavarian bratwurst parlour, it needs to be dewatered and filtered. A hot centrifuge system will do this instantly for you. Otherwise gravity fed filters take a little bit longer and give you the time to get to know your greasy chef while you wait.

Oilybits are offering a special deal on centrifuges and filters for everyone taking part on the challenge.

As a last resort you can fill up with unused veg oil (Straight Veg Oil - SVO), but some say this has a negative impact on all the starving little children in the world. There is a lot of debate about this and we're not entirely convinced that's true, but either way it's still better than using fossil fuels.

Taking a standard vehicle.

Thanks to GreenFuels here’s no need to convert your diesel engine to take part in the rally. Teams will still need to be on the hunt for oil along the route and before putting it in their tanks they will need to convert it to Biodiesel using the “Green Fuels FuelPod2 Grease to Greece Mobile Refinery”,  aka “The Pod” for short .

The FuelPod2 is the safest and easiest to use biodiesel processor on the market. It’s designed for people that want to make their own biodiesel in the garage from vegetable oil, but those Vegetable-Oil Barons at GreenFuels are putting one onto the back of a trailer for the rally, transforming it into the world’s first mobile grease-guzzling refinery.

By reacting waste cooking oil with ethanol (in our case Bio-ethanol made from whey actually, so there is no fossil based fuel in it) the FuelPod2 converts the oil into biodiesel and because the FuelPod2 makes biodiesel to the correct standards, you can put the golden fuel into any diesel without needing to convert it.

There’s likely to be quite a queue for the processor, and possibly a GreaseMark fee for processing, so teams can “tow their own”.

GreenFuels are doing a discount on their range of products for rally teams so check out their website and if you haggle hard they may even accept your GreaseMarks.

Useful Links

• Wikipedia
• Vehicle Database
• BioPower