MacDonald's French Fry Oil & Diesel Hybrid

AWESOME!!!

hey, it wont support a lot, but every little bit helps. even a swimming pool can be filled one drop at a time, plus it also reduces landfill requirements...

too cool!

 

No real surprise - there are more than a few TDI's that have the "greasecar" conversion.

Basically, it is a heated second tank, and the procedure of beginning and ending a trip is somewhat different than with a car running on regular diesel or biodiesel.

What makes this even better for him is that he has a ready source of used fryer oil. Think about it: what fast-food restaurant owner wouldn't do this?


Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil.

 

If he's got any warranty left on his VW (and likely his Ford), he's almost certainly voided the warranties for the engine, exhaust, and emissions control systems. You aren't supposed to run a VW w/anything higher than 5% biodiesel (B5) for now http://www.vw.com/contactus/faqs.html#5.1.

 

I doubt he gives a rats arse. If he was spending $350/wk on diesel he's saving 18K/yr in fuel costs. He can buy a new TDI every year practically.

 

So?

 

30 cars a year? yeah, that scales... that's the problem I've
always had with the greasecar concept. There's only so much grease.
.
_H*

 

I'm saying that assuming he had any warranty left, he's the voided warranties on fairly important parts of his cars. I do not know about you, but they're fairly important to me, esp. on a car and brand that pretty poor reliability records.

 

Well, having had a VW nB, I can say, you are right about that. However, it's his car, and not mine, so I don't care.

nB's break down, sad to say, and he may be better off with what he has done.

 

The guy owns 4 McDonalds, I don't really think he is worried about if his warranty is still in effect.

 

xactly, that and the fact that his fuel saving could buy him a new car every year if he need it. Why preserve the warranty and spend 18K in diesel fuel every year. That doesn't make any sense.

 

Of course it doesn't... but consider that this is just a good example of waste to fuel. It just highlights that there are a lot of solutions right under our noses. Cellulose ethanol is sort of the grand scale of this. I bet that a city could run it's bus fleet off of waste grease. That's something pretty substantial if it could be carried out.

 

Considering American eating habits, I think we have enough grease to power the country... :lol:















J/K.

 

i dont see how waranties or reliability of the product comes into play here.

your choice is pay a bundle for gas, drive cars that are unreliable and expensive to repair....

OR

pay nothing for gas, drive cars that are unreliable and expensive to repair

 

Back to the supposed $18K figure a year for fuel, I think that's the worst case since it says "Tomey once spent more than $350 a week for diesel", not ALWAYS. If we assume he spends $350/week for diesel w/diesel being $3/gallon and he gets 20 mpg avg between his truck and his diesel VW Beetle [seems very unlikely it's that low], that meant the vehicles were driven a total of 2333 miles/week. Is that likely?

The warranty and reliability does come into play in my opinion. It's drive cars that are unreliable and cost nothing to fix while under warranty by using approved fuel

OR

drive cars that are unreliable and will cost you a bunch to fix and likely be out of service more becuase of the unapproved fuel that's virtually free.

I guess the reason why I was pointing out warranties to begin with is because I've seen people here (and elsewhere including message boards at my work) consider getting diesel VWs strictly to run on pure biodiesel from processed cooking grease. They don't seem to realize they're trading reliability by buying VW and their warranty on an already unreliable car by running unapproved fuel.

 

no, but my brothers brother in law owns only two MacDonalds in Portland and he does a HUGE amount of driving back and forth. plus, i would have to say that the truck probably does a disportionately large amount of driving.

its also amazing to me that here is someone who is greatly reducing his use of imported oil and all we can do is nitpick what he is doing.

i dont think anyone here is saying that its a widespread viable option. but as a niche solution, it works. is that so hard to accept??

 

It works for him, and it uses no gas, costing him less money. That is the idea, isnt it?

 

I'm with ya mate.

Precisely.

 

just a note... talked to David (the MacDonalds owner) and asked if he has thought about doing the same thing. he says that someone comes and gets his used oil for free. he never knew what it was being used for. only knew that before this guy started coming to get it, it was costing him $400 a month to have someone come pick it up.

the used oil cannot be dumped into regular garbage so its collected in a big dumpster like container. he would shuttle oil from one store to the other so he only had one collection point which was cheaper that way. once every couple of weeks when the container got full, the oil guy would come and pick it up and charge them just under $200 per pickup.

now he has this guy who comes by once a week and takes everything he has from both stores. he no longer pays for pickup, he no longer hauls used oil from one store to the other.

 

Good idea. And the plate - "frybrid" - is brilliant.