It's been a fun couple of weeks. We've had a few folks bring in their not-fully functioning SVO trucks (first-time installations), providing us good puzzles to figure out and vegoil systems to improve.We like to encourage do-it-yourself vegoil conversions. We'll sell you a kit at a discount, and give you free phone support installing it.
And if you get stuck, we're available to fix things.
Yep, here at Arctic Vegwerks, we keep busy. We teach biodiesel and SVO classes and seminars, sell and install vegoil systems, spend hours giving free phone consultations for our customers, and we fix those poorly running or unfinished WVO conversions.
We're available in 4 hour chunks of time, for $150 a pop. Both systems this week took two 4-hour blocks to finish up.
First was a nice, burly, and moderately complex 3-valve Plantdrive setup on a 95 F250 Ford Powerstroke. The 3rd valve switched between looping and returning to tank. All the hoses were finished, but the electrical hadn't been started. We installed the really truly amazing VOControl on the truck. It's not cheap, but it BLOWS the competition's controllers out of the water. It's a real computer, not just a timer. More on that later.
The second was a 1996 Dodge 2500 Cummins with a Greasecar setup. It was installed by a local mechanic about a year ago, and had never run well. The mechanic is a good one and his work was beautiful. But, it was his first SVO kit and he just followed the generic Greasecar instructions. Once again I was unimpressed by the Greasecar setup. Temps rarely hit 100F, the vegoil was being pulled first through the veg filter, then the diesel filter and the tank and lines were full of gunk. We drained the tank, added a flat-plate heat exchanger and completely rerouted the engine fuel hoses. On its maiden run the temps were pegged in the 160's, yeah!
Thinking about installing a system? Need a tune-up on your existing system? We offer a free initial consultation to any Alaskan.
