The Veggie Mercedes

The orange beast, the cheapest car to run I have owned.

1976 old school Diesel Mercedes 240D.

The vegetable oil came from a McDonalds restaurant in Brisbane CBD where I worked security for the complex it was located in.

I always talked to the different delivery drivers and contractors and worked out a deal where I could get 100 liters of used veggie oil from the McDonald’s fryers from the company who empties and replaces the oil for them. So once per week they would arrive and give the fryers a clean, empty the old oil and replace with fresh oil. I would then get all the oil I needed to run my Mercedes for the week for free.

The oil came in 20-liter barrels. Once at home, I’d pour it into a 200-liter plastic container in my tin shed, attached to a brass tap handle secured by knead-it sealant; the liquid passed through a garden hose to a 2000 micron filter resting in another container below, then back up into the top reservoir with a bilge pump.

A tap was attached about 5cm above the bottom of the top container so after filtering for hours and then letting it sit for a few days, all the sediment was below the tap and I could extract maybe 80 liters of pure vegetable oil and the car would run on that almost everyday except if it got really cold then it would be too thick and I would have to just unscrew the fuel filter which is on the top of the engine so easy to get too and then empty out the veggie oil, fill it with pure diesel and that was enough to crank over and get going like nothing happened.

These car are work horses and known to do over 1million km on the same engine. You don’t buy these cars for the speed or their power which was 71 HP when they where build.

In normal traffic they are fine and freeway driving is ok, but if you see a red light going up a hill, then expect people to start using their horns and get agitated with you, as they don’t move quick up hill and getting up to speed.