Greasecars in Montecito
Having French fries with your burger may not be such a terrible thing after all, especially if it helps someone drive home. A company called Greasecar is helping turn old diesel cars into biofuel cruisers. Chris Dabney, a Montecito Union alumnus and former Lucky’s valet, has recently returned from a solar program in New Mexico and can be seen driving his converted 1980 Mercedes 300D.
“The conversion process is not very difficult,” Chris says, noting that, “They [Greasecar] send a very detailed instruction manual with the kit so it's hard to mess up. It would help,” Chris adds, “if you had a little knowledge of electrical wiring and knew the basic components of the diesel engine.”
Chef James Sly of Lucky’s, who is in the process of converting two cars to run on vegetable oil, believes the conversions are the best alternative out there for eco-conscious drivers. “I feel that vegetable oil,” Sly opines, “and waste vegetable oil, is a significantly better solution than ethanol, which can cut your fuel mileage in half. Alcohol has about half the energy content of gasoline,” James continues, “as well as being hygroscopic - it attracts water, which you typically don't want in your engine.” Chef Sly has his customers in mind, however, when he weighs the pros and cons of biofuel. “Closer to home,” he says, “the move to ethanol has raised the price of corn, which in turn caused a jump of 20% in the price of our meat at Lucky's. More ethanol equals not only expensive tortillas, but also expensive prime beef. And we don’t want that!”
Chris Dabney believes Greasecar is here to stay, that it is not just a passing fad, and encourages others to explore the vegetable-oil fuel option. “I would very much like to see other people interested in this technology,” he says, observing that, “There are actually more people doing it than you might think.”
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