Peak Diaries: The Travel Queen (trailer) from PowderLines.Com on Vimeo.
We drive a car that runs on used vegetable oil and we built a straw bale house... we thought this might be a fun way to document our adventures and maybe, in turn, help others who decide to give it a go as well. Note: If you are interested in reading about the building of our straw bale house check out the blog archive (on the right side a little ways down) from 2008- when we began our research and 2009- when we actually constructed the house.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
V Dubs from Utah
7 Years ago we bought are first VW. Since then I have taken on the task of saving as many as I could from Junk Yards to fields. Some would get full rebuilds with new engines and paint. Others would be sold as shells for someone to start their own VW rebuild, moreover some would be turned into grease cars to travel the US. To date I have saved over 20 VW's from either being crushed or parted out and the number is still rising!
Monday, August 6, 2012
The Real Cost of Free Fuel
As the saying goes, “nothing is free”, with our efforts in
running our vehicles on grease/waste vegetable oil (WVO) it’s simply cheaper
and less bad for the planet.
To all of the “nay-sayers” as to whether or not using grease/WVO
as a fuel source is damaging to your engine, we are not debating that. We have owned several vehicles over the
last six years that have run off of grease/WVO and have not had any problems
because of this system conversion.
With this post we simply hope to offer insight and information about the
process.
Our primary vehicle is a turbo diesel sedan (VW Passat); see
the post (click here) for how we filter our grease/WVO at home with a centrifuge setup. This system has worked great and saved
us thousands of dollars over the years.
We have spent four weeks in a diesel motor home with a grease car
conversion kit in it on a road trip to Alaska and back.
While on this road trip the grease/WVO was free, but there were
still costs involved in running the system.
-Rubber gloves and paper towels
-Bag filters to run the grease/WVO thru to catch larger
particulate before poring into the heated fuel tank

We collected about 600 gallons of free grease/WVO over the course
of our trip. It is important to
note that two things drastically affect your bottom line. 1- Grease/WVO quality and 2- fuel filter
choice.
On a trip like that, where you were trying to acquire 100
gallons of fuel at a time, your instinct says take as much of whatever you can
get. While that may seem like a
good idea at the time, ultimately it could be the demise of your fuel filters causing
them to clog and need to be replaced more often. We normally get our fuel filters from AutoZone, which are
both cheaper and last longer. On
this trip we were forced to get our fuel filters from Napa Auto Parts, which
did not last nearly as long and were
more expensive. We found
that using the Napa fuel filters in conjunction with the bag filters (rather
than a centrifuge) we were getting drastically fewer miles out of the fuel
filters.*
Simple numbers break down:
Cost of diesel fuel about $4.30/gal
The motor home we drove gets about 10mpg diesel or grease/WVO
If we had driven 7,000 miles on diesel fuel alone our cost
would have been about 43 cents per mile (total of $3,010).
Our actual end result in the motor home, with having to
change the Napa fuel filters more often, as well as running on diesel more
often because we didn’t have enough fuel filters with us, was about 20 cents
per mile (total $1400).
This process is not for the fast gas and go traveler. This process can be slow and arduous in
both collecting and filtering the grease/WVO. There has to be a deeper desire to either “save” the planet
or save money in your pocketbook. If you are considering using grease/WVO as a
fuel source for your diesel vehicle, go for it! You are sure to be and meet an eclectic group of people both
in your town and in your travels while hunting for fuel for your vehicle.
*The oil we collected was free of both water and fine
particulates and still it was clogging the filter much sooner than what would
be normal. We can only assume that
the micron of the Napa filter was significantly finer than the micron of the
bag filters allowing particulate to go thru and clog the fuel filter sooner. Even still, we had cut our fuel costs
in half from what it would have been to burn diesel for 6,000 miles.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Summary of Our Grease Home Adventure to Alaska
It started with a conversation Russ and Sean had and it quickly became a reality. We bought the 1977 Travel Queen with a 1993 Dodge Cummins diesel engine for $2,000 in January of 2012. The remodel (interior pictures before and after) took over the next several months with final touches on the waste vegetable oil fuel system happening the day before we hit the road. All of the stickers on the side are from the various sponsors that Sean and Mollie were promoting on the adventure (read Mollie's blog here). The major sponsor being Goal Zero, a Utah based solar power equipment company that gave the Travel Queen her electrical power source, solar panels and a yeti generator and inverter.
Sean, Mollie, Russ, Ava, and I (Brittany) set off on May 31, 2012 with a tentative itinerary and a lot of excitement, that was challenged but not conquered along the way with a variety of mechanical problems.
In the end we drove 7014 miles on waste vegetable oil. We had a one of a kind adventure of meeting people along the way, talking about and living sustainability, and seeing the incredible landscape between Utah and Alaska.
Click on the following blue links to see each Picasa photo album:
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
On Your Marks! Get Set!.....
School's out for summer! We have a couple of faculty meetings Tuesday/Wednesday. And then..... We're off!!!!
It has been a busy couple of months. But it has been an especially busy couple of days. The tentative plan is to leave Thursday and head north to Yellowstone...stop over in Whitefish, MT....then up towards Calgary and Banff...then diagonal up to the Yukon...over to Anchorage and then back.
Please send happy thoughts to all of the restaurants along our journey that they will want to give us their WVO (waste vegetable oil). The Travel Queen loves her grease like the best of the fuel guzzlers out there.
Some updated photos of the TQ:
It has been a busy couple of months. But it has been an especially busy couple of days. The tentative plan is to leave Thursday and head north to Yellowstone...stop over in Whitefish, MT....then up towards Calgary and Banff...then diagonal up to the Yukon...over to Anchorage and then back.
Please send happy thoughts to all of the restaurants along our journey that they will want to give us their WVO (waste vegetable oil). The Travel Queen loves her grease like the best of the fuel guzzlers out there.
Some updated photos of the TQ:
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New if the kitchen is the metal back splash and thrift store spice rack. |
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Energy efficiency is important in the refrigerator. Reusing is important at all other times, as found in the storage bins below. (They were left in the dorms after the students left for the summer.) |
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We have four bunk beds in the back of the TQ. Privacy curtains were Sean's great idea from a sailing expedition he went on. |
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Sixty gallons of grease will be stored on the back of the home vehicle. With Russ's welding skills, the hitch was extended a few feet so we will still be able to attach the bike rack. |
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Fill 'er up! |
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Grease/Veg/WVO, whatever you want to call it, is then transfered to the heated forty gallon tank at the front of the TQ to be used by the engine. |
Friday, May 11, 2012
Fun Physical Preparations for the Alaskan Adventure
In addition to continuing remodeling work on the 1977 Travel Queen Home Vehicle, I have been happily practicing my slacklining skills. Gibbon Slacklines gave us two lines for us to take on our Grease Home Vehicle (GHV) Alaskan Adventure! I had never heard of a slackline before the super bowl halftime this winter and now I'm in love! I practiced yesterday for an hour and a half and woke up this morning very aware of just about every muscle in my body. I want everyone to know that this is HARD!!! But so much fun!!!! I am excited for all of the slacklining that is in my very near future all on our drive to Alaska in T minus 3 weeks! I also want to give a shout out to my incredibly comfortable Twist Tank Top by Lole in these pictures.
For more information about our Grease Home Vehicle adventure here is a link to Mollie's blog. She has also been doing updates about our adventure and will probably be more regular about updating on the trip. So if you want to stay tuned along the way, I recommend you subscribe to her blog, too: http://themollieshambeaushow.com/2012/04/travel-queen-update/
Don't look at the bottom of my foot. Gross! |
They say it is easier to balance with your arms up, rather than out to the side. Of course the dancer that I am has to make those arms elongated. :) |
Held this just long enough to get the picture! |
See Ava the doggy? See the stick just below the slackline that she really wishes I would throw for her? |
Monday, March 19, 2012
Grease Filtering System
I recently realized that I've never documented the process that we (mainly Russ) goes thru to make it possible for us to drive a car the runs on waste vegetable oil (WVO). So here it is....
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Step 1: Using air compressor, make sure vacuum has been created in tank that is hooked up to vehicle. |
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Step 2: Find WVO (waste vegetable oil- from restaurants that use a fryer) and suck decent looking oil out of container. |
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Step 3- transfer oil to barrel for stage 1 of settling. The settling process is important to let water/bad oil separate from the good oil. |
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Note: In the settling process the good oil separates from the bad oil. What we see in this jug is the amber color and the creamy color. We want the amber color. |
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Step 4: Good oil (amber colored) is transfer to this barrel where it is heated and sent thru the centrifuge. |
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This is the centrifuge. The particulate matter that is in the oil is spun out into a holding area letting only the good oil fall back thru into the tank. |
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Step 5: The clean oil is then transfered to this barrel for further settling. |
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Step 6: Final storage until it is needs to be used. |
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Step 7: This is how we get it from the big tank to the heated tank that sits in the trunk of our car. |

Saturday, March 10, 2012
Travel Queen Remodel Progress
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Notice the beautiful laminate wood-like flooring. A custom table will be created for the space. |
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The curtain/blinds are in too good of condition to get rid of, so the lovely colors for the space that we are working with are peach, lilac, cream, white, and camel. |
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The Travel Queen
Russ and I and our friends Sean and Mollie are now proud owners of a 1977 Travel Queen Motor Home with a 1990 Dodge Cummins diesel engine. If you are a regular follower of our blog you can probably guess what that diesel engine means to us....
It will soon be converted to run on vegetable oil!
Enjoy the 1977 interior in the pictures alone because it has already been taken out as the remodel of the interior has begun. We all know that Russ doesn't do anything halfway. So very soon we will be traveling in comfort and in style. I will update pictures throughout the process and details about the upcoming adventures we are planning to have in the travel queen!
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Your eyes don't deceive you- that is a wood burning stove. The man we bought it from also installed solar panels to run all of the electricity. It will be a grease solar machine! |
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The fishing fly wall paper is not going to last much longer. |
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It will soon have 4 twin size beds in this area. |
In order to get the old and broken refrigerator out of
the motor home Russ had to cut it in pieces. He learned
that freon is combustible. This video is not sped up...
He can move fast!!!!!!!
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