This came about because the SFBiofuels coop’s biodiesel pump got shut down (due to neighbors complaining), which has made getting biodiesel in San Francisco somewhat of a pain. The coop apparently has plans/permits in the works for 4 potential new locations around San Francisco, but in the meantime I decided to take matters in my own hands. I called up Peoples Fuel, they gave me a quote for a biodiesel home setup (about $400), came out to my house to install it, and filled up the barrels right from their biodiesel delivery truck. They’ll come back for refills anytime I run out. Peoples Fuel have been great to deal with. Apparently they deliver/quality monitor biodiesel for lots of places around town, including the SF Zoo (I believe they run 100% biodiesel) and the SF city buses (they’ve just switched their entire fleet to B20, 20% biodiesel).

PS: Before Diane let me put a gas station in our house, she asked me to look into the safety issues. I’m happy to report that biodiesel has a flash point of over 200 degrees Celsius (I think that means that the garage will burn down before the biodiesel will ignite). It’s also been shown to be 10x less dangerous than table salt when ingested – I’ve no plans to try this, but apparently it’s safe to swallow.

Apparently Citroen will release a successor to the classic 2CV. It looks great and will supposedly have an interesting sounding diesel hybrid drive train.

Pros:

• Feels great to be driving on soybeans!
• Getting gas at SFbiofuels has been easy (very nice people there too)
• The car runs perfectly well and a little more quietly than on petrodiesel
• No more puffs of black smoke when starting the car (it’s puffs of white smoke now)

Cons:

• The exhaust smell takes a little getting used to (smells like a french fryer, which I guess is still better than regular exhaust)
• 10% lower gas mileage

My next goal is to get my kids’ school to switch their 8 buses over to biodiesel (I’d love to hear from people who have done a similar project).

Landcruiser – so now I have 2 biodiesel cars! I found the Landcruiser on eBay. It was listed by Chevrolake Motors in Canada, a car importer/exporter whose name I’d seen listed in the Landcruiser web forums as a reliable Landcruiser importer. I called them up and the car sounded promising, lots of miles (260,000!), but a straight, well maintained car with very little rust. So I headed up to Seattle to meet with Wayne Darby from Chevrolake. He picked me up at the airport and I liked the car immediately (Wayne too ). I bought it on the spot and drove it back to San Francisco (Wayne was nice enough to let me borrow his dealer plates for the trip). Except for a loud muffler, the 14 hour drive was fine. I listened to The Golden Compass (9 hours, highly recommended), stopped for the night at a friend’s house in Ashland (thank you Cathy and Keith for a great evening!), checked out the Calatrava sundial bridge in Redding on the way, and otherwise just cruised along. Once in San Francisco, I got California plates for the car. This was an incredibly easy 20 minute exercise at the DMV thanks to the fact that Chevrolake had gotten the car titled in Indiana before bringing it in from Canada (I insisted on them doing the title because I’d read Landcruiser importing horror stories). I then followed Zander’s excellent fuel hose replacement directions and I’m now happily sipping biodiesel (looks like I’m getting about 25 miles per gallon, pretty good for a tank-like SUV) which I get at the Biofuel Coop South of Market in San Francisco (please note their excellent WordPress powered site!).

Given my picky choice of vehicle it took me 10 months to get going since Braughm first gave me the idea (I probably could have done it in a couple of weeks with a diesel Jetta!). What’s funny is that my car looks almost identical to the one I showed a picture of in that orignal post.

But what happened to the Land Rover? When it rains it pours! It works great as well. I got it back from the shop in September and it now runs great. It’s a lot of fun to drive, my kids are in love with it (as are all the neighborhood kids). The rear sidefacing bench seats, and the overall rugged safari feel are perfect. After I got it to San Francisco, I took it to the DMV to get it titled. Just like the Toyota, it was easy as pie to get the California plates. They did a 5 minute inspection (completely missing the fact that it was a diesel) and another 10 minutes later I had my plates. I’ve been driving it around San Francisco a little and enjoying it, but the Landcruiser is more practical. So I’m planning on keeping the Cruiser and selling the Land Rover.

My posts on biodiesel are getting a suprising amount of search engine traffic, so I’ve created a page with biodiesel info based on I’ve learned in this process.

In my last installment I described how I had found a diesel Land Rover from an outfit called UK LandRovers in, you guessed it, the UK. They shipped the car in early July and it arrived in Port Hueneme, just south of Santa Barbara about 5 weeks later. The UK LandRovers guys sent me all the necessary paperwork and I called the port people who recommended Soo Hoo Customs Broker to get the car through customs. The Soo Hoo people were super friendly and efficient and 10 days and $400 ($200 to Soo Hoo and $200 for import taxes) later, I got a call that my car was ready for pickup. I checked with the DMV and they said to just drive it home from the port and then bring it to the DMV to get plates (sounded surprisingly relaxed for a DMV).

So far so good. Next I went down to Santa Barbara, spent a truly fun weekend with my brother in law Sean, then the two of us drove down to Port Hueneme for the pickup. I was slightly shocked at how easy it was. They waved us in, we enjoyed the sight of a couple of giant freighters being unloaded and brand new Minis and BMWs shooting out of a warehouse, I handed over my paperwork and 3 minutes and an additional slightly mysterious $100 unloading fee later, the guy pointed to the parking lot and said “You’re all set”. We walked past a couple of old Mercedes, a Smart Roadster and a nice old Jaguar. For a second I was tempted to grab a brand new Range Rover Sport and drive it off the lot (they were all open with keys in them!). Range Rover, Land Rover, close enough . I finally got to my Land Rover which I had been eying in the distance. It looked very nice, though quite dirty from the trip. To my further surprise, the car fired right up (we had brought jumper cables just in case) and I cautiously started driving it off the lot.

Up to this point, things had been going way too smoothly, so it was now time for the troubles to begin. Before we drove off the lot, we had looked at the engine and were concerned that the fan was not looking like it would cool the radiator enough. The car drove pretty well though and did not get overly hot at first. I did notice that there was something wrong with the steering (heavy and lots of play at the same time, bad combo) and that the instruments were not working. Without a gas gage, we had to first find a gas station (with diesel) to make sure there was enough gas in the car. After a couple of false starts we found one, probably just in time because a full 12 gallons went in. Then we started off up the coast towards Santa Barbara. Aside from the terrible steering the car drove well and got up to a whopping 65 miles on the freeway! But when we pulled off the freeway and headed up the hills in Santa Barbara it started to overheat. We pulled into Sean’s driveway, inspected the car some more and decided that it had gone as far as it could for now…

The next morning I headed back to San Francisco (in a rent a car…) and Sean dropped the Land Rover off at Winning Makes, a nice classic car shop in Santa Barbara that was recommended by the Rover shop as the best guys for old Land Rovers. They promptly fixed my cooling problem (new electric fan), steering (partially seized up steering column and worn out bushings), gages and added some lap belts to the back benches for good measure. Then they were nice enough to offer to drop the car of at my sister’s and… on the way to the house the timing belt broke on the engine. As I am writing this, the car is back in the shop waiting for the belt to be fixed…

Despite the troubles, this has actually been a pretty fun adventure so far. I’ll give UK Landrovers credit for the smooth shipping and importing, but their claims about the car’s condition were definitely off the mark (they claimed is was a solid daily driver, yeah right). I’ve written them about the troubles and they apologized but have not offered any remedies.

Update: Part IV is here, or check out this summary page with biodiesel info

Aurora’s proprietary technology, developed at The University of California, Berkeley, allows Aurora BioFuels to create bio-diesel with 125X higher yields and 50% lower costs than current production methods.

They are a small, impressive team with a promising plan to use genetically modified algae to efficiently create biodiesel. Today, biodiesel is typically made from soybeans. It’s a sustainable way to create fuel, which is good, but the soybeans take 11 months to grow and the fields to grow them in are large. Aurora proposes to use algae instead, which take 10 days to grow and you can put lots of them in a small tank. I believe Aurora is interested in finding additional angel investors at this time.

In my quest to find a good diesel, I did test drive a couple of early 80s Mercedes. They were pretty clunky and not very fun to drive. So I ended up passing on the above options and ventured into more exotic choices… I decided to try and find a used diesel Land Rover or Land Cruiser. I started with Land Cruisers because I read that there are plenty of them in Canada and you can find importers who will bring them into California (they were never sold directly in the US). I searched the Land Cruiser forums and found several guys who offer to import diesel Land Cruisers. I also started watching Craigslist Vancouver for used ones. In particular, I wanted a mid 80s BJ or HJ60. Here’s what I found: there are decent looking used diesel BJ/HJ60s in the $5-10k range in Canada. However, none of the 4 or 5 importers I contacted ended up following through. I also found a few people with import horror stories (any car newer than 25 years gets imported as a grey market vehicle which apparently can cause all kinds of issues with the DMV or trying to find mechanics to work on them). If you are looking for older BJ4x style Land Cruisers, US based ones do pop up on eBay and I found some dealers who specialize in them.

Given my slow progress with Land Cruisers, I then checked into Land Rovers and finally found what I was looking for. I started by checking a couple of sites for US based used land rover dealers and eBay again. I ended up finding two places in the UK that specialize in sending old Land Rovers to the US, Land Rover Centre has more original and slightly pricier models ($10-15k range), and UK Landrovers who have more affordable, daily driver type cars ($5-10k range). UK Landrovers sell most of their cars via eBay. They always have a few diesels sitting around, so selection is OK. The drawbacks are buying a car without seeing it and that most of them are right hand drive.

I ended up finding a nice looking 73 short wheel base Land Rover at UK Landrovers (via a Land Rover enthusiast/importer in Oregon):

It has an updated diesel engine, ready for biodiesel. It was reasonably priced and it’s on its way from the UK at the moment. I’m picking it up in a couple of weeks and will report back on how the importing went and what the car is like in person.

Update: Part III is here, and I’ve also created a summary page with biodiesel info

Step 1 was to pick a fuel.

My requirements

Replace my primary car (a 1993 Volvo Wagon) with a car that runs on a renewable fuel. I’d like to be able to get the fuel without going way out of my way. If I’m stuck somewhere without renewable fuel, I’d like to be able to use “normal” gas or diesel as a backup. And while I’m at it, I’d like to get a smaller car that’s a little bit more convenient for around San Francisco. The cost of the fuel is not a huge factor for me (because I don’t drive that much and won’t mind paying extra if it’s better for the planet). The cost of the car is a factor, because I don’t want to invest a lot in a car that might not be the best alternative fuel choice in 2-3 years.

The requirement to be able to use widely available fuel as a backup pretty quickly narrowed my choices to ethanol or biodiesel, which can be run alongside regular gasoline or diesel respectively.

Ethanol

Ethanol looks very promising and is certainly in the news lot. However, I found some drawbacks:

• It’s hard to find ethanol in the SF Bay Area (according to this fuel station locator there’s one station in Berkeley and it’s for fleet customers only).
• From what I can tell, it’s hard/expensive to retrofit an older car to run on ethanol, which means you have to buy a new ethanol ready flexfuel car. There several of those available, but I’m not in the market for a brand new car (and most flexfuel cars are large SUVs and trucks which are not ideal for getting around San Francisco).

Maybe in a year or two I’ll be ready for ethanol.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel looks better in my analysis:

• Biodiesel is available in the Bay Area. Examples are BioFuel Oasis in Berkeley, the San Francisco BioFuels Coop, Golden Gate Petroleum, and more on this list.
• Biodiesel can run in regular diesel engines (pre-1995 cars might need their fuel lines swapped out). This opens up the possibility of buying a used diesel car and running it on a renewable fuel. And if you’re in a place that doesn’t offer biodiesel, you simply switch back to petrodiesel for a tank (bio and petro can be mixed). As a bonus, diesels get significantly better gas mileage than gasoline cars.

Based on this, I decided to switch to Biodiesel.

Sustainability

I also read up on various articles and papers about how much better ethanol and biodiesel actually are for the environment. Opinions vary. The primary arguments against these new fuels are that they take a lot of land to grow (today in the US ethanol is primarily made from corn and biodiesel from soy beans) and that the fossil fuels used in the fertilization, production and transportation of the new fuels cancel out some or all of their benefit. I decided to make the switch anyway because even if these fuels are only partially better for the environment today, they will get a lot better in the future if consumers start using them and creating demand for better ways to produce them.

Part II

The next step was to find a used diesel car, which should take a “normal” person about 2 weeks. For a car nut such as myself, it takes a little longer to find just the right thing. More on that in a future post…

Update: Part II is here.

Great and thorough presentation on ethanol by Vinod Khosla (found on Infectious Greed):

A couple of things I’m curious about and haven’t been able to find the answers for:

• How do ethanol and biodiesel stack up against each other (Khosla briefly touches on this saying that over time ethanol will be more land use efficient)?
• Can existing gasoline cars be retrofitted to become flex fuel and work with Ethanol?