Sammy the Samurai

I've been meaning to post pics of this bad little dude for a while. I posted about him back when I bought him, then when I first put him on the road, and again when I swapped in a vw1.6 turbodiesel using an Acme Adapters kit.

Anyway, back in February '07 I converted it to run on veggie oil. Being a trashy old oil sucking engine, I decided to just use a homemade heat exchanger I had laying around, and a Pollak 6 port fuel valves. For a fuel tank, I used a 20 liter aluminum fuel tank that I bought for $5 at a flea market (actually, I bought 3 of them!) and soldered up a copper heated fuel pickup that goes down into the tank. The final heat exchanger is woefully inadequate, I get about 50*C fuel temperature at the injection pump.

I have a really nice 1.9 AAZ turbodiesel that I'll swap in this summer. At the same time, I'll clean up the wiring & plumbing, add a FPHE & vegtherm, and probably even paint it.

The veggie tank: On the top, you can see fuel and coolant lines going into the heated fuel pickup. You can also see the insulated Hose on Hose (HoH) running towards the front of the car.

You can see the HoH going up the driver's side footwell, where it passes through the firewall. You can also see the vacuum gauge in the center of the dash. It reads the vacuum in the fuel line just before the injection pump, so I can see if the diesel or veggie filter are plugging:

The fuel & coolant lines pass through the firewall where they connect to the wacky, inefficient copper heat exchanger. The fuel passes through the center, then out on the left, through the small filter and into the 6 port valve.

Here's another look at the (messy) engine compartment. A couple things worth noting:

-glow plugs have individual wires run instead of the standard "bus bar". This makes identifying dead plugs MUCH easier.

-I used cheapie "worm gear" hose clamps instead of the better fuel injection hose clamps... something I generally advise against.

No, Sammy the Samurai isn't pretty. But he is tough and easy to love.

I've had him on the road for 3 years now, and I've never washed him once, but hit him with a coat of Tremclad once a year.