My first mistake was leaving the house without the roll of paper towel, I had it under my arm at one point but must have set it down before it made it to the truck. Oh well, I was on my way now and no turning back. The focus on centrifuge manufacturing has taken my attention from oil collection and now my supplies have run dry. I was headed to meet up with another local Greaser that had an extra tote of oil for me.
I had met Randy about a year previously when we both spoke to a community environmental group at the College of Charleston. Randy is a retired doctor that started using and collecting oil about six years ago. Starting with cubies then moving on to 55gallon drums then finally to 275gallon totes he has a nice clean shop with about 2000 gallon capacity. Randy's collection method is quite unique in that he actually gets the oil directly from the fryers after hours and replaces it with fresh oil. This allows him to have absolute quality control and ultimately, the nicest oil I have ever seen. I spent a couple hours at his shop getting to know him and his operation and even shot some video of him telling his story. (Watch for that on the site soon).
I hit the road home now nicely loaded a 275gallon tote of veggie but still low on diesel and empty in my veggie tank. I past a gas station that was on the wrong side of the road and while I though ominously about it figured that I would just catch the next one. Well, fate was not smiling on me and I didn't pass another station before I hit the Ravenel Bridge (highest point in South Carolina I am sure) and as I started pulling up the grade I knew I had made a mistake as I lost power and coasted to the left margin that is about a foot and a half wide, completely blocking one of four lanes of traffic. Sweet, I ran out of fuel hauling fuel.
I stepped out of the truck onto the center divider and into the truck bed to survey what I had to work with. An empty 90gallon bed tank, a full 275gallon tote, a 120V transfer pump, 3/4” hose with cam loc fittings and no inverter...Almost immediately a police officer pulled up behind me with lights on helping to divert traffic. By the time he approached me I had decided that it might be possible to use a 5' section of hose to siphon from the tote to my veggie tank. He watched as I played Hover on the hose and managed to get a steady flow of veggie into the bed tank without even getting a mouth full of oil. Good think that tote was full! We chatted about vegetable oil, engineering and southern ladies for a minute until I noticed that the level had dropped in the tote showing that I had transferred 20 gallons or so then went to give it a try. I recall the officer saying “Do you think this is going to work”. I primed the veggie pump and line with the purge override and the system confirmed that I had fuel pressure. When I turned it over, she fired right up but died when my veggie controller recognized the loss of power (from the starting relay) to be a shutdown and then initiated a purge. Normally, I don't start on veggie and if I did, the diesel pump would maintain pressure during this time. However, since there was no diesel the engine would die from lack of fuel (again). This was disappointing, and my mid raced to solve the problem of how to disable the purge valve. I probably would have disconnected the wires from it except that it is under the vehicle on the passenger side and towards traffic. It was still early afternoon and I didn't want to get run over yet. Fortunately, I had a better idea and pulled the fuse panel to access the controller relays, after a moment of “do I pull the green wire or the red wire”? I disconnected the relay for the switch and she fired right up.
The officer helped me enter traffic and across four lanes so that I could make the next exit on the other side of the bridge. While the truck ran, air in the line robbed me of full power and it was a bit of a nerve racking mile or so till I could pull off the highway to a gas station (which didn't have diesel). My truck was now happily running on veggie now so I thanked the officer for his help and he went on his way. Total time blocking traffic on the bridge was maybe 5 minutes, the taste of vegetable oil in my mouth was not unpleasant but I did wish I hadn't forgot those paper towels.
