Biodiesel has moved into the spotlight recently due to rising gas prices. It’s an attractive solution because of the minimal modifications needed for the conversion and the abundance of fuel. The original Diesel engine was designed to run on vegetable oil, but fossil fuels proved much cheaper.

This particular conversion is on a 1980 Mercedes Benz. It uses a second fuel tank mounted in the trunk to store the filtered waste vegetable oil. Vegetable oil can gel and even solidify when the outdoor temperature drops so the tank has a built in heat exchanger to warm the oil with engine coolant.  The fuel supply line is bundled in with the warm water lines as it travels to the engine compartment.  The car is started using the normal fuel tank and then switched over to the vegetable oil after it has properly warmed up. It is important to switch back to regular diesel before turning off the engine to make sure the oil is flushed out of the injectors and supply lines.

Continue reading “Vegetable Oil Benz” →

[Blind tree frog] sent in two great links. The first is a full write up that resulted in the bike pictured above. It was hand built by laying carbon fiber over aluminum tubes and could be made for $600. The second is a more traditional triangular frame bike that was constructed by following the original article. Both bikes are beautiful pieces of work.

Continue reading “Home Built Composite Bike” →

Homemadeturbo.com is dedicated to scratch building turbo systems using salvaged parts. That’s pretty cool, but this project really caught my eye: building an individual throttle body manifold for a Honda engine. Jeff picked up a  set of throttle bodies from a 2001 gixxer on eBay for $50. He then cut down the stock manifold and added extensions to attach the throttle bodies using silicon couplers. The velocity stacks also came from eBay for $35. The only really difficult part seems to be attaching the throttle position sensor. It is definitely a great looking set up and much cheaper than it would ever be off the shelf.

[thanks bodiby]

Continue reading “Individual Throttle Body Setup” →

We’ve covered snowboards and longboards on previous Mondays, but it would be a shame not to mention their precursor the surfboard. [biscuitdough] suggested this online book by Stephen Pirsch for getting started with board building. The introduction does a good job of covering why you would want to pursue this and also reasons not to. It even suggests that reading the guide would help you if you plan on ordering a custom board. Make sure you check out the “Helpful Links” section for a description of their small wave design. (photo via)

Continue reading “Build Your Own Surfboard” →

After seeing last Monday’s snowboard build, [mike] thought it would be cool if we covered longboards too. Toothless Longboards has a ton of information on building these things. It covers everything from alternative deck shaping techniques to different press methods like vacuum bagging. There is some street luge building info too. All around a good site

Today’s project comes from reader Douglas J. Hickok. A practical, portable car computer design it is intended to be easy to use in the car, but also easily removable.

A practical, portable car computer design
By Douglas J. Hickok

Introduction

What do you think of when I say “car computer”?  An expensive special piece of hardware that’s permanently mounted in a hidden spot in your car?  Probably?  For the last six months, I’ve been designing and building a portable computer.  By portable, I mean it can be plugged in as an ad-hoc server, workstation, media player, or GPS navigator just about anywhere — including my car.  Even though it was designed mostly as a car computer, who said it had to stay in my car?  And at the cost of a typical desktop system, why should it stay on my desk?  Car computers aren’t just for the rich anymore?

Continue reading “HOW-TO: Portable Car Pc” →

A 1976 GMC camper is probably one ot the last things that you’d expect would ever leave the earth. That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved by an engine monitor originally intended for an airplane. The device measures exhaust gas temperature on each individual port, water temperature, engine rpm and speed. Alarms can be set for each input and the device gives vocal warnings when these levels are reached. There are a lot of other gadgets he’s added to his vehicle on the site (i.e. computers, tire pressure monitors, and cameras). So, have a look around.

[thanks Bird603568]

Continue reading “Camper Avionics Engine Monitor” →