Monday, November 24, 2008

Would an old diesel car work for me?

Lately, I've been haunting Craigslist in search of an affordable, older diesel vehicle.

It's almost an oxymoron. Seems like all the diesels out there are rediculous-sized pickup trucks, at matching inflated prices.

I did, however, stumble across a pair of old Volkswagon Diesel Golfs. One runs, one doesn't. One had a title, one doesn't. Guess which is which. Yep, the non-running one is titled.

The Golf seems to fit the bill for me. Good fuel economy, useful body style (the classic hatchback!), and can be run on either bio-diesel, or converted to waste vegetable oil

The trick is, it's a package deal - both cars AND 3 more of the same engines!
Not sure what I would do with two cars, let alone three engines!

It does seem like a good chance to get some fossil-fuel-free vehicles on the road.

Perhaps I could fix the one and convert it to vegetable oil, then do the same to the second and sell that one to cover the cost of buying the cars and engines in the first place.

The engines seem to have enough value in themselves, that I may be able to resell them and cover much of the investment in the project.

The engines could have other uses as well. Perhaps convert another vehicle to diesel, or use one to run a generator at a remote location.

The possibilities are endless, but I can't have another car project taking up space in my driveway. I need a reliable - gasoline free vehicle, in the not so distant future, without too many parts that need to be stored.

Oh well, at least its my first look at a practical vehicle that could fit into my master plan of getting off gas.

1 comment:

  1. You should go for it! I'm dying to see someone build an electric golf. They're very sturdy cars and quite common, I'm interested to see how easy it would be to do this.

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