SEQUIM – Jerry Pino figured conversion was impossible.
Then a Rabbit pulled up to woo him with a surprising scent.
That Rabbit, the Volkswagen type, “smelled like french fries,” Pino recalled.
Its driver, a former aircraft mechanic, said he’d built a vegetable-oil fuel system from scratch.
Pino was filled with inspiration.
That was last summer, and Pino has since lost track of the Rabbit and man.
But he has since found www.GreaseCar.com, and the conversion kit that enables him to run his 1998 1-ton Dodge diesel pickup on used fryer oil from two Sequim restaurants.
These days Pino’s pickup – which smells something like fried rice with a hint of calamari – can travel well over 1,000 miles on a single tank.
That tank holds 45 gallons of filtered vegetable oil.
It looks like a toolbox, riding as it does in the bed of the truck.
Grease as fuel is free and easy, Pino said, since the restaurants discard their fryer oil anyway.
He brings big blue containers to the Dynasty Chinese Restaurant, 990 E. Washington St., and to Cedar Creek Italian Cuisine, 665 N. Fifth Ave., and collects their oil about once a week.
“It’s a very good thing,” said Dynasty owner Melissa Guan.
Since Pino picks up the used oil, Guan no longer has to haul it to the receptacle outside the restaurant.
Pino said he chose Dynasty and Cedar Creek because they change their fryers often, providing him with cleaner oil.
The only ongoing fuel cost of this conversion, he added, comes with the small amount of petroleum diesel he buys and adds to the vegetable oil.
That’s needed to get the engine started in the morning, he said.
