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Flyin out of the sunshine state and back to reality Tomorrow,,,,I got a call from a friend and the latest newest price for diesel on the dockin Newburyport Mass ,,,just off of the press as there are no boats in the water yet except the party boats ,,,,4.20 for diesel roughly the same as the over the road ,,I was under the impression that diesel was allways cheaper in the marinas as the over the road payed an additional "road tax",.,.,.,.,.it's looking like about 940$ on a fillup,.,.for me and the season has not started ,., expecting more increases?
May 23 boats are allowed in the marinas use to be april 15 ,.,.,Took away 1 month of our season on top of the gOuGiN ..,whew .,.,.,.,weez takin a hit in a big waze.,.,.,.,

Rick-And it's just starting. Local gas station in East Hampton-$4.11 for regular. Town marina as of today has 3 boats in the water. Usually at least 15-20. The diesel scam is criminal. Wait till the consumers go to buy fish this summer. Walter

Hell don't feel bad, it was $4 bucks a gal. @ the Venice Marina this pass weekend. Trimmed off with 30 Gals of deisel in the 31 before heading back to P'cola and it $120 for that little bit.

R,
DQ

i put 15 dollars in the honda today and the needle barely moved...it only has a 12 gallon tank and i can drive to canada on six.....5 dollars a gallon is on the horizon now. forget supply and demand.....its what the market will sustain.

In San Diego ( Mission Bay ) $5.05 for diesel.

Thats red dye with no road tax.

I guess if you live in paradise you are excpected to pay!

I guess that makes a 200 nm tuna hunt about $656.00 for fuel.

freeport ny long island, 4.90 a gal diesel as of last weekend on the docks

Ric,

Better bottom paint really good this season....I don't see using it too much at these prices

I might try the home heating oil trick this year.

Did it back in 2000 out of neccessity (land locked) price of home heating fuel usually depresses in mid summer

Yesterday I was kinda bummed about the 500 bucks I tossed into the tank. I paid 3.82 for the red stuff with the commercial discount. I thought holy crap that is a weeks salary for me, where is the for sale sign? In November I filled it for 2.68 a gallon and 2 months prior to that I paid 2.48 a gallon. This is just getting out of hand and I wish We had some control over these things. You guys make me realize that down here fuel is not that bad compared to other areas though.

rummer has it, i have not confirmed , coast guard is sticking tanks, looking for boats using the home heating oil. $5k fine

I didn't know you couldn't use heating oil!! What do they care? There must still be some tax on offroad diesel that isn't on heating oil. the only thing that gets the government wound up like that is lost revenue!!

A buddy of mine in town has been using used frier oil in his late 80's mercedes keys cruiser. Its a rust bucket with a diesel in it and the only thing he does is run the oil through a fancy particulate matter strainer and then dumps it into tank. He does not add any chemicals like the bio directions state. Stand behind car and you can smell french fries. When I first got the diesels in late 06 I asked Steyr about it and they said "I don't see why not". I may put a phone call in to them again see if they will let me try it with out voiding any warantee. I would like to hear what Bruce thinks about the frier oil thing.

Kevin,

My wife and I picked up an '85 MB CD, with the intention of converting it to run on waste veggie oil. My understanding is that the late 70's to 1985 MB 617 diesel is the engine which needs the least amount of mods to run on wvo. But, as I understand it, if there are not a few mods done, you'll be going through new injectors quite often. I was going to order from a company that had a unit that splices a coil into the coolant lines. The fuel line then passes through a 20 micron filter, and then parallels this coil, which heats the oil to a better viscosity, so it's less stress on the injectors... I did, at one point splice into the intake & return lines and ran a gallon of new crisco canola oil through it. I would say the engine ran better on the oil, hands down. Smoother idle, good acceleration, etc..

Anyways, long story short... we had another child which we weren't planning on, and the car is a CD (coupe diesel) so it aint condusive to strollers, car seats, etc. So the conversion never happened...
At this point the car sits under a "tarp tent garage" and I have done alotta work to it, runs great- actually pretty fast for a MB turbo diesel. Also in real good cosmetic cond..Was thinking of selling it on ebay, some of them go for ridiculous amounts. But with the current trend in fuel prices, might be a better move to hang on to it. I dunno.

Didn't R.Diesel design his engine to run off of veg. oil to begin with? Then the big wigs stepped in...

Buju,
midas well keep it. Lots of fry joints close by in our neck of the woods.
I do not think my buddy heats it prior to it going to injectors but I will touch base with him and find out. It is so hot down here the majority of the time anyways. He did tell me it was much smoother, less noise and more power......seems to good to be true. As long as you have the time and the space for dealing with messy oil and strainers etc. I think it might be worth it.

Good friend in Hermosa Beach uses a 300CD as his daily driver. Gets all the veggie oil he wants from two local restaurants.

Don't use home heating oil in your good engines. Home heating oil can be a mixture of various petro products including old nasty engine oil.

It is one of the least controlled items at the distributor level.

Anybody ever look at their burners in the furnace and see how dirty they are? Now imagine your injectors.

Yeah Kevin, I probably should keep it. If nothing else, the value should just increase, especially if I do the conversion to it.

I think my favorite thing about it (besides the diesel) is that it's got a honest to god rubrail. Thats awesome... how many cars have rubrails?
However, I know a doctor who's got a 300SD, and did the conversion... it's his daily driver too. He's having problems getting enough wvo to meet his consumption needs. Problem is, most restuarants have contracts with companies to supply new and remove the old oil, grease etc.. I guess, the way to go would be to either contact one of these companies, or draw up a competitive contract and perform the service for cheaper. Getting paid to fuel your car, imagine that. It would resemble work at that point though.
Would be great to see this in a boat, someone has done it by now I'm sure.
BTW:Here is the co. I was going to get the conversion "kit" from...
http://www.greenbenz.com/
Cool thing is you can run straight wvo, or biodiesel, diesel, or any combo of them. Single tank, just dump it in.

I checked out the future of Sportfishing today and the boat must have been 20+ years old. On the hard in a local marina was a steel Striker displacement hull with twin 4B's. She must have been 30-35ft. VERY nice looking boat. Sit back and cruise at 10kts and rediscover the beauty of the waterways and the ocean. The owner wasn't around but the yard said the fuel economy was unbelieveable. Very good looking boat, based on the water line you would never know it was a displacement hull....down side was it draws around 6ft!

I'm still on the bubble about what engine will go in the 25, but "econo-ride" is looking better and better. Spending my time crunching numbers while working on the hull. I can say I'm very pleased with the single diesel conversion and I'm not looking back on that decision.

So just how small of a diesel can I get away with, 17-18kt cruise is looking pretty good!!!

http://fuelmeister.com/

What do you guys think about this stuff? Looks like something I could build. Big container, pumps, a few valves, hoses, and a stand. Methanol is easy to get(RC nitro fuel) and they say you can get the lye at most stores. I live close to my boat so getting fuel to the boat would not be that hard. I wish I had some good parts list for one of these. 3K sounds like a lot unless there is some stuff there that is top secret or made by lockheed. At 4-5 a gallon making my own might be worth it if I could get enough fry goo.

I though about putting rub rails on my mustang. I thought it would look funny with out nav lights though. That car looks clean. Go for the alternative fuel. If Steyr sais I can burn this stuff I will do some more research this project.

Kevin: Check out the Biodiesel board at the Diesel stop.

http://www.thedieselstop.com/forums/f22/

Amendment.

I spoke with JP and he stated smoother, quieter but the power level is the same...not more like I previously stated. It is a 1985 mercedes wagaon. He just strains the oil and puts right into tank. Changes filter every 300-500 miles. Spin on racor just like the boat. Most of his vehicles are more like boats than automobiles. One of them does have nav lights.

Has anyone here experimented with making their own biodiesel? Looks like a bit of a process....but kind of tempting to try.

Yep, I figured when you said he was cruisin around in it with no real mods, that it had to be a MB 617 diesel, production ended in '85. The car must be a 300TD...
How long has he been running oil?
No injector problems...yet?
Just a Racor?
Hmmmmmmmmmmm...
Bruce, thoughts?

Rawleigh,
checked out that sight, lots of good info there on the bio thing. The machine everyone seems to like is the biopro..........9000 bucks! Way out of my price range. Some say you can build your own and get good results but lots of time needed to make the machine, experiment and get it right. I will keep researching till I am discouraged.

Buju,
JP has been running it for a little over two years. Like I said though, the value of the car was not much to begin with.......a true keys cruiser. He is an old school mechanic, been turning wrenches a long time and has a lot of great knowledge with boats. When I spoke with hime yesterday he said no problems at all. He drove the heap to South Carolina not too long ago and found a resuarant that let him take enough oil to get him home to the keys. His only catch is changing filters frequently. Think he said the filter set up is off a mercruiser or something. He owns a salvage yard for boats. Lots of parts around for him to tinker with.
Getting oil is actually problematic from what I hear. Many fry joints are contracted to trade the old oil for the new from supplier. I have two here that I can get oil from and that is just the first two that I tried.
If you want to talk to him I can give you his number so you can hear it from him. Great guy to talk with.

$4.39 for gas, $4.70 per gallon for diesel on the Mystic River in Noank...

Gonna be a howdy boat rich summer!

In San Diego and Marina Del Rey are charging 5.09 for diesel. That is the red dye with all taxes applied. Brutal!

For a car or truck getting 20-30mpg making your our biodiesel may be an option. But if your going to be using your boat often your going to be needing a whole lot more Vegi oil then many places are going to use. Then what do you do, stock pile the stuff in the off season?

I hate to keep churping about our national policies...but, consider just a couple of our OWN DOMESTIC policies.

1) Each state can determine and set their own required fuel blends. Hence CA's excessive fuel cost and the refineries have to adjust the blend depending on where the fuel is going. why don'y we decide what is acceptable and have a single blend for the entire country?

2) No offshore drilling off the West coast, East coast, much of Alaska or the West coast of FLA. The rest of the oil producing nations must love that one! Where do you go in most of the GoM to catch fish??? Duh, the oil platforms.

Heres the good part:
1) You can donate your Bertram to the Sierra Club for a tax deduction, and thank them for all their hard work.
2) Cigarette boats with twin 502's are going to be DIRT cheap.
3) Much of your day will be spent making new friends at the fast food joints in an attempt to talk them out of their old deep fryer oil.
4) You will be in better shape after hauling 5 gal pals of bio or wvo up and down the pier while attempting to fill the boat up...don't spill any the fine is 10K.
5) Your pride will no longer stop you from asking your buddies to "pony up" after a day of fishing, thus you will become a more humble person.

So it's mostly good to have no energy policies that make any sense at all, right?

I'e got this deal figured out, at least short term. I have this buddy, who loves to bass fish twice a month on a couple of big lakes straddling Texas and Mexico. I found a 650 gallon diesel tank last week on craigslist for $100. Needs some cleaning and paint but essentially workable. Putting on a trailer of mine.

He will haul it empty to Mexico and fill up for $2.00/gallon and haul back. He's up there every other week and fishes the opposite weekends with me. So 440 gallons goes in the boat, the rest we split in our trucks and sell to any remainder to friends to cover the extra fuel to transport back. Looks good on paper but we'll see next week when he makes the first run.-T

El Presidente,

Careful Tom, you're going to be riding a long legged slippery horse...

Scrutiny at the boarder these days is intense & ya'll are going to be under a microscope real quick. Border Patrol, Customs, Home Land Security, & who knows whatever other Big Brother groups are getting into the mix. Both sides of the river. Far more risk than just buying your meds from Canada...

Br,

Patrick

BTW, "La" Presidente is what they'd call Hillary if she won in November... Need to change your gender to "El" Presidente...

Good luck Tom,

$2.00 bucks a gallon! Black gold from the Gulf, compliments of PEMEX!
I hear it's up to .14 cents a gallon in Hugo land....what an outrage! how could he do that to those people!