I still have the intent to go pure ethanol in the future. I won't try or advocate anything that is at all reliant on petroleum based fuel, which E85 is.

The recent sale of our 2001 Trooper means that my wife is now driving the '99 IronMan, which was to be my ethanol conversion. So that puts me in the spot of either keeping that vehicle within reach of a fuel supply or carrying addtional fuel if we want to drive it any significant distance rather than the '01 Dragon.

So, the current plan is to purchase a pre-1986 Mercedes turbo diesel and experiment with B100 biodiesel. If we find it's simple and economical to make ourselves then we'll look to convert both VX's to diesel. I'll pickle the gas 6VE1 engines for future projects. The Isuzu engine in overseas intercooled turbo diesel Troopers is the 4JG2, and I've gotten a few quotes over the past week averaging around $3000 for a delivered low-mileage long block. But I have seen a 2nd-gen Trooper with a Mercedes OM617 conversion, but at the time took nothing more than passing interest. Wish I had looked MUCH closer now! The Mercedes crowd is getting wild performance out of that engine. Consider that an early 80's 300D weighs about as much as our VX and that people are drag racing their daily-drivers getting 13's in the 1/4. And that's without any intercooling! You can get used, running OM617 engines for around $500 and it's fully mechanical so there's no ECU or electrical companents to worry about. There's a huge community supporting these engines and cars, plus parts availability is excellent and inexpensive.

So the numbers for a bio-diesel conversion look very good, especially since B100 bio-diesel is fully compatible with petroleum diesel. And that means not getting stuck away from your fuel supply, as you can tank up with pump diesel and be just fine no matter how much bio-diesel is in the tank.

We start getting the bio-diesel processing equipment together this weekend, and will hopefully have a Mercedes 300D by month end. So I'll post info along the way as we learn how viable the idea really is.