The Car - Part 1

So, what do you do to make a drive to New Orleans in a $250 banger (that's English for beater) more interesting? Make it smell like french fries, of course.

I don't recall exactly how the idea came up, but I think it's safe to give Kent credit for it. I do recall that much of December was spent reading about old diesels on craigslist.com. We even managed to go look at a few.

One of our favorites was Kyle's 1976 Mercedes, somewhere in southern NH. Kyle is a high school senior of great promise -- really cool kid. He did the wvo (that's waste veggie oil) conversion on this car himself as a school project. It was our first look at a complete conversion.

While we were pretty impressed with Kyle, we weren't sure that his car was totally up to the trip, and he wanted to get real money for it (at least $400). So we kept looking.

Next up was another home-grown conversion in Portland, Maine. The best thing I can say about this one is that it made Kyle's car look really good.

Along the way we (well, mostly Kent) ferreted out every diesel anything for sale under $1000 on craigslist, anywhere in the country. We kept our spouses entertained with late night cries of "Hey! Look at this one!"