Veggie Car Visit's McCoy

Even a blockhead like me couldn't miss this car parked on No. Union.

Turns out it belongs to one Joe Connor, a freelance major league baseball writer and self-proclaimed Captain Veggie. He's driving this modified Mercedes to 260+ ballparks in 215 days using little more than vegetable oil. There's a small excerpt below from his website explaining how it works.

The tour, honoring Joe's father, seeks to raise awareness of alternative fuel technologies as well as to raise awareness of tour sponsors, including David's Sunflower Seeds and AutoTrader.com.

Joe's a busy guy. On Monday, he hit three Cape League games. Today, he caught the Pawsox day game and is probably still driving to his nightcap in Brockton. Pawsox won 4-2.

Here's a nice feature article about the tour. I'm lazy. Here's that excerpt:

Vegetable Oil Running A Car?: Connor’s Mercedes is a two-tank fuel system. The car’s existing diesel tank and filter supplies diesel fuel to the engine at start up. Then radiator fluid transfers heat from the engine to the heat exchangers in the fuel system. These exchangers heat the vegetable oil in the fuel filter, lines and fuel tank. The heat reduces the viscosity of vegetable oil so that it is similar to diesel and can be injected into the engine properly. Before the engine is shut down, you switch back to diesel so remaining “cold” vegetable oil doesn’t clog up the injectors the next time the engine is started.

-- trs