Biodiesel Stinks

Monday, 21 April 2008 16:25

It used to be that people who drive with the windows open or the top down could identify two kinds of vehicles from their smell, even at long distances: Ford diesel pickups, both old and new, and old diesel Peugeots.

The ranks of the stinkers have been supplemented by biodiesel conversions of cars and trucks that should have been scrapped long ago.

And here in Santa Cruz, there are a lot of these things.

Way back in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s I was involved with SCCA racing. Folks back then used castor bean oil in their engines. One could tell from the scent which cars used bean-oil and which used normal lubrication. Biodiesel has the same smell, but stronger.

You can’t tell me that a cloud of sickeningly sweet stench coming from the tailpipe of a 30+ year old car burning biodiesel is some sort of environmental gain.

If it smells then it is polluting the air.

Perhaps a modern engine might not stink so badly when run on biodiesel fuel. But who can tell when most conversions are done on old clunkers with motors that were worn out decades ago and that, even when new, were high polluting by today’s standards.