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hello all - if anyone is interested, here is a link that shows a few photos of my truck, alongside a mostly-true blurb (written by the company that installed the veggie fuel system).
http://greasecar.com/profile.cfm?profileID=76
I've driven about 30,000 miles since the secondary fuel system has been installed - for the most part those miles have been trouble free (and more evironmentally friendly!).
In a nutshell, you can run a diesel engine on a wide variety of fuels; vegetable oil is one that is similar to petroleum-based diesel fuel (from the perspective of the engine).
Generally speaking, the vegetable oil needs to be heated up a bit before using it as a fuel. A lot of the vegetable oil fuel systems 'out there' will use a second, separate tank to accomplish this heating; the veggie oil is put in the separate tank (after being filtered properly).
The second tank is generally heated by running hot antifreeze through a coil of copper tubing inside of the tank; sometimes the fuel lines running from this tank will be constructed in a “hose-in-hose” manner, which also allows hot antifreeze to run through the same lines that the fuel (veggie oil) is run through. The idea is to make the vegetable oil thin enough for the engine to burn.
Once the veggie oil becomes hot enough/thin enough, you can flip a switch (mine is mounted on the dashboard) which routes the veggie oil into the engine. When I'm nearing my destination/ready to shut my truck down - I push the switch into the 'purge' position - which causes diesel fuel to flow through the fuel lines towards the veggie tank - this way the vegetable oil won't be able to congeal in the fuel lines.
After purging, I switch back to diesel and drive for a mile or two to insure that there is no vegetable oil left in the engine.
From what I understand, your local climate (and the type of vegetable oil that you use) will determine how much you need to purge (or if you even need to heat your oil).
If you live in an area that never dips below 50 degrees F (for instance) and you use an oil that tends to stay liquid even at lower temps (non-hydrogenated canola oil, for example) you could potentially just run the oil in your main tank…I would NOT recommend this personally, but I have heard about quite a few people who do this. Most of them live in southern Florida and drive older (ie:less expensive and more tolerant) diesel cars - mostly Mercedes.
In my opinion, the “2 tank system” is probably the safest way to go.
Anyways, sorry for rambling but I love to go on and on about this stuff. Hopefully I haven't insulted anyone's intelligence or anything - just figured I'd write a little intro, since this is the sort of stuff I tell people when they ask about my truck…
If anyone has any questions - feel free to ask away.
Peace
Joel
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