Alaskan oil Bus line

[Wilcosd]

Hey,
It is good to finally find some people that share my passion from cruising around in school buses. I am currently outfitting my second school bus, a 1985 Thomas International, as an RV and i am also converting it to run on used vegetable oil from restaurants. We drove from Virginia to California and back in the first one but we decided that wasn't far enough. So, this summer several friends and I are headed to Alaska. We are looking to be out for 2 and 1/2 months and cover 14,000 miles running on oil almost the whole time. We hope this trip will spread the word about alternative fuels, which are an incredibly imprtant alternative espeacially with the ongoing debate on drilling for oil in the Artic National Wild Life Refuge. If there are any Alaskans out there that wouldn't mind a school bus parked in there drive way for a night and some good company let me know. If anyone else is interested I have written several documents and i would be happy to share them. We are also looking for sponsors for this trip. We already have a few but every little bit helps.

-Scott Wilcox
Head of Operations
Alternate Transport LLC
-Ideas to Burn - Energy to Spare -

[lapeer20m]

I want to go to alaska ! j/k...well, I do want to go to alaska, but not only was i not invited, i don't have the resources to take that much time off of work.

I've burned about 1,000 gallons of wvo in my bus. that's about 8,000 miles so far.

As far as veggie oil for fuel.....you'll probably have to switch to diesel every now and again to clean out the injectors/filters. People i've talked to that try to run exclusevily on wvo have issues.

another thing to consider is getting good wvo while on the road. I've had to go to a dozen or more restaurnats to find suitable wvo. This can burn up half a day just driving around to different restauratns.

You'll need a good way to store lots of wvo, and a good method to filter on the fly. I have some good ideas on this topic if you're interested.

good luck on your trip to alaska! I'm very jealous

[Wilcosd]

We are going to be running as a dual fueled vehicle. We will be starting on diesel or bio-diesel and heating the oil and then switching over to oil when we get up to running temp.. As far as oil collection goes we have developed a portable collection unit consisting of mesh filter on the end of a wand, a transfer pump and a batery pack. we can pump into two twelve gallon drums we have, if the grease bin is not bus accesible and we have to haul the oil or we can pump it right into two 50 gallon drums we have inside the bus. before the oil goes into the drums we run it through a common house water filter with a simply cotton element, there the oil is heat and sent to three tanks we have installed under the bus. when the oil leaves the drums inside it passes through a heated diesel fuel filter. so it is pretty clean when it hits the injectors. We should have an aproximate 1,500 mile range with all tanks full. I have also set up some pretty good oil contacts in Canada and Alaska. Restaurants up there have been incredibly helpfully. So hopefully we will have more than enough oil. Thanks for the interest.

-Scott

[Demonknight]

Well if you come through the northeast part of Co, I can let you drain our used fryer oil. *S* Sterling Co on I-76 is where I am and wouldn't mind meeting others that are into buses.

[AK-Brando]

I can't offer a place to park (I'm in government housing and they already complain about my bus!). If you come to Valdez, let me know and we can get together. There are plenty of RV parks here and I know at least one allows skoolies since I've seen one parked in one of the RV parks here.

From my experience up here, as long as you are not in town, you should be OK parking/camping overnight in the turnouts found along the highways in Alaska.

[Wilcosd]

Thanks for the good feed back. We aren't coming near CO but we might be going to Valdez we haven't nailed down our exact route yet but if we do i will be sure to let you know. Thanks agian.