French fry Mercedes

• By JOHN BOYD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 8, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Pennies pinched at the pump may never offset the cost diesel drivers could incur swapping their current ride for a new hybrid or high-mileage vehicle.

However, a vegetable oil conversion kit could have owners of diesel-powered vehicles saving money by springtime.

Two years ago Baton Rouge resident Mary Uter installed a fuel conversion kit on her 1982 Mercedes-Benz, which allowed the car to run largely on free, used vegetable oil collected from local restaurants.

“With gas prices like they are now, people are envious of me,” Uter said.

The car is not 100 percent diesel-free. The Benz still needs that fuel to start and get itself going.

Justin Carven, the Easthampton, Mass.-based inventor of the Greasecar conversion kit, said any drive of less than five minutes probably isn’t long enough to lead to significant savings.

For Uter, who makes frequent trips to New Orleans and Gramercy to visit family, the savings are substantial.

In the months following Hurricane Katrina when trips to New Orleans were more frequent, she saved up to $140 per month.

Within months, Uter had recouped her initial $900 investment in the system. Now she saves about that same $900 each year in fuel costs.

Uter collects her oil from a Mexican food restaurant in her Midcity neighborhood.

For about two years, she collected from the cafeteria of the hospital where she worked. Eventually, they cut her off when a new cafeteria policy was enacted giving the oil’s supplier sole rights to it.

She tried a Chinese food restaurant, “but the language barrier was too much” when it came to explaining why she wanted to go into the kitchen and suck oil out of the fryers.

For collection, she only wears clothes which she doesn’t mind getting greasy and usually takes the family pick-up truck, rather than her Mercedes.