Vegetable juice
AT Lovecraft Biofuels, the Silver Lake auto shop that San Francisco native Brian Friedman opened smack in the middle of hipster heaven, old junkers are transformed into classic luxury cars for the new millennium. Freshly painted chocolate brown with Lovecraft’s Valentine heart logo, the 7-month-old shop at Sunset Boulevard and Sanborn Avenue specializes in converting cars, especially diesel-powered Mercedes built from 1975 to 1989, to run on 100% vegetable oil. It’s usually a $700, four-hour conversion.
With such a romantic name, it’s easy to think that Lovecraft is some sanctuary for tree-hugging vegans, an association Friedman, a lanky 40-year-old, dislikes because, as he put it, “they’re already won over.” He named the business for the science-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft and aims to spread his message to all types. “I don’t want to come off as an ‘environmentalist.’ That turns a lot of people off,” he said. “If I can get truckers to burn thousands of gallons of vegetable oil, that’s better than having hippies loving me.”
Indeed, Lovecraft’s location is in keeping with the alternative fuel movement’s increasingly cutting-edge appeal. The Silver Lake shop has helped bring the vegetable oil gospel to the kind of L.A. trendsetters who may make veggie cars the new organic food or the latest style of yoga -- that is, the newest old idea to head toward the mainstream.
Many who appreciate his kind of high-concept recycling often stroll past Lovecraft with $700 baby buggies, well-worn Birkenstocks or a treat from the nearby organic gelato shop. Adjacent to Sunset Junction and within shouting distance of Jiffy Lube and a new Kor Group upscale condo development, the corner is the perfect intersection of save-the-planet idealism and style-savvy car culture.
Friedman, who has driven his own vegetable-oil-fueled Mercedes for four years, has sold a car to singer Mandy Moore, had Diane Keaton in for a test drive and been asked to consider appearing in a TV series. On July 6, the City of Los Angeles issued Lovecraft a certificate of appreciation for its efforts “to move Los Angeles forward.”
Setting an example
Riding in Amy Morrison’s 1981 Mercedes that runs on pure vegetable oil is sort of like hearing your first iPod or perhaps feeling what it was like to be at Kitty Hawk to witness the birth of modern aviation. It’s still just a car, a well-traveled old car, in fact, but the intangible cool factor is that vegetables, not dinosaurs, melted to fuel the diesel engine. A few weeks ago, Morrison bought the 1981 Mercedes wagon with the third row of seats for $7,500 to accommodate growing carpool duties. Like many old diesels, it putters more than it zooms, but the exhaust smells like tempura is shooting out of the tailpipe.
Morrison, a concert promoter who majored in environmental conservation, sees her car as a way to set an example for her young son. “I want to show that you can individually make a difference.”
Though the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t certified any vehicle to run on pure vegetable oil, biofuel enthusiasts are hoping to make a point, even if they have to break the law: The technology exists to run cars on a clean, affordable fuel -- one that can help American agriculture too.
Friedman’s pure vegetable oil fuel system seems to avoid some of the problems posed by the only legal alternative fuel, biodiesel, which is plant oil processed to remove the sticky glycerin. Biodiesel, which is often sold as a blend with up to 95% petroleum diesel, is hard to find and costs as much or more than diesel, but it can be legally pumped into existing diesel engines without any modifications. Friedman’s converted cars, however, will run on any combination of pure or filtered waste vegetable oil, diesel or biodiesel.
As he and his mechanics are quick to remind you, Rudolf Diesel demonstrated at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair that his namesake compression ignition engine could run wholly on peanut oil.
Making the change
More than a century later, Friedman is making a name for himself with the simple technology that uses a renewable resource to run a car. He and a small crew can be found in the cramped quarters at all hours, installing his series of pumps, heaters and oversized filters. Unlike many other systems, Friedman’s requires only one tank, no diesel fuel for starting and no driver-operated switches to control the flow of vegetable oil. His cars operate almost exactly like any other diesel engine, minus the sooty exhaust or petroleum. He also has devised a fuel funnel that screws into the gas tank -- a cut-off Gatorade bottle.
It’s also not lost on fans that biofuel can be a budget path to low-impact luxury. Rya Kleinpeter bought her first converted Mercedes more than a year ago and came back for a second after the first was crashed. Recycling, both the car and the fuel, appealed to Kleinpeter, an artist and behavioral therapist, who can more easily afford a 20-year-old car than a new hybrid.
“I may be poor, but I was raised in Hidden Hills. I have standards,” she said. “And these cars are way cute. They’re still a Mercedes.” And besides, she said, the Prius has no style.
Like Kleinpeter, Kristina Wong spends a lot of time answering questions about her car, a 1981 Mercedes turbo diesel with 172,000 miles on the odometer and vivid pink paint. Wong, who is three years older than her car, is a performance artist, writer and cyclist who longed to say goodbye to gasoline. After searching in vain for a diesel car to convert, she happened upon Lovecraft, where she bought the $5,900 car and named it Harold.
Though she had some scary moments when out-of-town mechanics told her Harold would never make it back to L.A., she’s since made many petroleum-free, guilt-free trips in it. “It’s a lot of fun to show it off,” she said, and she hopes to incorporate it into her performances.
Wong’s hot pink car may be among the most memorable of the 600 that Friedman said he has converted, including one with 400,000 miles on the engine. “It runs like new. I’m really tripped out,” said Friedman, attributing some of its longevity to the oil.
Friedman also is patenting a conversion kit for do-it-yourselfers and sells an at-home filtering system for waste oil. For those who don’t like the sight of shrimp tails floating in greasy, back-alley barrels, Costco and Smart & Final sell boxes of pure vegetable oil for about $2.20 to $2.70 a gallon, a price that didn’t seem cheap when he first began converting engines. (Most cars get similar miles to the gallon on vegetable oil as they did before they were converted.) As gasoline prices went stratospheric, the war in Iraq renewed concerns about foreign oil dependence, and global warming seemed well underway, Friedman already was spreading the vegetable oil gospel.
“It was really hard getting people to know that these cars worked,” Friedman said. His methods were simple: Drive one car and talk to people. Then he moved to Los Angeles, where used vintage Mercedes were in good supply, and began developing a network of mechanics to rehab the cars.
“In the beginning, everybody who was interested in them was flat broke. There were a lot of junkers. I’m amazed that we got them to run,” Friedman said. “Now that it has style and acceptance to it, people want them nice.” A Lovecraft bumper sticker that touts the cars’ pure vegetable oil fuel has become a kind of status symbol among eco-conscious early adopters.
Busy shop
Friedman, who offers a money-back guarantee on his conversions, began working on cars in his frontyard, then just over a year ago moved to an 18,000-square-foot Echo Park warehouse. It’s now full of parts, ongoing repairs and cars waiting to be converted. The Silver Lake shop originally was to be a showroom, but demand has been so strong that his stock is sold out and customers are putting money down on a waiting list. Most of the completed cars cost $3,500 to $9,000, he said, including the many cosmetic and mechanical upgrades to the cars.
The Silver Lake shop is bumper-to-bumper full of Mercedes and other makes of cars and trucks in mid-conversion. Hardly a day goes by that Friedman doesn’t have a news crew or curious crowd pressing him with questions. By his count, the business gets 200 calls and 50 e-mails a day. Lovecraft has nearly a quarter-million hits on Google, and judging by the Lovecraft blog entries, Friedman is up at all hours responding to inquiries -- and to the attacks.
In just about every online forum regarding vegetable oil conversions, debate is heated over issues such as one- or two-tank systems, the proper temperature for heating vegetable oil to start a diesel engine, and how and whether Californians should pay fuel taxes on vegetable oil, even if they recycle it from waste oil.
“I expected to get attacked,” Friedman said. “We’re threatening a lot of industries and not appealing to any.” Yet Friedman was blindsided recently when fellow members of the biofuel community and the L.A. Weekly raised questions about his methods and alleged that his cars violate several laws.
“The cars aren’t illegal because they’re multi-fuel cars,” said Friedman, adding that he’s been trying to comply with every applicable law, but few have specifically addressed his type of operation.
EPA’s view
According to John Millett, spokesman for the EPA, “No motor vehicles have been certified by the EPA to operate on vegetable oil,” and neither has it certified conversion kits. Millett adds that the Clean Air Act prohibits converting a motor vehicle to operate on any fuel other than the one the manufacturer used to obtain its EPA emissions certificate. Violations can bring fines of $2,750 for individuals and $32,500 for manufacturers or dealers. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel that has passed the EPA’s testing standards that study emission components and their health effects, allowing it to be a registered, and therefore legal, fuel.
Friedman is working on a way to add diesel to the converted car tanks to, in effect, create a legal, but dirtier, fuel. Devotees of the vegetable oil concept continue to navigate in a legal gray area. On online forums, including Lovecraft’s, owners of converted cars discuss emissions, road taxes, oil rancidity, lubricity, flash points, biodegradability, particulates and hydrocarbons. They debate how and if they should pay fuel taxes, register to haul waste oil, and locate the correct tax forms.
“We are doing everything we can to do it legally. That’s why we chose to do it really high profile,” Friedman said. To him, it boils down to a simple choice: toxic petroleum or safer alternatives. Vegetable oil fuel may not be perfect, but according to Friedman, it’s close.
“You can eat this one,” he said, pointing to a box of soybean oil. “What does that tell you? It’s really simple, but it can be made to be complicated.”
