Evolution of the Grease Snobs
With the transmission down, our stay in Abbotsford British Columbia became an opportunity to develop as grease connoisseurs.
Inside the John's C. Anderson's trailer is a legitimate grease refinery. It allows one to take grease from a restaurant, and in theory, convert it directly into useful fuel on the spot.
The simplified steps are as follows:
1. Collect used cooking grease in the back alleys of restaurants (Asian food restaurants are the best).
2. In a super gnarly process, a hand pump is used to suck the grease from the waste bins into blue 20 gallon barrels.
3. A diesel transfer pump equipped with a dense screen moves the contents of the 20 gallon drums through a massive filter that then dumps into a 55 gallon drum located in the trailer.
4. A second transfer pump moves the refined grease from the trailer's 55 gallon drum to a fuel tank located on the side of the truck.
5. Flip a switch on the dash of the truck, and the fuel lines start moving grease through the engine.
Abbostford was our second grease gathering session. We pulled into a lone restaurant- Rivers Restaurant late at night, spotted their grease disposal bins, donned our newly acquired grease suits, and got to work pumping a concoction that would make the firmest stomach flinch. Within an hour, the police showed up. Instead of shutting us down, they were totally into the process. One of the officers was an aspiring grease burner himself. They complemented our system and then took off into the night, leaving us with cold hands, and another hour of sludge pumping to go under a cold rain.
The lesson from the Abbotsford grease session was that one has to be really selective in their grease foraging. Without knowing any better, we were pulling poor quality grease- grease so bad that it clogged the various pumps and made for ridiculously time consuming pumping and little yield.
Children, there is lot of bad grease out there.
Don't pick from the bottom or the top of the grease barrel. Don't go for the light colored stuff.
Floating french fries are a bad sign.
The dark non-hydrogenated oil (soy oil from Thai restaurants) is the love nectar that makes for easy gathering and clean burning.
With our new found knowledge, we roamed the back alleys of Abbotsford and began rating the various caches on a 1-10 scale of grease snobbery.