BillyPruitt.com

I’m new to this whole “blog” thing and I must admit that I’m not too great at remembering to actually post on it.  I’ll make this quick as things have gotten busy.

We did end up buying the 99 F-250.  The smoke stacks are long gone, sold on Craigslist.  I put ended up putting a 4 inch turbo back exhaust on it.  Oh, and about the real reason for buying the truck.  I did perform a WVO conversion on the truck.  I ended up going with the kit from Greasecar.  The install instructions were ok, but I had to stop to do a little thinging several times.  I ended up doing the install after work on a Wednesday through Friday, then all day Saturday.  I estimate that I spent about 20 hours performing the install, but if I had to do it again it would probably take only 10 hours.

After all of the preparation we set out on our trip to the Grand Canyon in our veggie-mobile.  I must admit that the ride was a little rough where the pavement was bumpy.  However, we drove 3,800 miles on 20 gallons of diesel fuel (and 200+ gallons of vegetable oil).  We saved a lot of money by using WVO.  My rough estimate is that we would have spent $650 taking the Honda or $1100 taking the Grand Cherokee. 

I know you are probably wondering how we got WVO along the way… We didn’t.  We bought a 300 gallon container before we left and filled it 2/3 up before we left.  My friends brother-in-law agreed to sell us an insane amount of veggie oil for $.30 / gallon.

Over two months later we have already logged nearly 8000 miles and are well on our way to recooping our investment.  The way I see it, after we’ve logged 40k miles we will have paid for the truck, conversion kit, new tires, and the cost to have the A/C fixed.

OK, time has run out.  I’ll be back soon.

My family and I are taking a trip soon and we have a delima.  Do we make repairs to one of the cars that we own ( to make it road ready) or do we purchase another vehicle.  We’re looking a purchasing a 99-03 Ford F series pickup OR Excursion.  The plan is to buy a diesel and convert it to use WVO (waste vegetable oil) for fuel.

We’ve been stockpiling oil for the past several months.  So far we’ve collected over 75 gallons.  I am getting excited about doing this as the cost of fuel wont be going down any time soon.

The first car that we drove was a 2003 Excursion Eddie Bauer.  It was way nice and way out of our price range.  Yesterday we drive a 1999 F-250 extended cab.  It has a 4 inch lift kit and, unfortunately, dual smoke stacks.  Yes people, smoke stacks… Like a semi.  I’m red, but not that red.  And besides it won’t fit in the parking garage at work with the stacks on.

Regardless, we’re interested as it is well within our price range.  We’re going to have a diesel mechanic give it a proper inspection.  It has some problems, but if all of the drivetrain checks out then we’ll probably buy it.  I’m going to try to get some pics when I have it inspected.

Update: Here is the picture of the Truck .

So, after having the same old desktop for five years I’ve finally decided to make a new purchase.  I bought a new-to-me (refurbed) dell inspiron 1525.  I “built” a laptop with the same options and found that I ended up saving $300+ by buying a refurb.  I would be skeptical, but a guy at work already bought one and had a good experience.

Speaking of work, that has something to do with why I am buying a personal laptop.  Things have gotten so bad at the Big H that we can’t even surf to google.com without being logged into the corporate VPN, where all of our traffic is controlled, monitored, and scrutinized.  Even the guy 3 levels above me in management does not carry a company owned laptop because he states that it is too hard to get any work done.  I’m following suit and buying my own as well…

Overall, I’m pretty stoked about the purchase.  I currently have an Ahtlon XP with a gig of RAM.  I’m moving up to a Core2 duo with 2 gigs of RAM, etc.  After all, I’m a techie and deserve to have a somewhat modern piece of computer hardware, right?

I thought that I would start keeping my random thoughts somewhere safe, secure, and personal… So, I’ve started this new blog for all to read.

Some topics will include life, technology, and theology.  Come back later (when I’m not so tired) to enjoy some real discussion.