The filter is working correctly now, it took a while to get the kink out of the hose, heating it with a propane camp stove helped make the hose flexible. I'll put a new valve in the bottom of the drum, as the old one was leaking a little.


Walt's students got the temperature gauge installed, it will be hooked into the heated oil filter for now.


You can see the hole where the temp gauge will dip into.

Also, below you can see the bottom part of the heated fuel filter, where they put a rubber cushion under the actual filter, so that it sits smug in the heated copper coil housing.

The filtering setup:

My wife and I spent about 4 evenings sowing these jeans into filtering socks. The process involves a pair of old jeans, cut the pant legs off, then sew the bottom shut and put a plastic tubing ring in the top and sew that together. See below. This will filter the oil down to 5 microns. There are two of these socks and they will hang vertically into the barrel through a couple holes that were cut in these boards.
The filtering setup below shows the pump sticking into the 55 gallon steel barrel. A used planting pot is used for a pre-filter before the sock filters, this filter was just taped to a planting pot that has the bottom removed. The filter does 100 micron filtering, so it will catch the bigger pieces of junk.

Above you can see the top opening of the sock filter, and the planting pot. It is about 30 degrees, so the oil is gelling up a bit quicker.

In the above picture you can see that the drum is a bit above the ground and has a drain (left) at the bottom with a valve. The hole was drilled into the barrel, and an air tool was used to widen the hole.

Above you can see one of the jean filters hanging into the barrel, and also the pump is sticking into the barrel. About 6 gallons of filtered oil is sitting in the barrel. I think I'll start with a 30 gallon batch and put a fish tank heater in there to heat the oil, so it can allow the water and other particles to separate to the bottom of the barrel. After a few days of this I'll do the crackle test to see if the water is out of the oil. Below is a holding barrel, for oil that needs storing.

The previous week and this week, the kids have been working on the electrical and the VegTherm. Below you can see where the red coolant hoses go down below the cab to the tank in the truck bed. The hose in the foreground is going from the right, out of the heated oil filter, to the left into the Mega Vegthem. The Vegtherm supposedly draws 30 Amps when fully operational.

Electrical wiring to the switch and fuel gauge. A temperature gauge will also be added next week.

And The tank now has electrical to measure the fuel level.

Walt explains solenoid A and Solenoid B, and shows how they mounted the Vegtherm on a custom piece of metal pointing towards the injectors. You can see the red and black wires sticking out of the Vegtherm. By the time it gets out of the Vegtherm, the oil should be 160 degrees.