The first week of spring heralded my taking ownership of a W123 Series Mercedes Benz 300D, the icon of the veggiemobile movement. She (for she is a she) is a 1985 model with a seemingly undercounted 323 000 odd kilometres on the clock.
The first trip for her and I to get acquainted with each other took place from Cape Town, up to Picketberg (where I am told she grew up), across to Elands Bay, down to Pater Noster, through the West Coast National Park to take in the spring flowers and back home to Stellenbosch again. Unfortunately her trip meter stopped sporadically so I couldn't do consumption calculations on normal petrol diesel (my web research suggests that she should be getting somewhere between 9 and 10 litres per 100km). My plan is to wean her off that wicked stuff and on to a biodiesel blend, ultimately running her on pure biodiesel after some minor modifications to the fuel line.
