ALTAMONT — Barbara Floeser is letting the sun shine in. After 15 years of driving a minivan, she’s got a sharp new Jetta with a sunroof. "Yeah, that’s where we stick the fries," she laughed.
The "Fryride," as the license plates read, is a diesel Volkswagon Jetta that Mrs. Floeser had converted to run on vegetable oil. It runs on used oil that her husband picks up from a restaurant every week and smells, just a little bit, like what was cooked in it.
"It’s kind of like at the fair when you walk by," she said of the exhaust from her car. "Not that strong though."

The couple converted their car about a year ago and they’ve tried using oil from several area restaurants but settled on a pizza-and-wings place on Madison Avenue because it produces the least oil each week. Since restaurants have to pay to have their waste oil removed, they’re always amenable to giving it away, Mrs. Floeser said. The problem is, some places want the Floesers to take it all away and she only needs eight gallons each week.
The Floesers were inspired to convert their car when their daughter raced a car for a school project at last year’s Tour De Sol alternative energy conference in Saratoga. The Floesers talked with someone at the Greasecar booth there, and "We left going, ‘we can do this,’" said Joseph Floeser.
"I can say, with pretty solid assurance, that we’re the biggest outfit in the country for this," said Josh Paul Levy, of Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems. About six years ago, Justin Carven, a Hampshire College graduate, founded the East Hampton Mass. company and it’s sold a few thousand kits to date, Levy said on Monday. The conversion kits sell for roughly $800 and can be installed by the car owner or someone on the company’s installer network.

The Floesers took their car to Mark Wienand in Ithaca N.Y., who’s had his Jetta running on vegetable oil since 2000. Since it’s got to be a diesel engine in order to run on vegetable oil, Wienand said, Jettas are pretty common because there aren’t many other diesel cars out there. The 34-year-old saxophone player has been installing the kits in people’s cars, who come from as far as four hours away, for about three years, he said. Most of them do it for environmental reasons, he said, but saving money is the other big reason.
"We have an awareness of the global-warming thing," said Mrs. Floeser, "but I wouldn’t say that we’re activists or anything." She had been paying as much as $70 a week to fill the tank of her minivan when gas prices were nearing $3 a gallon, she said.

Now that the Jetta runs primarily on vegetable oil, the couple spends less than $10 every three months on filtering supplies. After Mr. Floeser picks up the oil each week, he runs it through what looks like a coffee filter in the garage and then pours it into the 13-gallon tank that sits in the spare-tire well in the car’s trunk.

The original gas tank serves as a back-up fuel source as well as providing gasoline to start the car. Once the oil is warmed up, after a couple of minutes, Mrs. Floeser flips a switch above the car’s radio and, without a sound, the car is running on vegetable oil that flows through a heated system from the trunk of the car to the fuel injectors.
There’s no difference in the performance of the car, whether it’s running on diesel or vegetable oil, said Mr. Floeser. "The car doesn’t know the difference," added his wife.
It’s a pretty good set-up, they think, but it’s just a step in the direction of something better. Hydrogen cars will probably replace gas-powered cars as the standard in the future, said Mr. Floeser, like CDs have replaced records. "This would be like the eight-track thing," he said. "A good idea on the way to the cassette."