A retired boat builder, Hamm strolled down the path and toward his shop. He barked discouragement to anyone else considering fueling their car or truck with straight vegetable oil.

“It’s not a casual thing — you have to be very dedicated to make it work,” Hamm said.

He warns it cost him about $2,000 to build both the filter setup and a second fuel system in his diesel Ford F-350 truck to carry vegetable oil, which must be warmed to between 160 and 180 degrees, to his engine. Any cooler than that and it might not spray evenly through the engine’s injector nozzles and could lead to problems. He heats the insulated fuel lines at five spots.

“I don’t want to give people the false impression that this is for them,” Hamm said. “If you want convenience, go to the pump.”

Once inside the 6,000-square-foot shop, Hamm faced another large cluster of cans and walked between them toward a pair of bright yellow, 55-gallon drums. Heaters keep the contents — filtered vegetable oil — warmed to about 80 degrees. Above them hang two filters — one store-bought and one made from blue jeans — through which Hamm drains the vegetable oil, readying it for his truck’s backup fuel tank.

By the end of October, Hamm had taken trips to Kenai and Anchorage on cleaned, straight vegetable oil (SVO) and was ready to drive to Seattle carrying 250 gallons of it.

Hamm’s new hobby places him in a small, but growing, club of area drivers fueling their cars and trucks with filtered fryer grease. With few exceptions, most report positive results. Hamm said his truck even sounds quieter than on petroleum-based diesel fuel.

Plus, he can find all the vegetable oil he wants for free.

For now.

One of Hamm’s suppliers told him recently they would start charging $2 for a five-gallon can of grease.

Hamm said the change shows that the supply of used vegetable oil may have already met his and other drivers’ needs.

Bob Malone, who manages the Safeway grocery store, said his waste grease is suddenly in demand. Until a few weeks ago, the deli staff used to store it before someone would offer to take it.

“Now they’re fighting over it,” Malone said.

Restaurants used to dump more than the 30 or 40 gallons of fryer grease at the Homer dump every week, said Jim Norcross, who supervises the facility. He guessed drivers are collecting more of it straight from vendors.

That would suit Rob Heimbach, an organic farmer and tree surgeon. Heimbach hired a mechanic to install a system in his Chevrolet Cheyenne pickup last year.

“I hope we get to the point where we’re using all the grease before it gets to the dump,” he said.

Like others, Heimbach had heard vegetable oil lubricates diesel engines well enough to extend their lives. Engine problems — including having to replace the truck’s starter, which he said may have broken because of using vegetable oil — have limited his use of the system to just over 100 miles so far. He sees those problems as part of his learning curve, however.

Dale Banks, who found instructions online and converted his 1984 Chevrolet Suburban — since named the “Soyburban” — has helped others get their systems set up since. He estimates between six and 10 people in the area are filling up their cars and trucks with vegetable oil.

Photo by Chris Eshleman Dale Banks installed a system in his Chevrolet Suburban so it can run on vegetable oil, which he collects and filters from area restaurants.

When he started looking for a fuel source this summer, Banks approached restaurant owner Sean Hogan. Hogan had been throwing away about 10 gallons of used peanut oil he uses to cook with every week and was happy to start giving it all to Banks instead. Since then, he’s been approached by three or four others, but doesn’t use enough peanut oil for anyone else.

Banks, whose truck has hit the 2,000-mile mark on vegetable oil, said Homer’s supply of fryer grease has probably not been tapped just yet. He admitted it could happen. After all, it is an attractive option for environmentally-friendly drivers or those tired of paying $3-a-gallon gas.

Banks delivers plates, napkins and other products made from recycled materials for a living, and likes the thought that he’s recycling old cooking grease as fuel.

“This meets my stated goal of living off other people’s trash,” he said.

Clean emissions mean vegetable oil is a “carbon-neutral” fuel, attracting drivers who want to do their part to cut back on the amount of carbon released by cars’ and trucks’ exhausts into the atmosphere.

Pulling back a wrapping of insulation under his truck’s hood, Banks pointed to three copper lines. One carries vegetable oil from his 18-gallon tank to the engine. The others carry coolant, warming the oil line.

A dial near the dash tells the driver when the oil system gets warm enough for the engine. After that “warm-up” drive — about five to seven minutes — Banks flips a switch, and the engine stops drinking petroleum diesel and turns to vegetable oil.

He sounded a note less cautious than Hamm, and said while building the $600 system was a challenge, it was certainly not impossible.

“I’m messing with the fuel lines and filters only, nothing internal in the engine itself,” he said.

That’s because most diesel engines ran on versions of vegetable oil until the 1920s. The original compression-ignited, internal-combustion diesel engine, introduced at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, was demonstrated using peanut oil as a fuel.

With store-bought vegetable oil costing twice as much as diesel fuel, however, old fryer grease is the only affordable option. It must be filtered before it hits the gas tank.

Banks said his Suburban gets the same gas mileage on vegetable oil as on regular diesel. He admits that with more people trying SVO, competition for grease could arise. But unless people begin hoarding it, the market won’t become tapped yet, he said.

“All I really want to do is stay a couple of weeks ahead of the game,” Banks said.

Since vegetable oil has a much higher viscosity than petroleum-based fuel, the two cannot be mixed in the same engine as biodiesel and petrol-fuel can. Biodiesel, created when vegetable oils or animal fats are cut with methanol or ethanol, is similar enough to petroleum diesel that the two can mix. The use of petrol-biodiesel mixes, which first caught on when the cost of gasoline jumped in the 1970s, has increased in recent years. The National Park Service has rung up about 200,000 miles on biodiesel in one of their Yellowstone National Park trucks. Service stations continue to pop up in Europe and other American states, and a handful of Homer residents have turned to brewing biodiesel as a hobby.

David Daly began making it a few years ago for his tractor. Pleased, but not fully satisfied, he’s now looking to cut out the conversion process and start running his 1999 Ford pickup on straight vegetable oil.

“I figured, ‘Hey why not?’ Particularly with the price of fuel these days,” Daly said.

Daly hired Fritz Creek Welding to build a second fuel tank for his truck and plans to install the rest of the system himself.

But Hamm warned that anyone thinking about trying what he’s done needs to have some mechanical ability.

“This can work and it does work. But you can’t be haphazard about it,” he said. “I’ve had over 50 years of experience building things.” His shop provides enough space for him to filter the vegetable oil, he said, but someone trying the same in an apartment would have a tough time filtering oil in a bathtub.

Drivers interested in trying vegetable oil also have to work to find potential fuel sources.

And last, they need the dedication to stick with it so they’re not throwing away their time and money.

“It’s kind of like a diet — it has to become a way of life,” Hamm said, stirring oil in one of the yellow drums with a thin stick of lumber.