May 18, 2006

By David Reed, Photographs, David Reed, for more info, contact Reed at 536-2700

Where Cars Hum – and Smell Like French Fries!

It’s been the usual long winter. Now that Spring is here, your car is showing the effects.  While it was too warm to ski much, it wasn’t too warm to create frost heaves severe enough to leave your car’s front end with the shakes. If that isn’t bad enough, the price of gasoline has gone through the roof and you’re suddenly conscious of how much gas your car consumes. What to do?

First, make sure your car is in top notch condition.  A few gadgets and black boxes under the hood out of adjustment and you’re using more gas than you should.  Suspensions out of line reduce gas mileage, too.  Even tires can drag gas mileage down.  Where to go?  Try KTM Auto.  It’s right downtown in Plymouth at Depot Square right behind Spinelli’s Movie Theater. 

Don’t be surprised if you don’t know them.  They’re relatively new.  They took over the old KC’s Tire facility back in December of 2002 and have been thriving ever since.  “They” are Kevin Maass, the owner/manager/chief mechanic plus three top mechanics and a great service manager.  They’ve got a surprising amount of room and are equipped to do anything your car needs, plus some things you’d wish for if you knew about them.  (But that comes later in the story…)

One of the realities of living in New Hampshire is that car repairs here get complicated.  The part that needs replacing costs the same here as in more temperate parts of the country.  But getting the part off the car may involve dealing with severely corroded fasteners, “frozen” parts and deterioration.  That’s when the typical auto dealership recommends replacement of an entire subassembly.  It’s faster and, frankly, much more profitable for them.  But costly for you.  At KTM it’s different.  Their economics encourage ingenuity and creative problem solving.  They’ll figure out ways to avoid having to sell you that subassembly.  As Maass says: “That’s what separates mechanics from technicians.  The mechanic has skills and techniques ‘way beyond bolting on a new part. They know how to fix things!”   They have access to all the parts and equipment your car needs and just recently, KTM became an approved installer for the Tire Rack.  Bottom line:  If your car needs some help, KTM will make it hum.

Maass got his postgraduate degree in being a mechanic when he ran a 14 man crew of mechanics back in the mid-1990’s helping to keep New York City’s airports functioning.  During the winter, the airports depend on massive snow removal equipment including loaders pushing 50 to 58 foot snow plow blades.  (That’s wider than most houses!)  Altogether it involved 850 pieces of heavy equipment for the three airports.  Some of it was retired mining equipment.  When the mines couldn’t keep the machines running after twenty years or so, they sold them to the Port Authority.  How would you like to run these through the winter, doing work they were never designed for and then try to keep them running for the next season?  It took a lot of ingenuity!

Next, Maass spent five years in eastern Oregon working as shop foreman and mechanic for an auto and truck repair center in LaGrande.  It’s beautiful country but a very long way from

anywhere.  (It’s 310 miles from the nearest major airport—Portland.)  And it’s poor!  (Would you like to rent a six bedroom home with a three bay garage for $300 per month?)  It wasn’t a place in which to build a life.  Having grown up in the East (Manhasset, Long Island), Maass decided to come back.  Plymouth gave him much of the beauty of the mountains and valleys of eastern Oregon and puts him within easy distance of Long Island and other parts of the East he enjoys.  And it’s a great place to apply all the creativity he’s learned over the years.  Which brings us to “Smells Like French Fries”.

Awhile back, some folks at PSU (Biological Sciences Professor Len Reitsma and Jared Woodcock) got interested in using vegetable oil for fuel instead of diesel oil.  The papers have been full of talk about bio-diesel recently, but that’s actually a more processed fuel that carries a higher cost to produce.  Reitsma and Woodcock were interested in what’s left over after a restaurant has deep-fried its French fries, onion rings and calamari.  KTM worked with Woodcock and Wise Guys/Car Quest on Tenney Mountain Highway to develop a system using readily available parts and materials that could be installed in any diesel-engined vehicle.  It consists of filters, valves, tubing, pre-heaters and pumps that allow a vehicle to run efficiently on waste vegetable oil (WVO).  Regular diesel fuel is used for starting and shutting down but other than that, it’s vegetable power all the way.  How about a diesel VW Jetta that gets 50 mpg. on fuel doesn’t cost anything (for now)?

Restaurants use lots of vegetable oil in their frying.  The restaurants along south Main Street alone, from Lucky Dog to KelC’s Kitchen, use 48 gallons a week.  It has to be disposed of regularly and costs the restaurants about one dollar a gallon for pick up and removal.  The KTM folk with help from others now collect it, filter out left-over French fries, onion rings and other food deposits and then provide it to their WVO customers for fuel.  Maass estimates that Plymouth’s restaurants in total could supply the needs of 15 to 20 WVO-fueled diesels.  So far there’s only a handful on the road but the interest is growing.  If you have a diesel, want to go WVO and enjoy new challenges, KTM will help you with a parts list and good advice.  (Check out their website at www.KTMauto.com or call them at 536-3944.)  If they do an installation it’ll run about $1,000. But just think: cross country via McDonald’s and Burger King with no fuel cost.  And you’ll leave the yummiest smells in your wake!

Looking down the road a bit, if WVO catches on, restaurants may start charging for their oil.  After a while, with enough diesels on the road WVO fuel demand will outstrip supply.  Then what?  Maass notes that bulk canola oil costs seven cents a gallon, brand new and unused.  You can buy regular vegetable oil at BJ’s for 99 cents per gallon.  And according to Woodcock, the green algae on a pond like the one in Fox Park is 64% oil.  Which means that three, 25 foot-diameter ponds could generate enough burnable oil from algae for 35,000 miles of diesel driving.  But that’s another story.

By the way, if you use WVO you owe the state of New Hampshire 25 cents per gallon for state road tax.  You’re on your honor to mail them checks regularly.

This Spring and Summer, KTM can make your car hum.  If it’s a diesel, they can make it smell like French fries.