Passing of the torch

It's time, I finished my Masters at Manhattan College and have passed the Veggie Car keys along to Dr. Rich Carbonaro. There were a few students still at the college who were showing some interest in the car and the veggie car project. I am sure they will continue the project and make us all proud. Next I am off to Boston to start my career as a Consulting Engineer. Maybe a Veggie powered hybrid plane is next, we'll see....



I will pass along all blog information to Dr. Carbonaro back at MC and hopefully they will continue to use this to update everyone on future events and happenings of the Veggie Car.

Veggie Car in the newspaper again!

Sunday there will be an article in the NY Post about alternative fuels and vegetable oil as a fuel. I spoke with the journalist for awhile and she is going to include some of my thoughts on alternative fuels. She may come up to see the car this week. Hopefully she'll take some pictures and we'll get the car in the Post Sunday!

Updates to come!

Manhattan College Graduate Graduation May 21st

Veggie Car resting

Not much happening with the car recently, but I have been able to get the SNY.tv clip of the car on CD. If you would like a copy please let me know and I'd be happy to send it to you.

I recently came across a new technology that promotes fuel efficiency and cleaner emissions. It is called PICC (Pre-Ignition Catalytic Converter) . It's worth looking up on Google if your interested. This is something that I'd love to work on but because I am graduating in May I won't have the time. Although, I am starting my search for a student to take the Veggie Car project and continue it when I leave. I am going to encourage him or her to try the PICC.

On Campus

On Thursday January 31 from 2-5 I will be in Draddy Gymnasium presenting my poster on the Veggie Car Project. The event is "Focus the Nation" and inside Draddy Gym is a Sustainability Fair. Throughout the day speakers will be presenting relevant issues, I will try to post a schedule. I am also working on displaying the car somewhere on campus.

Updates to come...

The Veggie Car got some great attention on SNY tv. I was very interested in how they were going to edit it, but it came out great. Thank you everyone for tuning in and watching!!!

On January 31st there will be an event on the Manhattan College Campus where I will be speaking and showing the car. As soon as I know specifics I will post them.

SNY.tv

SNY.tv will feature the Veggie Car in one 30 minute episode of an 11 episode series called Manhattan College Basketball Weekly.

The Veggie Car episode in this weekly series will show this Friday at 4:00pm, recap on Saturday at 11:30 AM.

SNY.tv: Provider Channel
Cablevision 60
Time Warner Cable 26
DirectTV 625

Since WEFTEC '07 the car and I have been pretty busy.

December 4th I was in Connecticut speaking at a LABACT (Laboratory Analysts of Connecticut) meeting. I spoke about the car, its environmental benefits, and a little about the chemistry behind the technology. I was among some other great speakers and innovations.

LABACT, Thank you for having me, it was fun to meet so many fellow scientists concerned with making a difference in the Environment.

Very recently I was interviewed for a spot on SNY.tv (Sport New York TV) . It is the channel most famous for showing Mets games. In January there will be a 10 episode series on Manhattan College and our sports programs. One episode is going to feature me cruising around Riverdale in the Veggie Car. When I hear an official time and date I will post it.

I have several more events coming up. As they get closer I will post times and dates. I am still looking for sponsors to cover some of my WEFTEC '07 costs and to help keep the car running. Continued and new sponsors are welcome!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

The Veggie Car in it's glory, looking as shinny as ever. These pictures were very difficult to get, most of the convention there were at least several people looking at the car at any point in time. It was exhausting but fun.

I am Finally home. The car is on a truck being shipped back to Manhattan College as we speak. The trip was a great time, I was able to meet alot of great people and alot of great companies. Thankyou for checking out this sight and following my trip across the country with the Veggie Car.

If anyone wants more pictures or information don't hesitate to contact me, espargimino.student@manhattan.edu

Thanks again,

Eric Spargimino

I took a tour of the local docks and maritime museum. I ended up stepping on this private boat and meeting the owner. He gave me a great tour and explanation of the whole boat. He recently finished a 2 million dollar renovation, beautiful boat.

This is an active veteran run navy ship. I ended up stumbling into the engine room and I met the engineer that still runs the steam driven turbines that run the ship. He gave me a pretty thorough tour of the engine room and an awesome explanation of how everything on the ship is powered.

Thanks to WEF this is the view from my hotel room. You can see the port with large old sail boats and cruise ships. I explored them today after Jay left and met some great people.

Just to give you an idea of how big this place is. There were dozens of large trucks like this inside, several of these cherry pickers and one full sized crane.

Here is the car all polished up first entering the convention center. This place is enormous.

We made it to San Diego, we had to cut out a few detours we wanted to take to make sure the car made it safe and sound. If everyone is still interested I have tons more photos and will continue to post pictures from the trip and once the car is inside the convention center for WEFTEC.

Thanks for following our trip everyone, we are having a lot of fun.

Here is the car as close as we could get it too the beach.

Not too far into CA we drove through a desert with these amazing sand dunes for miles.

We made it to the West Coast, the San Diego is a impressive city.

These are the mountains of California, very nice to look at, but the car didn't like climbing down them too much. The downhill was nice though, we did about 5 miles straight in nuetral.

Driving through the desert of Arizona.

We have many more great scenery shots. O, and apparently there are dinosaurs in Arizona now

We saw some awsome scenery leaving New Mexico and comming through Arizona. We met a nice guy at a rest stop that suggested a great short-cut through the mountains for a great scenic route as the sun goes down. But for any of you who have ever seen a horror movie, stay off dirt roads in the midwest!!!

There is the line for fuel at the gas station, and there is me pulled off to the side of the road filling the car with some used vegetable oil we collected earlier that day.

Our car problems yesterday were bad enough that first thing this morning we brought the car to a Mercedes Dealership in Albuquerque. They checked it out and concluded they would not be able to fix what needed to be done any time soon. The engine is burning oil internally. Fortunately this car is such a tank that as long as I carry extra motor oil with me it should make it to San Diego without much of a problem. There is just a little loss of power, so up hills are a little slow going. We are in Phoenix Arizona tonight than hopefully arriving in San Diego tomorrow. We had to cut out some detours we wanted to take (like the grand canyon) to make sure the car is in San Diego in time for WEFTEC.

We've been finding that in TX and New Mexico restaurants are paid for their waste oil instead of the East Coast where the restaurants pay companies to remove their waste oil. Here is the first restaurant we found in the country that was reluctant to give us their oil. But they were all very friendly.

O and there is Veggie he's been sleeping most of the trip but we're thinking tomarrow we'll make him drive a few hundred miles.

This is a really cool looking wind turbine we passed, there were acres and acres of turbines but this is the first we saw that looked like this. New Mexico is gorgeous, at one point we were driving into this wall of the mountains which is the start of the southern Rockies.

This is what we figured was a controlled brush fire. Cheaper than cutting the grass I

guess, but it was cool to watch.

We ran into some car trouble today, the exhaust was spitting out black smoke and

I was having trouble making it up some hills. I am bringing the car into a shop tomarrow morning to try and resolve some issues that may be causing the problem. So if anyone is interested I am always looking for sponsorship for the car, and all donations are tax deductible. (please contact me at espargimino.student@manhattan.edu if you are interested)

This picture is when I first pulled over to check for problems, this is when we found out not all southerners are friendly. It was a little scary but it was a cultural learning experience.

We saw some awesome things and some great scenery. Definitely things you would never see in New York or New Jersey. And yes those trucks are moving at about 70mph, many things are hauled just like this.

This was compliments of Jay, the owners of the farm invite everyone to spray paint the cars. So now this blog has some nation wide plublicity.

Wow today was an eventful day. We are in Albuquerque New Mexico now and we saw some interesting things today. First we came across what I called the Cadillac farm, it was about 10 old Cadillacs that some farmer half buried in his field.

We crossed the Mississippi River yesterday, it wasn't as spectacular as I expected but now I can say we are the coolest kids this side of the Mississippi...

We've been passing some hilarious bilboards on the side of the road. This one is pretty cool but the only one that is PG. Note: this is still 300 miles away from the steakhouse

Today we passed a huge field of these wind turbines. The picture doesn't do justice to how big they are. We've been seeing some really cool engineering along the way

Everything is bigger in Texas including this 6 story tall cross.

OK we picked up a hitch-hiker and his name is Veggie Mercedes Oklahoma. He will be the most well traveled hamster in all the world

This is just an example of some of the monster bugs that hit the car on I-40 (the old Rt 66).

I guess TX needs a few Engineers because this water tower had two legs in the air.

We went to the amazing steak house today in Texas (Big Texan in Amarillo, TX). Unfortunetly we didn't try but if you finishe a 72oz steak you eat for free.

A special thanks to Katherine and Bill Blum for having us in there beautiful home in Norman Oklahoma. We got a great tour of Oklahoma University and the surrounding town, and had some excellent Mexican food.

This is about 200 miles outside of Oaklahoma City we stopped to fill up in the pouring rain at a truck stop. After we filled the Veggie tank I washed off my hands in the run-off from an over-hang

We visited the Oaklahoma City bombing memorial today, it was pretty incredible.

Jay and I at the Jersey shore monday before we left.

Wow did we drive alot today. The car is running great, everywhere we stop people compliment the car and are interested to hear about the project. Tonight we are right outside of Oaklahoma city. We got some great pictures I will post tomarrow of some hilarious signs along the road.

This is me filling the veggie tank at a rest stop.

We met some great people last night that were interested to hear about the project and why two Jersey boys would want to drive all the way to CA.