As usual when I visit my 78-year-old mom, she slips me clippings of stories she reads about motorcycles. As she slid this one onto the desk, I noticed that it was the same one Earl McNeely sent me from federal prison in Texas. When I was in Vietnam, my mom sent me clippings about guys who were wiped out on motorcycles. Of course that was to push her feelings on helmets. Years later, she gave up on helmets and fought along side of me in the name of freedom, at least intellectually.
On one recent afternoon, she gave me an article fromThe Los Angeles Times about a guy named Harold Benich, who turned his Softail into a soybean-burning bastard. When I first read the short piece and studied the photograph, I got the impression that he had altered anEvo engine to make it run on diesel fuel, but that wasn’t thecase. He had replaced the Evo engine with a small displacement dieselturned sideways in the frame. According to the National BiodieselBoard in Jefferson City, Mo., it is the first diesel-poweredmotorcycle in the country to run.
I gave Harold a call and found out that soybean oil iscombustible at 300 degrees, which makes it very user friendly. Standarddiesel fuel is combustible at 150 degrees, although there is asubstantial difference in the flash point. “If diesel oil prices gotoo high, the trucking industry could turn to soybean fuel,” Haroldexplained. He gets 100 miles to the gallon. Unfortunately, soybean oil is $2.50 a gallon, compared with $1.39 a gallon for gas in Pennsylvania. With diesel fuel prices cresting the 2-buck mark, soybean fuel could become an alternative.
According to the Biodiesel Board, trucks, cars and even planesrun on food oils. But the motorcycle crowd may be reluctant to playsince the installation of diesel motors in their bikes, as Harold hasdone, may reduce their ability to have kick-ass power. “Soldiersrode such bikes during the world wars to save fuel, but since thenthey’ve gone the way of the Edsel,” said Jenna Higgins, a spokeswomanfor the Biodiesel Board, a trade group that promotes food oils asgasoline alternatives.
The 21 HP Perkins Diesel pumps up to 35 horses!
The positive aspect of soybean fuel is its cleanliness, before and after it’s digested by a diesel engine. “You can eat this stuff,” Harold said. “Cleanup consists of a little water on a rag. It’s wonderful.” Soybean oil is consistent and readily available. “When others speak of alternativefuels, they are often referring to waste vegetable oils. These oilsare not consistent and should be used in home furnaces whereconditions don’t change,” Harold explained. “Soybean is pure, can bepurchased in 5-gallon buckets or tanker trucks full. Some waste oilscontain animal fat, peanut oil or even canola oil. Just depends onthe quality of oil a restaurant pays for.”
Another garage-inventor, Hugh Gerhardt of Holland, Mich., is working on a custom bike that will take a rider from Corpus Christi, Texas, to San Diego, Calif., on a 12-gallon tank of soybean oil.
According to Jeffery Bair of The Associated Press, “Harold’sbike gets 100 mpg, roars like a jackhammer and smells like a freshbatch of McDonalds fries.”
Harold used $15,000 in H-D parts and an engine he rescuedfrom a construction site. “People wonder whether I have come to mowthe lawn,” he said. “It doesn’t accelerate like a stock H-D, andcosts a third more to run currently (4 cents a mile compared with3 cents a mile for the stock bike), but the fuel won’t catch fire andit runs so clean even the fish will eat this stuff. It’s also readilyavailable. Currently, due to the influx of foreign oils, farmers arepaid not to grow crops of soy. If demand grew, the likelihood ofreduced production costs are great and the price would drop, makingit even more competitive with fossil fuels.”
Using food oils for fuel is not a new concept, according to the AP story. “Inventor Rudolph Diesel ran the first diesel engines on peanut oilin the 1890s, and Erwin Rommel, the crafty German general, putcooking oil in tanks when they ran out of gas in the Sahara Desertduring World War II.”
Some vehicles combine food oils and standard fuels, accordingto a fuel salesman, but Harold wanted to go where few had gonebefore. He attempted to make the standard aircleaner cover concealhis sideways engine. It works until he fires that sucker up. “Some guys just thought it was a Softail, until I start it.”
Harold grew up in the Great Lakes Region near Erie,Penn. “I started riding with a Harley Sprint when I was 14.”Although his wife thinks he’s nuts, they’ve stayed hitched for 11years. “We live five miles from Albion, which is a town of 2,500.We’re in the sticks. My neighbor thinks I’m building a space shuttlein my garage.” Harold worked for Detroit Diesel for 14 years beforejoining the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ VehicleRestoration Department. “We have 60,000 square feet and it’s packedwith vehicles to tinker with.”
Harold suffers from rider’s block (snow) from October untilearly April. “We still have snow on the ground fromHalloween, when it started. This year we had record count. Currentlywe’re up to 180 inches of snow for the season. I bought a ’92 Fatboyand was riding it when my neighbor suggested, ‘Your next bike willhave to be diesel.'”
Harold started thinkin’ and the snow started falling and thenext thing he knew he was buying a 2000 frame, transmission, frontend and controls. “The bike is Bozo-proof,” Harold said. “It operatesjust like a stock bike, no strange controls, levers or switches.”
Harold started playing with alternative fuels a decade ago. “I had adiesel generator that ran on soybean oil. I was generating my ownelectricity for nothing.”
There’s the story of Harold, a brother, an inventor and a manconcerned about the country’s fuel problems. We’ll keep in touch with him and see where he goes with this. Wonder if he can make whiskey…
–Bandit
