The Tractor Project 

Greasecar founder Justin Carven got involved in bio-fuels at Hampshire College in 1998 and soon discovered the work of Carl Bielenberg, founder of the Better World Workshop, an appropriate technology group working in western Africa. With the immediate goal of enabling domestic vegetable oil production – and the larger goal of empowering the people of rural Africa – the Better World Workshop had developed a hand-operated seed press, producing oil for cooking or soap. But what piqued Justin's interest was that Bielenberg, a trained engineer aware of the diesel engine's vegetarian roots, had developed a system for running diesel generators on vegetable oil.

The difference between Bielenberg's success and the previous failures of others was the inclusion of a coolant-heated fuel filter, which allowed the vegetable oil to flow freely through the filter element in lower ambient temperatures. Though this breakthrough had wider – even global – implications, it also carried the immediate benefit of providing affordable fuel for diesel generators, electrifying rural villages with per capita incomes of less than a dollar a day.

Bielenberg, upon his return to the States, performed the same conversion on a Volkswagen Rabbit. And at Hampshire College, a decrepit, antique, but very lucky tractor – an Allis Chalmers G – was about to get a new lease on a life. Provided, of course, it went vegetarian.

In 1996, Ariel Benjamin and Greg Kholer – two Hampshire students inspired by Bielenberg's work – had begun to form a project to convert an old tractor to run on vegetable oil and put it to use at Hampshire's Farm Center. But although it had received a small grant from the Lemelson Foundation, the project never progressed past the initial research until Justin got involved. Fascinated by Bielenberg's research, Justin worked with a team of students over the next two months to replace the tractor's engine and modify the fuel system, employing Bielenberg's design but fabricating the parts at the Lemelson Assistive Technology Design Center at Hampshire College.

In the spring of 1999, the students trucked the tractor down to Washington, DC, for the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Annual Presentation at the Smithsonian Institution. The tractor began work at the Farm Center upon its return.