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VW TDI's 2001-2004:
I did a fair amount of research on these, yet did not buy one only beacuse of the price of Diesel going through the roof about a year ago. I still may purchase one to replace my metro in the coming year or two.
A former VW (but now Audi) technician friend of mine advised me to steer clear of any high mileage automatic trans TDI... he said $4k-$6k to replace it when (not if, but when) it goes out. They don't repair them at the dealerships, they buy reman units from VW. You want the 5spd. he said.
Replacing the timing belt and water pump is an expensive job on TDI's. If it has more than 90k miles and hasn't been done, add that to the overall cost of the vehicle (many VW owners choose 90k miles as a good time to sell because of this service interval cost).
My friend says the rest of the car is solid, the engine is almost bullet-proof, 300k miles if it's cared for. The suspension bits wear out, and bushing replacement is costly (VW parts are nothing like cheap, these days)
I looked into running on bio-diesel or waste veggie oil: The VW's will do either, some kits are junk, others use good quality components suitable for long term usage. My conclusion is 'there's no free lunch there'. When I looked at it on paper, brewing my own bio-Diesel would only made sense (cost effective, or me) if I had three or more cars buring the stuff. It takes equipment, hours per week of my time, storage space, etc. to get into this operation at home. I am not sure what you do to get rid of 'a bad batch' if something goes wrong?
To burn french fry grease I would need to make or purchase collection and filtering equipment, purchase and instal a tank and heater(s) equipment on the car, then spend my time on some 'route' collecting the french fry grease from resteraunts (yuck!). I deeply admire anyone who has the time and tenacity to make either of these solution work for them, but weather it's time, out of pocket cash, or both, the fuel isn't 'free'.
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