I know this might be a bit odd, but does anybody have a diesel engine?
even one dropped in.

I am thinking of going diesel so I can run a cooking grease conversion.
kits are made for this but a guy I met that attends UW-Madison runs two cars like this. He set his last car up for about 40 dollars. I can supply his email if anybody is interested.

Any thoughts or meandering ideas out there?

The JR Simplot company and the univ of idaho got a ton of money to do this with a biodiesel 6-8 years ago. It was in a kenworth truck and worked okay according to the driver. The only problem I remember was a cold temperature problem below 40f degrees ( 8 degrees above freezing) the stuff gelled up. But for a cool factor...on a hard pull it smelled like you were making popcorn. Seems to me the formulation was 20% diesel and the rest was veggie oil from corn and potatoes.
George