Thanks for your comment! A “playing” quad is just a “working” quad in waiting, eh? Texada Island’s land area is approximately 100 square miles, and Powell River’s back country probably several times that, so having a quad for recreational use in the bush seems quite reasonable. Linda and I used horses to explore the trails near our home, but the labour and costs of horse-keeping became too much for us. If needed, you could easily apply your recreational quad to other purposes, such as emergency rescue, wildfood gathering or homestead chores.

Thai,

Are diesel quads manufactured anywhere? Do they pollute more than gasoline quads, especially if they’re running on used motor oil? Your idea sounds quite possible, and definitely worthy of more research (any links you could share?). Waste not, want not!

But consider this: in the long run, any motor vehicle that runs on fossil fuels, including used motor oil, will be subject to the global oil market, and to global oil depletion (also known as “peak oil”). How about a methane-powered quad fueled by our own humanure?

–Tom

Having set a small diesel ‘quad’ to run (fueled by) waste motor oil, and with it’s mileage of 30 km per liter; it can run almost 200 km’s on one vehicles oil change worth of used oil! A fantastic recycling use and could easily be transferred to North America.