Going fast and being a gearhead go hand in hand, but with today’s gas prices, going fast comes at a high cost. But, gas prices won’t ever be an issue for Boise State University students involved in the Greenspeed club. As we told you back in February, the student organization has built a fully functional land speed Chevy S-10 race truck that runs primarily off of vegetable oil. Check out the video above to see what Greenspeed is all about.

Images: Jet-Hot Coatings

Founded by Jenny Kniss and Dave Schenker, Greenspeed aims to give students real life work experience while building and racing a vegetable oil powered vehicle. Inspired by Rudolph Diesel’s original idea of being able to run farm equipment using fuel that could be grown by individual farmers, the team took a vegetable oil-powered straight-six 5.9L compound-turbocharged diesel engine and put it into a stock ‘98 S-10 pickup.

With the Big Twin Diesel engine fully capable of using vegetable oil for fuel, the only major modifications the team had to do was add a second fuel tank for the oil and have the pistons coated by Jet-Hot Coatings for added heat durability.

If now you’re thinking that’s all well and fine, but how much power can really be generated off of vegetable oil? Well, according to the team, the alternative fuel can produce about 90 to 95 percent of the 700 ponies produced by the engine on traditional diesel fuel. It is that power that just last fall, shot the team to a vegetable oil-powered vehicle land speed record of 155.33mph at the November Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) El Mirage Dry Lake land speed racing event.

As impressive as that is, the team is not satisfied with just shattering the vegetable oil-powered vehicle record, they want to also shatter the diesel truck land speed record of 215mph. With a knowledgeable group of engineering students pushing the truck to bigger goals, we can’t wait to see Greenspeed attempt to set the diesel record at the SCTA August 2012 Speed Week.

For a closer look at the truck, check out the club’s Mnt TV feature below.