LPG Fuel

[CoxyBoy123]

No this is a real i have made, he knew i wanted a bigger car, he made the other one up

Many thanks guys for the replies you have helped loads

 

[snowdog]

If I drove anything above average I'd get an LPG'd car like my dad has had for the past 2 cars. ( tax is more here for LPG'd cars, but still less than diesel, but the fuel itself is 2-3x as cheap) Not sure how it is in the UK with lpg prices and how petrol/diesel/lpg affects tax.

You can always also drive on petrol, you can switch during driving.
An old LPG system like we had in the corolla will cause a little bit of power loss ( though it may have been set up incorrectly ) but we don't notice the difference between running on LPG and Petrol on the C5 with the G3 system.

We didn't notice any adverse effects on the engine by running it on LPG.

 

[Lum]

This is true regarding the engine as a whole, but I suspect it's more to do with the temperature of combustion and the valves/pistons/cylinder head/etc.

Pootling about with a pinking motor can burn a valve or a piston.

Pinking/knocking etc. is unlikely to be an issue as LPG has a RON of 106 vs 95 standard unleaded.

 

[[TW]Fox]

No this is a real i have made, he knew i wanted a bigger car, he made the other one up

He made up a thread about trading the Meriva for a smaller car?

Yea, right. More like you realised how daft it made you look so you've cooked up a face-saving story. The amount of people who make stuff up on here lately to save face is getting ridiculous, especially as its always so obvious.

'Oh my brother did it'
'Oh I actually decided in the space of a week since financing my £30k car that I needed to release capital to leverage some property synergies, not that i cant afford it, no no'

etc etc

 

[CoxyBoy123]

ermm right, talk about jumping to conclusions, if you have nothing useful to post move on please

 

[w1lliam]

My e46 330ci is on gas and it works fine, and saved quite a bit on fuel

 

[BigglesPiP]

Pinking/knocking etc. is unlikely to be an issue as LPG has a RON of 106 vs 95 standard unleaded.

I didn't mean pinking on LPG, I was using a pinking motor as an example of how high combustion temperatures can kill an engine which isn't being ragged to the point of over-heating.

I'm all for LPG by the way, done right there's nothing wrong with it.

 

[ajstan]

I read an article about a Aussie haulage firm that tested LPG HGV's and vans and found that the engines lasted a lot longer with LPG as its less corrosive than petrol.

I can't find the actual article but here is another one

http://www.lpgautogas.com.au/index.cfm?action=News&unq=142&Type=R

Ah right, ok then you lose performance

 

[EddScott]

You loose some performance its not like for like petrol and LPG regarding MPG.

Some big issues are with the actual conversion and whether its done properly in the first place. Older LPG conversions might give you grief and if buying a car with LPG fitted make sure you know what make of system it is and whether you can get parts for it. If the LPG system fails and the manufacturer no longer exists your stuffed.

Prinns seems popular but expensive at about £1800 for a 6 pot engine and AC STAG for a 6 pot costs £1200 fitted. With the £1200 conversion for me it would take £15K miles to recoup the money. LPG here is 57p whereas petrol is £1.17 and is forever going to rise stupidly.

I'll be having one fitted to my Jeep shortly. You can get under-chassis tanks but means you have a small gas tank and a small petrol tank. You can get big cylinder tanks but they take up most of the boot space. I'm going for a circular tank that will mount where the spare wheel is mounted (on its side) and popping the spare up onto the safari rack (when its fitted)

I don't actually think a DIY job is that hard but it would need certifying.

 

[Lum]

Depends on how it's set up. While it's true that a litre of LPG has something like 10% less energy available compared to a litre of petrol, a properly set up system will do some decent ignition timing advance to make it run more efficiently, compensating for this lot.

In theory, with some sort of aftermarket management (not sure if this even exists yet) and a good map, you should be able to get better performance on LPG than on petrol, but now we're getting into pretty specialist stuff that's likely the domain of race teams and the like. An old BMW with an aftermarket conversion wont be doing this.

You still wont lose performance though, because as soon as you mash the loud pedal it will switch back to petrol.

 

[bullit in head]

I don't actually think a DIY job is that hard but it would need certifying.

it's not hard . like I said I just did mine. and to certify it, it was £50 at the local installers.

with regards to the map all the newish sequential injection installs come with there own software that can be used to draw your own map. it can do it automatically but you can also play with it manually to tweak it.
Its pretty basic can only change injection timings and not ignition timings. but you can change the yimes that the gas cuts in (and out) so it really is seamless. on a cold start mine runs on petrol till it warms the vapouriser up to 39deg C then the gas cuts in un noticed and your then on gas untill your engine cools down. I use to put a tank a week in & £70ish I did mine a month ago and I recon I've used less than a 1/8 tank in petrol.

I did mine in 7 days to convert it(not working on it all the time as I was working nights so afternoons only) the most of the time is spent trying to figure out where to put all the extra gubbins, even on a galaxy that is huge there really isnt that much space to put things, If I had to do it again I recon two days to do it. when I had it checked over I only had relaibiliy issues and not safety issues so I was happy, and it didnt leak(which is good)


bullit