Lpg Conversion

[steve_wilson]

hi all,

 

winter had arrived and i'm after a little project to run alongside the other stuff im doing to the 2b.

 

petrol doesnt seem to be getting any cheaper so i've been looking into lpg kits. there is mixed views on how good they are, loss/gain of performance etc. but what im after finding out is, whats involved with fitting them?

 

the car im considering installing it on is a 2004 vx220 turbo, which is a 2.0 turbo engine (z20let)

it's had a remap (which im led to believe will be fine on lpg) and is running about 220bhp.

 

it's rear engined, and i'll be sacrificing the little boot space i have for the tank, but i can live with that.

 

 

so do we have any diy fitters on here that could give me some useful pointers, good kits to go for, who/what to avoid.

basically an honest dummies guide to lpg, with no BS.

 

 

i do about 14k miles a year so it might not actually be worth doing in terms of payback time, however i'd much rather put the money into the car than paying the ridiculous price of petrol, if that makes sense!

 

 

so people of rhocar....

 

give me your lpg expertise!

 

cheers, steve

[speedtripledan]

I had an lpg conversion done to a 3.0v6 peugeot a few years ago. Crap is the 1st word that springs to mind. never again ! on gas it had a lot less power, blew up randomly destroying the map sensor and air box. this was an early single point injection system and i believe later multi points are better but its not really a job for diy. there have been cases of gas leaks and explosions..

[Guest jasonmorris]

Stay away. Unless you pay a couple of grand for a top notch system, fitted by professionals, then I would steer clear.

 

I'm a taxi driver and we had systems fitted to our vehicles a few years ago, we even had our own gas station installed. To say it was a nightmare is an understatement. We had air boxes blowing into a thousand pieces, map sensors destroyed, overheating problems you name it.

 

Maybe the newer systems are much better, however for me its a case of once bitten, twice shy I'm afraid.

 

Rgds,

 

Jason

[maccavvy]

Heres my 2p worth.

I run a lpg van for work. ive had it 20 months now in total and done over 25000 miles

So far ive had to buy a new fill nozzle ...thats it. nothing else has gone wrong. i have it serviced every other year.

Nothing has ever been replaced or repaired apart from the nozzle.

It does a little less mpg when on gas,the change over is unnoticeable and power loss is very minimal,virtually undetectable.

 

I run a bmw 330 ,wished id have got it done when i first bought it.

 

It runs a brc mulitpoint system often to be regarded as the best, ALWAYS get any work done by a reputable qualified fitter.NEVER diy imo.

 

Plenty of garages about. i have work done at central garage in doncaster,they are very good at what they do and are good on prices.

[megadodo]

I would have to strongly disagree! I have run a self installed LPG system on 2 cars in the last 2 years and a friend has run LPG on several cars in last few years with very few issues.

I bought a kit for £700 after much research and it took me a day to install it a Renault Scenic 2 litre at first. I added the valve lubrication kit as the valve seats in the Renault are soft. Valve regression where the seats wear and the valve "sinks" into the head is the big issue for LPG conversions and there is plenty of info on the web about which cars suffer from it and which don't.

The install while a bit fiddly in places was straight forward enough and the system was set up on a computer within 10 mins. I ran this for a year. Petrol MPG on the Scenic was around 32 and 28 on LPG and yes while the top end power was slightly down it wasn't a big difference and you had to thrashing it to notice. In that year I had the LPG injector rail fail with a leaking seal which lead to a lumpy idle, this was fixed under warranty by the kit supplier. At the end of the year I did get get one valve start to to regress (probably not enough valve saver for mileage, I used about half what I was supposed to) which was fixed by re-shimming the valve.

This time last year I changed cars and got en E36 BMW 318is on to which I transferred the kit. 38 MPG on petrol and 34 on LPG. The power difference is less on this car (even though the car is more powerful). The injector rail failed again and as this time it was out of warranty I replaced it with a £40 one from ebay and even though I thought the idle was OK the new rail makes the engine even smoother. The new rail is quieter as well although I wouldn't say the old one was noisy, just noticeable when the radio was off and the engine was at idle.

Real pains are losing the filler cap several times (now wired to the car) and the filling is slower than petrol.

Is it worth it? it depends on your mileage so do the sums! It was for me, big time!

If DIYing then I would get it certified of course!

[steve_wilson]

mixed views!

 

i'm still interested, and need to do more research i think. as with most things i suspect you get what you pay for when it comes to lpg kits.

 

any else got any experience?

[richyb66]

I've got lpg on my Audi S6, I do about 650 miles a week so it makes sense as I only get around 23mpg average but even on lpg it's still a big fuel bill. So far I've done about 20k miles and it seems generally ok apart from having to replace air flow meters (twice), which seems to be something that isn't unknown on lpg. They still worked fine, but I couldn't clear the check engine light so I replaced them. Both time they went was after giving the car some serious welly so now if I'm in that kind of mood, I tend to swich over to Super Unleaded first. The system is made by Bigas and uses 8 injectors on 2 fuel rails.

 

There is a difference in power on lpg, but as the cars got around 350bhp, I can live with a drop in power for the 95% of the time I'm pottering around on lpg. I agree with other peoples thoughts on getting a properly installed system, unless the car is very basic then I could see self-installation being a real pain. Only stuff I've done to mine is swap the lpg filters which were about £25 for the pair from here http://www.tinleytech.co.uk/acatalog/tt-shop.html

 

who seem to sell everything, including complete kits. A complete kit for mine is over £2k fitted, so I bought a car already converted and saved taking the initial hit on the installation but if you've got a specific car in mind, this probably isn't an option. Downsides are the availability of fuel and limited range (200 miles on my car on lpg). I now plan my re-fueling so I use places with cheap lpg and if I do run out of gas, I've still got petrol in the main tank. Also, my tank is in the spare wheel well so my spare is in a big bag in the back - not really a problem as it's a big car and on the odd occasions I need the space, I take the spare out and carry tyre weld.

 

The car is great but it is still very, very costly to run (I didn't expect it to be cheap) but if I was sticking in super unleaded, my fuel bill wouldn't be affordable. I have had thoughts about swapping if for something more economical (diesel?) but as I'm currrently getting close to 45mpg diesel equivalent and I like a big, practical, performance car, I can't really see anything to beat it. For lower motoring costs, I basically need to do less miles.

[steve_wilson]

many thanks for all your inputs chaps

 

it seems a lot of the negative stories about lpg conversions happened some years ago, possibly the kits have improved since then?

 

i think i'm going to give it a go, fed up of spending ridiculous amounts for petrol, the car has to either get cheaper to run or it goes.

and i dont really want it to go!

 

i'll do some research on which kit suits me best and i'll keep you all updated with my findings

 

cheers, steve