gas conversion ?

ZoNeHeaD® uttered summat worrerz funny about:

What milage do you do?

Carbs or Injection?

Home grown or fitted?

Why?

I was lucky to get over 12 mpg in the Disco 3.9 with Bigas system installed.

Thats equivalent to 24mpg. Then you have to consider the tanks, then noe being able to off road / green lane with chassis tanks, or loss of boot space with boot tanks.

My RRIII averages 23mpg on mainly town runs and short runs. I don't have all the above worries as it's diesel. It's far quicker than the Disco and I don't have to fish around for fuel when out of the county. Downside is it won't run on biodiesel.

Lee D

There's your problem in a word, Bigas!

My DII does 15mpg on gas sitting at 50mph with 1800kg behind me, it did 15.5 on petrol with a slightly lighter load (about 1600kg) at similar speeds. That works out to roughly 28mpg equivalent, more than I'd get from a disiesel TD5 at the same speed/load! IF you fit a good lpg system, and have it properly set-up, it will always win over disiesel. No asthma-producing black reek on startup, no clatter, smoother engine and a better driving experience all-round. The secret is having the installation done properly in the first place. Point taken re. tanks though, not a lot can be done about that with some vehicles. Badger.

K Had a look at why URL and stand to save money. About 3k over 10 years....peanuts!! A multipoint gas injection installation from scratch costing 2k fitted. The engine is a 3.9 efi V8.

I dont use her to commute I use the missus's banger focus.

I also got a quote for 4 doors for a 110 only thing is they aint push button ones but the older ones. But 400 quid and all in good nick.. or should i stick to the push button ones n wait for some of them to surface ?

Badger uttered summat worrerz funny about:

I'm sure I could have done more than 12 mpg sat at 50 with the caravan on. But in reality it's mainly town / short run driving we do which I also used as a comparision for our Diesel. I've yet to do any decent distance to calculate the consumption of the 3l straight 6 at motorway speeds. Both vehicles are autos.

I'm sure there are better systems than the Bigas but when we got the car it had that system fitted and I wasn't about to fritter a months wages on another system for the sake of (maybe) saving a few quid in the long term.

I fear many people who have gas conversions fail to sit down and do the maths, selling the vehicle a short time after having reaped no finiancial benifit indeed maybe having spent more overall than if they had just left well alone.

What is also difficult to factor in is also making specific trips to fuel up rather than picking up fuel in passing a fuel station. Yes LPG is far more available than it used to be. But check out availability in your area. Newcastle under lyme for instance has one supplier - Keele Services on the Motorway.. which is a fat lot of use if you live in the town and aren't passing through on the M6. I was lucky in so much as I work in the big smoke that is Stoke on Trent and passed suppliers enroute - fine until I'm on leave when I then had to make specific trips. In my experience yes I probably wouldn't have run the Disco (v8) other than for the LPG but I wished many a time after I'd spent a few quid more and gone to a TD5. Lpg ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Lee D

The ONLY system I'd advise fitting is the OMVL Dream 21-N. Works fantastically well, assuming the std injection setup has lambda probes and cats. Badger.

Filling my landy up costs a bomb..Bout 50-60 quid. I use 2-3 times a week max. Sometimes a long trip in any given month. On the whole I agree with Lee. In my casr mebbe its not worth the risk or layout. She runs ok and im sure I can find someone locally who can tweak her a bit without having to buy stuff cept mebbe a dizzy cap (which i already got hehe). But I dont fill her up everyweek. lpg availability is ok at my end. And the price..I know but i just cant be arsed for now hehe.

You could DIY a single point open loop kit for under £500. Yeah not quite as good as a multipoint but it will work and be cheaper to run!

doesnt take that long to recoup £500 when you save £30 per fill up...

and you will drive it a lot more once it is cheaper :D

My local daily running (country roads, short distances and light town traffic) gives about 14mpg, 13 if I'm a little more spirited witht he loud pedal! My bmw 330dse (same engine as the rangie td6) did 36mpg on the same running, 42 on a long run at legal speeds.

Fair comment.

Another fair comment.

LPG is fantastic, but ONLY IF it's installed and set up properly. There are an awful lot of installers out there, some even with LPGA Approved Installer status, that are quite simply apalling! I'm lucky, I have LPG 1 mile from my work (Kinloss), in the local big town 10 miles away (Elgin), in a smaller town 10 miles the other direction (Nairn) and plenty of other stations which I always seem to be passing when travelling either East, South or to the West coast! Apart from the far north-west, and Perthshire, Scotland seems to have done pretty well in most areas for LPG availability. In the north, this is due to the foresight of a local Shell fuels company who very quickly set about installing a network across the north of the country - just a pity they fleece us with 49.9ppl, the wankah's! I'd NEVER have another diesel engined vehicle unless there was simply no alternative - as good as my BM was, I was always conscious of the environmental damage it was causing with the particulate emissions. Badger.

Badger uttered summat worrerz funny about: I was always conscious of the

And this from the man who fixed bombers ;-) Good to see you getting all fluffy! :-)

Lee D

I think the answer depends on why you want to convert. If it's purely=20 monetary then work out the cost of conversion and the mileage you need=20 to do to recover that. If it's ecological then research the figures and=20 decide.

My previous Discovery was a 3.9 V8 in which I was doing about 800 miles=20 per week so a conversion to LPG made monetary sense. I didn't really=20 consider the environmental effects.

I didn't see much change in fuel consumption (still managed 16/17mpg)=20 but with LPG at half the price of petrol the savings were impressive.=20 The vehicle actually ran better on LPG ~ smoother, more responsive ~=20 than petrol.

I went for a single point conversion (now I would go for multi-point)=20 with 2x40l tanks mounted in place of the normal petrol tank and a small=20 (25l) petrol tank mounted in the rear wing area. This meant I could=20 still greenlane and didn't lose any boot space.

I could probably dig up some photographs if you are interested.

--=20 Regards

Steve G

Ah, but technically the Nimrod wasn't a bomber, more a maritime reconnaisance aircraft with the ability to operate as a submarine hunter/killer with torpedoes........... And yes, I did work with tornado bombers, but they don't count as they're crap ;-) Have to admit though, those old Spey engines in the Nimrod can kick some s**te out at max chat - but at least it's at altitude and not giving kids asthma in the towns, oh, and helping global warming to boot, to bring us all warmer summers, hahaha. Badger.

We are spoilt for choice of LPG suppliers round here!

GT autogas on festival park (38p and they work with accounts and remember your name! :D ) the place next door to GT (why 2 LPG suppliers next to each other i dont know!) shell garage on the other side of the flyover in hanley BP in middleport (very expensive though) cargas in fenton morrisons in crewe and there are a few more on the map that i havent bothered to find yet.

You cant tell where they are on the proper LPG map cos there are so many! It doesnt take that much planning to go past one of them.

I've just got 5.3mpg out of a tankfull in the 101 (77miles, 65L).

I need to get it tuned properly! ;)

I was managing 12-15 with the 3.5 when it was set up properly..

Tom Woods uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Only If you're going that way.

Now how many in Newcastle under lyme? One on the motorway. As Mrs_D always used the Disco majority of time I got a treated at guess what stage on the fuel gauge! All comes from the same pot I guess but It psychologically scarred me it did! Other than work all of my trips are away from the city and into the sticks.

:-)

Lee D

Presumably the 'autogas' from petrol stations is no different from the propane sold in remoter area for central heating where mains gas isn't available, the punter having a large tank that they come and re-fill. What's to stop you having one of the large tanks and filling from that?

AWEM

Andrew Mawson uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Planning? I know the tank needs to be fitted a certain distance from any buildings as my folks have one for their central heating, prohibative costs and the outlet needs to be from the bottom of the tank not the top to take liquid rather than gas from the top. so it's not a simple hack (not that I'd personally hack a calor tank!)

Otherwise it's feasible if you run a fleet of vehicles for a business otherwise forget it.

I think Austin may have a tank IIRC.

Lee D

re-fill.

prohibative costs

business

Is heating propane taxed at the same rate as transport propane?

AWEM

On or around Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:17:35 +0100, "Badger" enlightened us thusly:

If it's a 3.9 I assume pre-thor, so not quite so difficult... dream 21-N is excellent but costs more.

No, but up here (north of Scotland) if you want a tank with a liquid outlet you have to fit a meter to the gas offtake - they charge you road duty on whatever goes into the tank and from your meter readings for gaseous use you have to claim the duty back from the tax man/customs&excise! They've gotten smart to tanks with liquid outlets connected to central heating....! Badger.