I'm bidding next week on a 1984 110 LWB CSW.
It's a V8 with an LPG conversion.
Mileage 140,000 (oh yeah, on a 20-year-old vehicle!)
Condition unknown other than it needs (at least) chassis welding to pass an MOT.
I don't get to see it until the morning of the auction.
At what point will I have bid too much? £500? £1,000? More?
Thanks.
On or around Fri, 25 Jul 2003 13:49:36 +0000, "Spamfree!" enlightened us thusly:
depends on the condition of the engine and the nature of the LPG conversion. A good set of LPG parts is worth about 500, if reasonably new. A crap conversion is worth next-to-nowt.
if the engine's been looked after it could be OK, or if it's been worked on or replaced.
bear in mind that the vehicle if immaculate is worth about 2K.
mileage could be genuine, though mine on a C plate has 100K more than that.
so all in all, if it's mechanically good and running nicely, with "just" the dodgy chassis, and it's got all it's seats and equipment, and headlining, and stuff, yeah, probably a grand. depends how much chassis work is needed really.
Wrong! I'm now not bidding...
Took advice from my car repairman. He said that the chassis welding shouldn't be an unbearable cost (if the vehicle's bought cheaply enough!).
However, he was concerned at the LPG conversion on a 1984 engine. He tells me (and I'm in no position to argue!) that the valves on engines of that period - pre-unleaded - were of 'soft' (or did he say 'hard'?) metal and not appropriate for LPG conversion. ("Sooner or later, a valve will collapse and you'll need a new engine".)
On the basis that in saying this he was doing himself out of the welding job, I'm believing him. (And thinking what a good guy he is!)
So, no bid.
Did I just miss a great > I'm bidding next week on a 1984 110 LWB CSW.
On or around Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:39:35 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:
well, I'm currently running a P5B version of the V8, which was made sometime between 1968 and 1973, on LPG only - it's well-suited to this, being 10.5:1 compression - this is a point worth noting about V8s, some of the landrover variants are low compression, and as such not so well suited to LPG - injection engines are 9.35:1 which is quite useful.
Mine seems to be working OK so far. at some point they became "officially" unleaded, but since it's an alloy head, it always got valve seat inserts, and these are not likely to be of cast iron if only because they'd be more difficult to make thusly. The problems with valve seats are mostly with iron-head engines with valve seats machined directly into the heads, with a few notable exceptions.
FWIW, I think the V8 in all guises is probably OK for unleaded and LPG (which, note, is harder on valves than unleaded), unless you plan to race it.
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