[Closed] LPG car owners question

My dad had LPG cars for years. The last one was used as a mini cab, had a 1.3l petrol engine off an Astra Mk.1 IIRC.
It could do 100mph but up to 80mph was much happier.
He never sold it despite 250000 miles on the clock. If the car didn't get whacked and written off in a collision, dad would still be driving it.
Get a quality set-up, drive normally, no worries.
AFAIK Large engines drink much more LPG than petrol and loose power. Smaller ones are fine.

Loss of boot space due to LPG tank, LPG is only cheap because the Govt have frozen the duty on it - that could change, it'll take a while to recover the conversions costs - maybe around three years unless you do huge mileage.

I wouldn't have thought it was logical to do on a small car. As stated, currently subsidised and the downsides with loss of space etc. Initial outlay will be in the region of £1500 to £2500 depending on the install needs and with the slight drop in mpg do the maths to see if it's economical. Usually aimed at high milers on big engined cars.

There's also an argument for a drop in re-sale vakue due to the caution needed when buying a car with the conversion already done. Keep all the paperwork and servicing up to date. Also check insurance.

I'd buy a car with the conversion already done, it's a much more cost effective way to do it. The only risk comes if there are engine troubles when the lpg people go my bits fine it's the petrol stuff thats at fault and vice versa. I'd be looking at a vauxhall personally as they were factory converted from new.

duty isnt frozen it is catching petrol prices up by 5% per year iirc

The downside with buying cars that already converted is that as mentioned above, people who've gone to the trouble and expense of converting them don't sell them til they are practically dead, as you need to have made back the conversion cost and gone on to make significant savings before its worth selling - and for a small, already economical car thats most the useful lifespan of the vehicle.

Ive currently got an old accord estate 2.2 running on LPG. Bought the car a couple of years ago with the mind to convert it straight away. Car cost £2k, conversion £1.3k.
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Anyway I kept a record of all fuel I put in the car post conversion against milage done, and worked out how much the same milage would have cost me on just petrol, so I could see how long it took to pay off. In my case this took 21'000 miles, or 13 months. That was a year ago so its half paid for the car now as well.

[u]Pros[/u]
Cheap motoring, Gas can still be had for about 53p/litre in some places. There is a huge variance in price though compared to petrol, there is garage just down the road from me selling it for 70p. I pay 56p.

I only had a small 45l tank fitted in the wheel well, but you can only get 38l in it (just a quirk of gas tanks). This costs £21ish to fill and on a steady run will do 280 miles. Or 7.5p a mile. On petrol it works out to be about 16p a mile. One tank also covers my weekly 45 miles a day commute with normal driving.

Car runs cleaner, hence can lower tax bracket.

There is less soot in the exhaust, so less ring blow by. The oil therefore stays clean much longer and can extend service intervals.

[u]Cons[/u]

You must relocate the spare wheel. In a big car this is easy, but more of a problem in something small.

There are fewer service stations with LPG around. However they are not as sparse as people make out. There are 5 here in Reading. And when I have found that there is at least one every 20 miles when travelling. The maps you can buy are good, or there is an ace iphone app called petrol prices pro which finds them all for you!

The petrol stations that do sell it generally only have 1-2 pumps. So be prepared to cue a little longer to fill up.

Filling takes a little longer too as the gas isnt pumped as fast. To put 38l in mine takes 3x longer than 38l of petrol.

There is a noticable loss of engine power when accelerating hard. If I need to get out of a junction fast, or pick up speed quickly on a slip road I will always switch to petrol. It actually cruises better on gas however.

There is a slight increase in servicing cost, 2 extra filters need replacing at 10k mile intervals.

You cant take the car on the channel tunnel!

In summary, the conversion will require a little more forward planning and a bit more patience. If you have it then there is a big saving to be made. That said I did mine when the duty was guaranteed to be fixed for at least a year. With the new government I dont know what will happen. You might be better off getting a car which has already been converted afterall.

And lastly, dont use http://www.greenfuel.org.uk/ for the conversion. Total cowboys, email me for more info.

Drop of about 10% power and economy is the average we've seen over a few cars/kits. Top end kits that do sequential vapour-phase injection seem to be the best of the current breed and do well as a bolt-on solution and are fairly easy to tune, you can get a decent 4 cyl kit for 3-500 quid if you're fitting it yoruself. Many insurance companies will want certification. Still currently 55p/litre around our way, has been for the last 4 years.

If you don't need the space, it's a good idea. If you need the space you need a spare-wheel tank and that's very limited in range. But ultimately with a modern petrol you could end up with an equiv of nearly 100mpg, cost-wise.

Worst one I've used was a ford van with it fitted from factory, the thing was gutless enough as it was and when switching to gas it basically just gave up. We fitted an injection system to a family members 3.5 straight 6 after using a mixer-based setup on it, the difference was night-and-day obviously, and the difference from petrol to LPG was barely noticable.

A proper conversion will alter your ignition timing by about 10 degrees too, but few do this.

You also have to look at your driving patterns and see if they make sense to use LPG. My fun car is teetering on going LPG but with a torroidal tank I'd get ~150 miles to a tankful, and living in central scotland that means I'd bearly get anywhere before having to go back onto petrol anyway, meaning only half my journeys would be at lower cost, extending the payback time somewhat.

Billysan; can you give me more details about the green fuel company? I'm looking at buying a car that had a conversion done by them! Chrisroaming@me.com

Cheers.

mcobie - yeah no worries, will drop you an email with details shortly.

Also agree with coffeeking about it depending on what system you have fitted. Mine is a BRC sequent 24 system, one of the better stand alone ECU controlled sequential injection systems. A friend has a much more basic system fitted to a 2.0l vectra and that is noticably less user friendly to drive.

You could install the LPG system yourself if you have a reasonable amount of mechanical ability. That way you can save some money and know how the system works so you can servive it when needed. Plus you will know that it is fitted OK.
The certificate that you get from the LPG fitters is nice to have but insurance companies rarely if ever ask to see it.
These people can advise:www.tinleytech.co.uk/