LPG Conversions – Mazda Bongo

Has anyone converted or driven an LPG v6 Bongo?

I’m thinking of converting ours (for about £1200). You get a 61 litre tank and I’m interested in how many miles I’m likely to get out of that (as much for the range and inconvenience of finding LPG fuel, as the cost).

You would be better off asking on this forum

http://www.bongofury.co.uk/

But sometimes STW is useful for a quick and simple reply. Thanks though, I will post there too.

Actually, on STW I’m likely to get a reply telling me I actually dont want a Mazda Bongo at all, what I really wanted was a 1960s split screen VW that runs off dung.

Do it i would say, I drive a dual fuel kangoo van…its a good feeling filling up at half the price and not really being able to tell the difference in performance (it is only a 1.2 though 😉 )

i have a v6 as well, looked into it and defo not worth it for mileage i do. generally reckon on 15 ish to gallon and be very careful as valve seats are not compatible with LPG unless you haver the flash additive or what ever its called and thats cost more as well. If someone says to u they are ok without it do not believe them! it will write engine off due to cost of repair on heads. also the size of tank quoted does not hold that many litres as there needs to be expansion room from memory u lose about 10l or more

Thanks. I was quoted about £50 per year for some sort of additive. I’ve actually got a diesel Bongo at the moment, the v6 is on order, I get about 400 miles out of a full tank. I wouldnt want to be refilling every 200 or so.

And I only do about 8k to 10k per year, so I suppose I ought to do some maths first or wait to see how much more thirsty the v6 engine is.

at best i get 26 at steady 60-70mph, ours only done 35000 miles and has new leads,plugs etc and runs like absolute dream just cant get more mpg, so 300 ish before light comes on.

gonna take you 3 years to get money back i reckon on that mileage,

ps dont forget system has to be serviced as well

My mate’s bomb-equipped 2.4 Accord is about to die from lack of flashlube. The monkeys who installed the LPG kit in the boot mounted the flashlube reservoir too close to the bonnet so as you drive along it turns the lube flow off.

it does seem that the more reputable installers are quite a lot more expensive but seems like a good reason for that. having read a lot of stuff about lpg seems can go wrong very easily

My conversion was done by the previous owner (a fisherman 😀 )
It’s a very hack and slash job but works perfectly, no flash lube and no need for it according to the LPG guy in plymouth

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the cost of Diesel and LPG next year when ships either move to them from HFO or install scrubbers to get past the new euro laws.

wasnt there a time limit on the lower tax applied to LPG? was meant to go up last year i think

The discount on VED on converted cars is miniscule. Worth about £10 on the Accord.

The fuel duty is still very low though.

I reckon I might save c.£1k per year in fuel, about the cost of the conversion (not including services and additives). Bit worried about the bad press though.

Fuel duty on LPG was meant to be rising at a certain percentage above whatever petrol went up. With the government having frozen fuel duty for the last few budgets the only price increase has been down to the price of oil going up.

When I first started using LPG about 10 years ago it was only about 30p, those were the days.

We ran a T25 2.1 wasserboxer on lpg for a couple of years.This was a seriously uneconomical engine doing 20mpg on a very good day. With lpg it actually did slightly worse mileage but the difference in price meant it worked out to about 38-40mpg depending on how much you paid for lpg.
Assuming a similar situation in the Bongo you should be paying for about 48-50mpg which is not such a blow to the pocket. We bought ours already converted but we couldn’t have afforded to use it much if it hadn’t been on lpg.

I have a 60 litre LPG tank, and get 250 miles pretty much exactly from a tank. Not sure the car compares with your Bongo (4.3 litre Lexus) but still pretty good. I reckon it comes in a 17p per mile to run.

My friend had her V6 2.5 Bongo converted in autumn last year. She reckons she is getting around 21 miles per gallon – but she uses it alot around town for shortish journeys which will increase usage. Apparently prices for LPG between different garages can vary quite significantly.

Mate – I’ve remembered who it was that converted our V6 Bongo, twas Mint LPG.

Don’t touch em with a barge pole, we had to take it back many times before it seemed to settle into working ok.

Having sold it a couple of years now, the main points I remember are that long journeys you nearly always had to switch back to petrol because there was no LPG stations on route when you needed them, the 60l tank actually only took just over 50 ish as it has to allow for 10% expansion, the flashlube was not too costly if it was tuned to lube at the correct rate (i.e. not too much, not too little!), but Mazda Bongos are notoriously difficult to tune for LPG and many “reputable” conversion centres struggle with them. Also, you have to leave the spare wheel at home and get a tyre sealant kit (or stick the spare in the back), as the tank is positioned where the spare lives. Personally, if I were to buy another one – I wouldn’t bother with LPG!!