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There is no catch, if you want to pay these prices, consider having your car converted to run on LPG.
What is LPG?
LPG is short for Liquid Petroleum Gas, commonly known as Auto Gas, most petrol driven cars or vans (not diesels) can be converted to run on LPG which almost cuts your fuel ... Read review
Advantages: Cheap fuel, reliable, good for the enviroment Disadvantages: Takes up some space, only 1200 filling stations
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What is LPG?
LPG is short for Liquid Petroleum Gas, commonly known as Auto Gas, most petrol driven cars or vans (not diesels) can be converted to run on LPG which almost cuts your fuel costs in half.
Currently, there are around 140.000 cars running around the UK able to run on LPG & 11 million worldwide. With around 1200 filling stations with LPG facilities in the UK you are never far away from being able to fill up.
LPG ... ...it is very environmentally friendly. LPG vehicles emit less Co2 gases, little sulphur & no soot particles. In the UK we export about 45% of our LPG supply.
When LPG is stored under pressure at certain temperatures it becomes a dense liquid allowing a large quantity to be stored in a small space.
How does it work in a car?
LPG cars run on both fuel & gas separately, in most cases the spare wheel is removed & a round tank ... more
How would you like to pay 1995 prices again for your fuel? That is between 56p - 61p a litre! Too good to true? A gimmick? Not so, it's even encouraged by the Government. There is no catch, if you want to pay these prices, consider having your car converted to run on LPG.
What is LPG? LPG is short for Liquid Petroleum Gas, commonly known as Auto Gas, most petrol driven cars or vans (not diesels) can be converted to run on LPG which almost cuts your fuel costs in half. Currently, there are around 140.000 cars running around the UK able to run on LPG & 11 million worldwide. With around 1200 filling stations with LPG facilities in the UK you are never far away from being able to fill up. LPG is a by product of the extraction & refining of crude oil giving no burn off & it is very environmentally friendly. LPG vehicles emit less Co2 gases, little sulphur & no soot particles. In the UK we export about 45% of our LPG supply. When LPG is stored under pressure at certain temperatures it becomes a dense liquid allowing a large quantity to be stored in a small space.
How does it work in a car? LPG cars run on both fuel & gas separately, in most cases the spare wheel is removed & a round tank that stores the gas about the same size is fitted in its place. There are pipes that run along the length of the vehicle underneath next to the fuel pipes that carry the gas to the engine compartment. Additional injectors are fitted along with an additional ECU to monitor its progress. Externally, the only thing that distinguishes a LPG car from a normal petrol one is the extra filler neck to allow the gas to be filled. It usually sits next to the petrol one on the rear wing. Internally the only extra item fitted is a digital gauge to allow you to monitor how much gas in your tank & a switch to allow the driver to switch from fuel to gas or gas to fuel.
The car runs on both fuel & gas & a normal family car is liable to travel around 700- 800 miles on both fuel & gas without having to fill up. If you get stuck & run out of gas it automatically switches back to fuel until you find a gas station. Each time you start the vehicle it starts on fuel & switches automatically to gas about 15 seconds later, so it is important to have some fuel in the tank.
What about performance & fuel consumption? If you drive two identical cars with & without LPG I doubt if you would notice any difference in performance. However, connect these vehicles up to an engine analyser & it would show a slight reduction in performance on the LPG car. Fuel consumption for one litre of LPG is slightly less than one litre of fuel, however paying just 56p - 61p a litre for LPG still means you can save a fortune depending on your annual mileage.
What about filling it up? Firstly you can't accidentally put petrol or diesel into a LPG tank but filling it up is slightly different. The filler pipe has to be inserted into the tube & a lever on the pipe turned 45 degrees to lock it in place to allow for a gas tight seal. Press the trigger & the LPG starts filling into the tank, just like fuel it will cut off when its full. You just release the lever & place the filler pipe back into the forecourt machine. You can't siphon LPG out of a tank so no worries about it being stolen. If you travel abroad you will need an adapter as they use a slightly different filler pipe design on the continent.
Is LPG safe? Safer that petrol to be honest, the LPG tanks are stronger & they don't rely on their mountings to retain their structural integrity. They will vent safely in an accident despite operating at higher pressures. Unfortunately you won't be allowed in the Channel tunnel with an LPG vehicle, ferry only I'm afraid.
Any other benefits? Once registered you don't pay the London congestion charge although that is being reviewed at present. Because the Co2 is lower it some cases many vehicles drop down a road tax banding meaning cheaper road tax. The Government have agreed not to raise the tax on LPG by more that just over 1p a year until 2011, although to be honest who would trust a bunch of worthless politicians to keep their word!
How easy is it to convert to LPG? I deliberately kept this part until last, LPG is nothing new, many vehicles were converted in the 1970s to run on LPG but due to the fact that many engines would only run on high octane fuels in those days they suffered all sorts of engine problems. Modern day cars don't have the same issues, in the 1990s the Government agreed to subsidise the conversion of LPG. The owner would pay anything between £1500 - £2000 for the conversion & the Government gave you a large proportion of it back. Just like everything else, once it got popular the nasty Government & those nasty worthless politicians stopped paying out. They official line was that LPG wasn't making that much environmental difference; the truth was they wanted to save money.
If you want to convert your petrol car today it would cost about the same amount for a decent quality kit. Cheaper ones are available but they are known to be troublesome. Kits have to installed by professional registered installers, this is not a job for a Sunday morning in the drive way with a pair of pliers & an electric drill.
Another option is to purchase a new or used car that has already been converted thus saving you the installation charge. Go to Google & enter LPG & you'll see your options. Used cars sell at a slightly higher premium with LPG but not as much as the true cost of the conversions. You will see the benefits of running n LPG if you clock up average or higher than average miles annually. However, one trip to the shops on Saturday afternoon isn't going to be cost effective giving the cost of the conversion in the first place.
Are they difficult & expensive to service? Usually every 20.000 miles they need some minor work, there are two filters that need to cleaned/changed & a regular inspection for leaks. Little else.
Lastly, what about the spare wheel? To be honest there is little room for them once the gas tank is installed. Commercial vehicles usually have them bolted in somewhere inside just in case they have a puncture. With cars carry a 'get you home kit' which will suffice. Punctures are not so common as they used to be & not carrying a spare wheel is less of an issue that it once was.
LPG is not a long term answer to high fuel prices but for the foreseeable future it can save you a lot of money.
Advantages: Cost of fuel, cleaner emmisions, better for engine oil Disadvantages: Initial cost, lack of filing stations, tanks space
I have fitted a Romano System N SGI system to my Omega 2.6 V6, it can off a previous car which had issues.
I will cover day to day first.
The car starts on petrol then switches to gas when ready, the switch also allows petrol usage as desired.
The car is a tiny bit slower than on petrol and a bit thirstier (Propane has a lower energy density per litre than petrol), it is also a little quieter on gas.
Day to day fuel costs are roughly half that ... ...cost.
The car can be difficult to fire occasionally on petrol, this can be cut down by using injector cleaner and also switching to petrol for a second before turning the engine off. Petrol evaporates from around the injectors and can leave deposites blocking them.
The car also takes 5 miles to fully adjust to a particular fuel, after running out of gas the car ran a lot better after 5 miles and after I refilled it ran better again after 5 miles, ...
MartinImber 18.08.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of LPG Conversions
Advantages: Save LOADS of money. Clean fuel. Grant assisted. Disadvantages: See opinion
...So if you convert to LPG your yearly running costs will be reduced considerably. I remember reading an article in one of the newspapers here that pointed out that it only takes the average motorist covering around 12,000 miles a year about nine months or so to recoup the initial cost of the conversion, and to start making big savings on their motoring costs from then in.
~ ~ The second major benefit is that LPG is a far cleaner fuel than petrol ... ...the car non stop on LPG then you run the very real risk of doing some serious damage to your engine. This is easily avoided by the very simple remedy of running your car for about ten miles a day or so on petrol.
~ ~ Running on LPG also adversely affects both your mpg and performance.
You will get about 15% less miles per gallon on gas when compared to petrol, but this is more than compensated for by the lower cost of the fuel.
As an example, ...
the_mad_cabbie 02.03.2001 (03.03.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of LPG Conversions
Advantages: Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap... Disadvantages: Availability in some areas
...which I had converted to LPG around two years ago. The coupe was not particularly thirsty petrol wise, however as I did around 20,000 miles a year I decided that converting to LPG would save me a considerable sum of money.
The LPG tank is a 65 litre 'doughnut' shaped tank which fits snugly into the spare wheel housing underneath the boot carpet, and therefore does not take up any boot space. I don't carry a spare wheel anymore, instead I carry a ... ...I often get asked whether LPG improves my car's fuel economy. The answer is no. In fact, car's that have been converted to run on LPG actually have slightly worse fuel economy when compared to petrol. However, when you consider that LPG is roughly half the price of petrol, the savings more than make up.
My coupe still has a petrol tank, making it duel fuel. In fact, it always starts up on petrol. To switch to gas, you ensure that the switch on the ...
Katenray 28.04.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of LPG Conversions
Advantages: Cost if done right Disadvantages: Cost if done wrong
I have been running on LPG for a little over five years now, and covered a shade under 220,000 miles in two cars.
The first car was a Honda Accord 2.2 Coupe that had 65,000 miles on the clock when I had it converted to gas. Used was a cheap and basic OMVL kit. This basically converted an injection engine, into a carburettor engine by inserting little more than an open pipe into the inlet manifold, allowing the engine to suck the gas into the cylinders ... ...with to compensate for the resulting drop in power. There was a cylinder in the boot behind the back seats which made the boot one foot shorter, but I still retained the full sized spare wheel. The engine was from the ultimately reliable Honda stable so; all the problems that I could/should of have had with such a cheap and quite frankly nasty conversion I didn't. I eventually sold the car still going strong with 245,000 miles on the clock and the ...
gasdriver 18.04.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of LPG Conversions
Advantages: Cost, Improves range, Energy reliance, green, improving technology Disadvantages: Small amount of petrol to start
My LPG conversion was installed a year ago I had being toying with the idea for a while. after hearing my partners uncle had it on a Lexus I took the plunge. 2 grand a small wheel like tank in tool slot at rear of vehicle and it was installed. The LPG can be switched between petrol and LPG and the fact you can have a tank of petrol and a tank of Gas gives your car a longer range. The LPG tank is full for £20 as oppose to £30 for half a tank of petrol ... ...If you get the LPG system installed correctly the car doesnt suffer much loss in power. I was made aware of rally cars with 200hp engines running on gas and I also drove a converted vauxhall calibre that really flew, overtaking was easy lets say.
A person I met through ebay informed me of widespread use in Australia because of cost primarily . The fuel is getting more recognition and more popular here I would think because of cost. The other benefits ...
floater 09.05.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of LPG Conversions
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Advantages: FAR FAR CHEAPER Disadvantages: NOT YET WIDELY AVAIL.
Hello everybody concerned about petrol prices. Unfortunately the prices are just going to keep going up. But if you are seriously concerned about this I would read what I have to say and implement it if you can.
It currently costs £500 to convert your car to run on LPG. If you do this, the government will give you £100 back of that money as an environmentally friendly initiative. Now comes the best bit. Not only will your car run smoother as the LPG is 100 octane, at present it costs just 33p per litre.
The government will not up the tax on this as they will be penalised by the EU for being non environmentally friendly.
I know several companies who have converted their fleet to LPG and now, not only is it saving them a lot of money, they also say that their cars and vans are paying for themselves. Has there ever been a time when you ...
Advantages: Cheap motoring, Cheaper VED (Road Tax) Disadvantages: Time to convert it, lose a bit of luggage space
considerably sturdier than a petrol tank and there are safety cut off valves that click in when the ignition is off. I'm no expert on this but I have used the kit for two months on two cars and it's been fine.
On the road. You start the engine on petrol and once it warms up it switches to gas. That's it. No input from you. There is a small postage stamp sized box on the dash that has LED's on it. One green and one red you're on petrol. Flashing red - it's switching to LPG . Two green - you're on LPG. There are four smaller green LED's that tell you how much gas you have in the tank. In the centre there's white button that you can manually switch to Petrol if you want and back. But it's not necessary to have any input at all- it's all automatic. Switch over is set to engine temperature and Rev's I believe.
Cost. My wife's Xtrail was ...
Advantages: Powerful and fun. Disadvantages: Minor niggles and fuel economy.
and the maintainance was easier.
The minor niggles i had with it were the rear door could only be opened from the inside due to a tiny spring breaking in the door mechanism. I tried to fix it but didnt have the dexterity to do it but if you have small hands it may be easier.
The front sunroof leaked especially if it was parked on a slight angle so that caused staining onto the front seats.
Starting was also tempormental due to a poor connection on the solenoid but once you knew the technique it would start fine. Most of the time you wouldnt need to pop the bonnet to fiddle with it though.
I would buy one again but would make sure it had an LPGconversion in order to make it cheaper to run, but would also go for a 5 door as it is much more practical.
Recommended for families and also those who like a powerful toy. It would out perform most cars ...
