Big home cinema & electronics fan, married with 3 children. I also like motor vehicles, I am a senio...
Big home cinema & electronics fan, married with 3 children. I also like motor vehicles, I am a senior programmer analyst for a small software house.
Member since:15.01.2004
Reviews:38
Members who trust:2
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 of petrol despite autogas being slightly less than half the 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, this is the ECU learning. It is of little consequence but useful to know.
There are not very many filling stations, and the ones there are tend to be in pockets, however I have only once ran out of gas, and I had a full tank of petrol to fall back on. Filling a tank usually takes about 5 or 6 minutes.
Installation, this is the most critical bit, there are quite a few different types of systems, the best for a modern multipoint fuel injected car is the Sequential Gas Injection system (SGI) this works on the following principals.
Tank, liquid gas flows from here to the evaporator heated by the cars cooling system. From here the gas travels to the gas manifold where it is connected to the injectors, the injectors squirt gas into the inlet manifolds.
SGI uses the cars own ECU to control the gs injectors, it uses interface cables to the petrol injectors which tell the gas system when to fire and for how long, it also prevents the petrol injectors from firing.
Other systems are single point injection and mixers but I do not know too much about them.
A good installer can be difficult to find as certain cars need certain techniques, a good example is mine, you need to get the water for the evaporator from one pair of pipes or it does not run too well.
For Omegas there is a good resource at http://www.omegaowners.com written by myself, a good site for systems is http://www.autogasworldwide.co.uk
If you go the DIY route you need to have good support and know what you are doing, I took a total of 30 hours to convert mine, this includes fitting a tank, fitting pipework and wiring, fitting T pieces into the heater circuit to supply hot water for the evaporator, and fitting injectors to the engine.
Was it worth it?
Yes, I save over £100 on fuel a month and a professional install is around £1800, DIY around £800
Pictures of LPG Conversions
This is an evaporator
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
The price of LPG seems to have increased 25% over the past 2 years. Government don't miss a trick do they.
wildcat2003 28.08.2006 13:45
having a car that runs on LPG, this is an informative and reasonable review
muttleythefrog 20.08.2006 22:53
Response to author. I don't dispute what LPG stands for and I don't dispute that it is greener than some alternatives. What I do say is that there is no such thing as a liquid gas... in the same way there is no such thing as a liquid solid. LPG is a liquid. You didn't explain in the review what makes this fuel greener... and it might be worth doing...as the statistical evidence is available to do so. But what I argue is that, judging from my very naive view of motor cars is that if you downgraded to a lower performance vehicle or indeed got on a pushbike instead then that would be even 'greener'. So what people may say is that your title in comparison to the product are irrational unless looking specifically at a particular vehicle. In addition to the consumer, the cost you advise for installing the conversion is probably sufficient to buy a second hand car that may well save money or 'emmisions' of the same or greater order than you experienced. Remember as a final point, there is a big difference between 'green' and 'greener'... it is significantly greener to drive a 10 tonne truck from London to Edinburgh than fly... but neither could seriously be described as 'green' ways to travel...lol. Pete
Advantages: Extremely luxurious, amazing handling and ride stability for its size, bloody nippy. good top end speed Disadvantages: its big, so not gonna fit it in small parking spaces, bad on MPG. spares and repairs can be costly
KushanFarsight 26.05.2005 ·
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