lpg conversions

[lukestrugnell]

Does anyone know why lpg has not taken off in SA as a fuel source?
I know in the Uk and in Hong Kong etc many vehicles are powered by lpg and it is a lot cheaper to run!

[pietpetoors]

I do not think we know much about it. All I know about it was that one company in Krugersdorp converted his vehicles to LPG and all I remember about it was these bakkies driving around with the huge gas tanks on the roof.

Is the tank big, bulky and heavy?
How much more cost effective is LPG? Especially now that they cannot even produce enough of it in South Africa to keep the Cadac stofies burning.

[Riceburner]

You loose power with lpg.

[lukestrugnell]

Check out this site:
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/articl ... _id=100108
(watch the wrap)
answer to why we dont have lpg here

[Arri]

They do it in the UK : http://www.arunautogas.co.uk/Toyota_Hilux_Vigo_2006.htm and as you know many forklifts and industrial vehicles in SA runs on
gas it's enviroment friendly but they make it so damn expensive to prevent people running on gas that it's not really viable for private vehicles and I think it was
out lawed for private use way back in the fuel crisis years when they hiked the petrol price promised it will pay for sasol and make us independant from oil imports for the future just like all the empty promises politicians uses to foil everybody to accept their crap.Almost any internal combustion engine can be converteted to gas with a small modification, just like diesels can be converted to run on sunflower oil and pretty much any other bio fuel, but there are still alot of fossil fuel reserves around the world to be sold at billions of dollars so they only stand to loose if alternative fuel, batteries and son become a viable option.
And even parafine can be used but it gets linked to the petrol price to prevent large scale conversion. In the end it's all about the money and countries like South Africa are easy to exploit because the people swallows evrything politicians feed them, accept weekly exuberant fuel hikes which raises prices accross the bord and think somebody with 50 illegitemate children all over makes a great leader and that it's the consumers fault we have have loadshedding because we go to bed too late and we should be punnished for not taking cold showers. Not mentioning that big industry can use the same amount Killowat electricity in a day as do the whole of Joburg's residential areas use in a month, but still we are the culprits and should go to bed earlier install expensive solar power systems and go back to our great grandfathers days of laterns ,candles and coal stoves, forget emission controll and so on....

[dalkill]

I'm fitting mine today.

There is a place in CT selling it for R7 / liter. Afrox selling it at +-R9 per liter if you individual - stay clear of them - not only they ripoffs, but they simply ignore you messages.

I figured out, even with 10-15% loss in performance, I can still save a bit at R7 per liter - something like 38 to 50 c/km . I email another oke from nissan4x4.co.za, who is running his nissan for a couple of years now on LPG. he said it took some 30000 km to recover the costs of the installation.

And, the dept of energy confirmed they will be putting a regulation on pricing of gas towards the end of this year, which might bring down the pricing even more + if you have a business, you can claim vat back on the gas.

Just a pity there are not alot of lpg filling points.

[Arri]

Sounds interesting

Let us know once you have the average consumption e.g. km/l of LP-gas and how many/what capacity tanks you've fitted?
Sound like a great opportunity to become a retailer open lp gas filling stations; I'm just scared that once it becomes a viable option and more people go for that,
the goverment will link it to petrol price again when they regulate it ...

Regards
Arri

[dalkill]

thought about uncle trevor wising up and getting their finger in that pie, but with the government trying to make gas cheaper to boost home consumption, they in abit of a catch 22. sure they can tax the autogas diff, but what's to stop an oke selling LPG filling up my car and ringing it up as gas for cooking. - we south africans are inovative that way

[dalkill]

I drove the beast to work this morning, going to fill her up with gas

damn that 2.2's big ass is slow.
Anyhow, she definately purrs better with gas.
No more of the flat spots at low revs (maybe that was juts my dizzy).
Definately starts much easier. Hardly turned the key and she be idling.

Will be going to De Dam this weekend.
+-500km round trip. Prob wont make it on my 72 liters of LPG , but I'll see how far she can go till she bone dry.
Prob not a good comparison to fuel, and I have not even drove her on an full tank of petrol, but 'm basing my comparison on the widely accepted figure of 16L / 100km for the 2.2.

Will report back on monday, if I'm not too much in my cone

[dalkill]

well the big fishing weekend is now behind me, with a round trip of about 570 km
seven burly okes and big trailer filled with all our food and fishing goods...

Ran on LPG from CT, and had to settle for crawling up sir lowry pass in second gear doing about 40. Busses were passing me. I could not even catch up with 18 wheeler 100 meters ahead of me.

The LPG definately has less power. I got about 395km on 72L of gas. There was some backfiring with the gas. Still have to enquire about that. This was heavy load going there, and some offroad dirt driving, and a bit of sand driving (2nd 4H). Was quite impressed. only had to engage 4L once when had to make a tight turn on sand and thus momentum and slight incline was too slow for 4H. I'm sure I used 4L much more with my previous 2.2.

On the way home I ran out of LPG and switch to petrol. Could smell the petrol come thru, and more power was at hand. Load was lighter with ALOT less food, and fewer sinkers
What was worring though was the constant smell of petrol after that. Whenever we stopped, one could really smell it. Checked for any leaks, but none visible. Another oke with a nissan who has LPG kit , said he travelled with timing light, to set timing when switching to petrol. Could this have been the cause of strong petrol smell that is was to rich, or flooding?

anyway, can't really compare it to petrol. Driving condition on LPG was different than petrol. based on normal 16L / 100km for petrol, I saved about 30c / km. Now with the proposed price regulation of LPG, and the tax I can claim back on LPG, this could increase substantially.

[lukestrugnell]

So Dalkil
Hows the lpg performing now you have had it a while?
is it worth it?
Luke

[Tinman]

only go to LPG if you have wats known as a full conversion, this is where all valves get changed to SS because most standard ones will be destroyed by the lpg being burnt, and ur engine can die with in about 80k kms, other wise now days you loose no performance with the new vapour systems, just you have to fill up more regular because you get less off a tank because you use 40% more.

[Bfreesani]

Tinman, I really don't think you loose that much. We were actually up on power in a big way on the diesel engines.

Petrols are down slightly, but the saving comes at the "pump" when LPG was over 3 bucks cheaper than petrol (not the case anymore)....and as a fuel, business could still claim back VAT which gave them a further 14% money saving

I was more interested in the diesel conversions as that's what a drive, and taking the really basic approach with a standard gas cylinder and just dumping into the air intake as an additive, the power goes up in a big way. The affect is the same as an instant inter cooler as the gas cools the charge intake, the second advantage is that the 1st generation diesel that I drive is known to be around 40% inefficient as can be seen by the amount of smoke that comes out the exhaust(unburned diesel). LPG causes a greater percentage of the diesel to be burned and hence the fuel saving and additional power gained.

Other advantage is the clean running of the fuel. In petrol cars, guys have reported 50K km between oil changes, and the oil looks like you put in yesterday. In diesels it becomes a problem as the scrubbing effect you get goes against the principle of lubrication you get from your fuel, so you have to be very careful.

And it is being careful where the SA government lost us with the regulations they slapped on the use of LPG. Only approved and very expensive "dispensers" were allowed to be used. A diesel pump with LPG conversion was retailing at around 16K plus installation .... I wanted it progressive, nothing besides the 16K route could give it to me legally.

I wanted the bottle under the car the same as the tank (not possible according to law)... If you don not have a certified installation you can not fill up at a depot. Besides that, we only have 2 depots in our town, about 40Km to drive to fill up....

Regulation stuffed it up for us here...

BUT and now I better get ready to duck.... on diesel motors there is a replacement that will give you just as much power gains, runs cooler, and helps the environment and improves fuel consumption by up to 25%, and that is HHO...

The threads are here and on many other sites, and I don't want to go off topic on this thread now.

Getting ready to hide , happy reading

[Tinman]

yeah on diesels its way better, my dads got it on his landy and hyou really notice the difference, and we have a family friend who does the conversions and he has it on his diesel ute and loves the performance upgrade, but he wont do any none full conversion on petrols because it never lasts unless its a late model car.

[wayne@lgc]

Hi guys to all your quires have been answered as what I can see the aidc did a pilot project for the taxis up in jhb so the good news is there is filling stations around key areas around jhb .and have don a conversion my self it was done by Bosch services team diesel jet park it set me back 15k .but was well worth it they have a great new fail safe product more performance and more or less the same efficacy as on petrol you can phone Pieter 0742933005 and I only pay R8.82 per l to fill up as due to R13.70

[Hoppy]

LPG was originally used in forklifts, mainly indoors because of the low emissions.

The emission laws in most countries (Not ours) prohibits you to use a vehicle without a catalytic converter and emission levels are lowered almost every year. If you own an older vehicle in these countries, the only way to run it is on LPG, the conversion is not designed to save money or increase (or even maintain) performance.

When LPG is injected into a Diesel engine, it hops up the performance and cools the combustion, if you add some Nitrous oxide with that, you even get more. We've just fitted a Methanol/Water injection kit to a Turbo diesel with good results.

[Thabogrobler]

In die 70's het my Pa sy Audi op LPG gery en baie goeie resultate gekry.

Toe el laas gekyk het, het daar nog 2 tanks by hom gele.

[AM Racing]

There are very clever systems out there that run in conjuction with your oem management system using your lambda sensor for a fueling reference and switching over between fuel and gas seemlessly. Looked at bringing them in but the problem was the difference between LPD and autogas.