LPG conversation
 

Does anyone recommend lpg conversions?

If you do reasonable millage and want to save on running costs then yes.

I run two LPG vehicles. The best value option is to buy a car which is already fitted with a good quality system. My XC70 has 3.2 6 cylinder engine with Prins VSI 2 conversion which works very well. Currently paying 50 to 60p / litre which is around half the petrol equivalent. Smallish tank in place of spare wheel so only get 190 miles between fill ups but as I pass two LPG stations on my daily commute its no great hardship. Still got a full tank of petrol so never going to get stranded due to lack of a fill up.

I second buying the car already 'conversationed' You'd have to be doing galactic miles for a conversation to pay. And even then, if the idea is to save money, you can still buy the car already done. There's heaps of cars, even Volvo factory gasified cars to choose from, and the LPG kit doesn't add any value to the car used. So make hay out of some halfwit refusing to think, and buy his car.

Instead of saving from day one, go the halfwit route and do, or pay somebody to do all the work. Only to find that two years on your car later, just when you get to break-even, you've trashed not just that cost, but a heap of depreciation too. And to get to break-even, you've put another 20,000+ on your car, with all the unfolding risk in doing that rolled-up. So you never get ahead.


So:
'Does anyone recommend lpg conversations? '

If they do... there has to be a very sensible reason. Perhpas you do galactic miles, will keep it despite the reg plate for 10-12 years, and run the proper gas, not LPG. Else, from the sort of fool that hasn't worked this out, you buy it done. They don't ever seem to join-the-dots, (witness this forum) and fortunately for me when I'm looking for a car, there's always plenty of them.

Classic! :D

I bought a Jeep Cherokee a couple of years back, already converted. Two reasons, first i'd always fancied one, second i wanted to try an LPG fuelled car and the thought of converting mine only to find i couldn't get on with it or the savings wouldn't be enough to warrant it seemed silly.

As such the Jeep was a good choice for me as it fulfilled two desires.

It had allegedly been converted professionally. I had to fit a new control system to it shortly after buying it and let's just say if it was a professional he (or she!) should be struck off and not even trusted with a wheelbarrow!

However the fact remained i got on with using LPG and because of the much cheaper running costs, the Jeep became the "weapon of choice" for any long distance trips.
As such i first converted my 827 Coupé to a single point system not long after getting the Jeep, mainly with secondhand bits and pieces. All in all, it cost me about £300 to do the conversion, using mainly secondhand bits but some new bits like the filler etc.

Next on the list is my 760 estate. That's getting an SGi Zavoli system in the near future then my 827 Sterling is having a Diego G3 SGi system.
The Zavoli is a rebadged AEB King and the Diego is a badge-engineered Stag 300-6 system.
I've also been gifted a Prins system (think it the VSI but i'd have to check) by a friend that can't use it as he's only got a 4-cylinder - well he could use it in theory but he's already got the wiring etc there for a King system and is considering upgrading to a Stag in any case.

That aside, once the Volvo and Sterling are sorted, my Coupé will be upgraded to SGi (Sequential Gas injection) with the Prins system.

All my cars are "keepers" and to be fair, the cost of having it done "professionally" is prohibitive. With that in mind, it made it viable for me for the simple reason i was able to buy the kits secondhand, fit it myself (with some help from friends along the way) and reap the benefits.

If your car isn't a "keeper" or you're not comfortable either fitting it yourself and with using mainly secondhand bits to reduce the cost then LPG probably isn't for you, unless you buy a car already converted.

Certainly you can buy new kits from the likes of :

http://www.lpgshop.co.uk/

http://tinleytech.co.uk/

and others and many will give you support over the phone, online/email and similar.

Obviously buying new will push the initial cost up but then you've got the knowledge everything was new when fitted and should have a reasonably long life time.
Nothing lasts forever, however even going down the secondhand route you should have saved a reasonable amount before having to renew anything unless you're very unlucky.

Best bet if you're unsure is buy a car already converted. You can find your local LPG stations with a recent price on here :

http://filllpg.co.uk/index.php?page=home.php

The smartphone app also includes a mechanism to find your nearest LPG station if you're not local and will even navigate there for you from wherever you happen to be.

All food for thought there! Final decision is yours, an added bonus is you can get rid of the catalytic converter and pass the MoT without it! ;) :D

I have a kit (brand new) that was going to go on my 940, but as that was wrecked (not by me) I will probably fit it to my 4cyl pickup, as my V70 is a 5-pot. I reckoned that it would pay for itself in less than a year, a bit better return than solar panels!

A vehicle should fail if it was built with a cat which is subsequently removed.

If you present a vehicle for MOT as running on gas, it will have emissions tested at idling speed rather than fast idle which can highlight other issues. For one of my vehicles, I know from experience it will fail emissions test when running on gas (due to the different test criteria used), but it will fly thru on petrol. When I had the LPG system tuned to give perfect emissions, it was completely gutless so the mapping had to be tweaked to give the best compromise in terms of performance and economy.

Not if the cat was removed because it was converted to gas.

If presented for test running on petrol then it would fail but running on gas, it will pass.

It's the law and in the MoT Testers "bible" and my tester didn't bat an eyelid at the lack of cat, only at 5.8% CO at idle - i'd forgotten to retune it for summer LPG instead of winter so had a slightly rich mixture. Passed at 0.01%, NO CAT!!! ;) :D

I can't seem to locate any official documents to confirm the statement about the cat not being required. This is from government website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...cked-at-an-mot

Section 2.5 states the test checks for "a catalyst isn't missing where one was fitted as standard"

It's not that easy to find, that's why!

This is the MoT Testers manual, section 7.3 explains a lot of it :

https://docs.google.com/viewerng/vie...-4-5-and-7.pdf

I'll try and find a more "reader friendly" version of "you don't need a cat if you convert to LPG" but i have seen it online from an official source, i just can't find it at the moment. I've had a long day and no dinner yet but i will find it.