As I drive a diesel car, last night I was chatting with my brother in law who's got a Daewoo Lanos 1.6 with LPG fitted. He was telling me on full tank £20 he achieves around 400 miles. I was really surprised to find that out because there's no way any diesel car would even do 300 miles for that money.
What I really want to know is how good or bad it is to drive an LPG car comapred to a diesel one on motorways.
Also if LGP could achieve such remarkable MPG then why aren't manufacturers pre-fitting them on their cars?
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Also if LGP could achieve such remarkable MPG then why aren't manufacturers pre-fitting them on their cars?
One reason will be that there aren't enough fuel stations selling LPG to attract enough customers wanting an LPG variant.
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L\'escargot.
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"there's no way any diesel car would even do 300 miles for that money."
Of course not. Diesel is 95p a litre LPG is about 40p. Based on 40p for the LPG - 400 miles is about 36 mpg - which isn't remarkable, but the cheap LPG makes it look so.
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Lpg cars have to run on petrol until they're up to temperature......That needs to be factored in if the car is used for short journeys.
LPG is a byproduct of the petrol refining industry, no petrol = no LPG
Reduced boot space due to the fact an extra tank has to be installed somewhere.
LPG systems shoul checking for safety a regular intervals (12 months?)
Petrol fuel injectors tend to block and give poor spray patterns due to not having enough petrol through them to keep them clean
Poor availability in some areas
The ingition system must be kept in A1 condition to prevent the engine backfiring and damaging the inlet side of the engine.
A 4.2 Range Rover doing a high mileage with tanks fitted underneath will have a huge advantage over running on petrol only
A small hatchback that does mainly short journeys would'nt be cost effective
Just my 2p
;O)
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While there are factory-made LPG cars, there are very few on the roads. Technical support may be very hard to come by, and any car with an aftermarket LPG fit will be unwarranted by the mfr
I can see they might make sense for a new purchase by a company fleet for high mileage cars, but to date the large fleets have not voted for them.
Quite popular in Oz I think?
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>Quite popular in Oz I think?
Very popular in Australia. Almost all taxis have it. My employers fleet use it extensively. The latest Ford Falcon's with dedicated LPG drive beautifully. There is no discernable loss of power compared with petrol.
Australian Federal govt offers a $2000 grant for LPG conversion and the WA state govt gives another $1000 making it almost free. There are lots of big sixes with LPG conversions but you seldom see smaller cars done. It is possible but people don't do it.
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Lpg cars have to run on petrol until they're up to temperature......That needs to be factored in if the car is used for short journeys.
Not true with the current systems, in the UK they'll start on LPG in most weather.
Rest of it's true although backfiring on modern systems is no more likely than petrol.
If you remap the ignition to take advantage of LPG's greater octane rating then they can run very well. RPI do a dual ignition timing kit for the Rover V8 specifically for this.
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LPG seems to have fallen out of favour with government:
The grants for LPG conversions are no longer.
Kens proposed changes to the CONgestion charge will see exemptions for approved-converted LPG cars phased out.
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Not true with the current systems in the UK they'll start on LPG in most weather. Rest of it's true although backfiring on modern systems is no more likely than petrol.
Current systems costing the thick end of £2K, which would take a while to recoup the installation costs back on the Daewoo mentioned in the original post.
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Current systems costing the thick end of £2K which would take a while to recoup the installation costs back on the Daewoo mentioned in the original post.
The problem seems to be the initial premium for LPG cars over petrol. If an LPG converted car cost £2k more than a petrol car, and a diesel cost only £1k more than a petrol, which would you buy? Especially when you consider that an LPG-converted car is modified from the maker's spec, and as such may present a few warranty issues, the diesel wins hands down.
It's a different matter if you drive a Range Rover 4.6 litre, 20k a year, and want to cut your fuel bills. But when buying a new(ish) medium-sized car for normal use, LPG just doesn't make financial sense. Indeed diesel doesn't either if your annual mileage is below about 10k a year. For the £2000 cost of conversion, you could buy rather a lot of petrol (around 2107 litres at 94.9p, that's 42 fills of a 50-litre tank). 2107 litres is approx 468 gallons. At 40mpg (average consumption for a 1.6 litre petrol), you'd have to cover over 18,000 miles before the LPG would start paying for itself. Do the sums for yourself and you'll get the same answer each time - LPG is not worth it.
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LPG was in vogue as a clean fuel in some countries, who offered tax incentives by way of lower fuel tax or subsidies to convert petrol cars to LPG.
The mantle of "environmentally friendly fuel" is now being taken over by bioethanol and biodiesel, so the subsidies are now moving to these - whereas LPG used to enjoy a tax rebate in Ireland that let it sell at 85c/litre vs 117c for petrol and 110c for diesel, there's now a 50% VRT reduction offered on bioethanol-ready a Saab 95 (there's also a flexi-fuel Focus 1.8LX offered in the Irish market, but Ford's website isn't specific about whether - or how much of - a VRT reduction is being passed on to the buyer).
I suspect its only a matter of time before tax discounts are removed from LPG and passed on to biofuels.
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The two are not mutually exclusive. Diesels can be converted to LPG.
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This page www.iwemalpg.com/Diesel_LPG.htm says that it's not legal to use LPG in a diesel system. Is it true, and if so, why?
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I ran a K reg 1.6 75 bhp 8 valve Astra for nearly 100k miles when I was commuting 135 miles a day in the time before I retired and was paying myself.
The system was completely reliable.I replaced a couple of HT leads which caused some backfires-no damage done.
The car had done 62.5k when I bought it at 10 years old-1 careful owner!
The conversion cost me £1150.
Fuel consumption was about 15-20% worse on LPG, but it was costing me 4p/mile for fuel.
The Vauxhall 1.6 8valve seemed perfectly suited to LPG-it did not lose performance-so I assumed the valves were OK.
The oil stayed bright and clean looking between changes-I admit to a minimum servicing regime-most of the miles were cruising at ca 69pph on the M-way.
It saved me money compared to a petrol or diesel car-8p/mile overall costs-including depreciation.
I sold the car for £400 to a guy nearby who ran it for another year without problems, and then sold it on.
I think the old Astras were great.
If you do a big mileage LPG can make sense if you buy a good old car, not a gas guzzler, and get it converted by an independent who knows what he is doing.
I think politically the Govt took away the subsidy on conversons because it was costing them in lost taxes.
In Brum there were always lots of Asian taxi drivers queueing up at the pumps at Listers Autogas-they must have worked out it paid them!
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This page www.iwemalpg.com/Diesel_LPG.htm says that it's not legal to use LPG in a diesel system. Is it true and if so why?
I don't know. I just did a Google search and found lots of articles and places doing diesel conversions, especially popular for trucks.
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