LPG Gas conversion kit for your car.

85

By earnestshub

Why convert to LPG?

LPG or liquid Petroleum Gas is a cleaner burning cheaper fuel than gasoline.

It is easier and safer to mine and drill for as well, because we have an enormous amounts of it within easy mining parameters.

LPG will work on almost any make or model car with a simple LPG fitting kit.

However fitting an auto with gas requires a licensed L.P gas fitter to ensure safety issues are addressed.

The gas conversion kit consists of:

  • A gas tank
  • Gas lines
  • A heated gas regulator, (several types depending on engine size, type of induction etc.)
  • A multi way valve and wiring with switch for dashboard.
  • Some hoses and clips.
  • Some units are simpler than others, but little modification is required to fit gas to most vehicles.

L.P.G. Conversion kit.

LPG complete conversion kit including tank.
See all 5 photos
LPG complete conversion kit including tank.

The problem with petroleum.

Ever since the Alaskan oil spill in March 1989 in the pristine Prince William Sound known as the Exxon Valdez oil spill it has become apparent that something needs to be done about oil transportation and oil spills in general.

The collapse of the Deep-water Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico has demonstrated the risks of mining in the deeper ocean for oil.

To a large extent the extremes of deep drilling in ocean locations and associated risk with these locations needs to be reduced.

Gas is a much better alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel for many very valid reasons.

We have got plenty of it for starters. No dwindling reserves of gas. Their is plenty to go around.

The amount of gas available in the world is astonishing just from known reserves.

These reserves do not rely on oil wells, in fact much of it comes alone.

Petroleum gas can be extracted from oil, but the difference is LPG is obtained from two other sources.

1. Gas wells.

Typically just produce gas alone. It will still need refining, and other gasses will be harvested during the process

2. Condensate wells.

This is usually called non associate gas, it may have other gases and little or no crude oil associated with it.

3.Oil wells.

This gas is usually called associated gas which is either separate or dissolved in the oil.

Before being refined gas may contain ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes.

Raw natural gas contains water vapour, hydrogen sulphide (H2S), carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, and other compounds that need refining, but the process is not as involved or difficult as producing gasoline from crude oil..

5 gas analyser

This 5 gas analyser will tell you exactly what emission is coming out your exhaust pipe
This 5 gas analyser will tell you exactly what emission is coming out your exhaust pipe

Liquid Petroleum Gas as fuel.

Let's be honest here. Gasoline is still by far the best fuel when it comes to the amount you need to carry for the miles you are going to travel. Diesel fuel could be compared favourably, but has as many if not more long term problems than petroleum or gasoline as a fuel.

Gasoline can be carried in a moulded tank, shaped to fit the car.

To maintain structural integrity gas cylinders must be round, so awkward to locate within a vehicle design or to fit afterwards.

Unlike LPG where you can only fill the tank to about 80% capacity, with petroleum you can fill to the top.

Petroleum or Gasoline has been a hard fuel to beat when it comes to cost/storage/miles travelled/engine longevity.

LPG Conversion.

To convert from petrol to gas, most conversions keep the old fuel tank and use both fuels.

The kit to change over to gas is quite simple as you can see. The problem currently is that the gas tank has to have a home.

With sedans, this usually means losing boot space. Quite a lot of boot space and an obstruction to your entrance to the car if it has split seats with boot access as many sedans do.


Cost of Conversion to gas.

As you can see, there is not much to a gas conversion kit! Most governments are encouraging vehicle owners to convert to LPG and the subsidy in Australia leaves only a couple of hundred dollars to pay. The cost of installations is far too high in my opinion, and the government at least our government is getting taken to the cleaners in my view.

The tanks are still quite expensive, but the rest of it is not. Despite the kit being a reasonable and simple process, the labour cost of conversion can be reduced considerably and the conversion is simple on many vehicles, yet the cost still remains the same.

How to encourage the use of gas as fuel?

When speaking to a friend of mine today, he mentioned a scheme where he had his car converted to gas without paying for it up front. They took the cost out of a levy on his gas for 15 months which paid for the conversion in full.

This would seem to be a good way to pay for conversions, as it is affordable.

The gas is not quite as efficient as gasoline, but much cheaper. The extra levy is not noticed, as the cost of running on gas is so much cheaper.

The picture is another reminder why we need to scale down on crude oil exploration in deep water.

The shipping and general transport, mining and lower exhaust emissions, cost to motorists and future supply, LPG has few if any peers as a fuel that will work in the 600 million vehicles (and rapidly growing) in the world today.


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Have you considered converting to gas?

  • Yes but have not had it fitted yet.
  • Yes I have been converted!
  • No but I will consider it
  • No my vehicle can't be converted.
  • Not unless someone else pays for it!
See results without voting

Comments

scarytaff profile image

scarytaff Level 4 Commenter 2 years ago

A very informative hub. Well done.

agvulpes profile image

agvulpes Level 3 Commenter 2 years ago

This is good information about LPG conversion. I have been told that the engine has to be modified if a car was converted to run on LPG?

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 2 years ago

Thank you scarytaff. I have a lot more to add, but hoped this would interest some anyway, as it does give some reasons why gas could be a best alternative fuel.

The biggest reason I can think of to use gas, is that it will run in ICEs with minor modifications.

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 2 years ago

Thank you for the comment agvulpes, petrol or gasoline does have a small amount of lubrication in it which keeps valves and valve seats from running too dry in many early motors.

When converted to gas these types of motors may benefit from a very small quantity of upper cylinder lubricant when running on petrol, (dual fuel conversion which is the norm) and should be run on petrol (gasoline)

On some other motors it is possible to inject it directly into the manifold.

I am not too sure how much it does affect a well tuned motor in good condition anyway. Perhaps cylinder head life is only reduced on some of them.

Hello, hello, profile image

Hello, hello, 2 years ago

A very interesting and informative hub. Thank you.

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 2 years ago

You are most welcome Hello, hello.

Candie V profile image

Candie V Level 4 Commenter 2 years ago

You always bring new information! LPG would be something I would love to learn more about. Thanks Earn! By the way.. you're at 97 and it's about time you hit 100!!

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 2 years ago

Thanks Candie V! LPG is looking better as time passes. We need to find a way to convert to gas which is cheaper. I think we can do that.

My profile score may be stuck at 97 I think. It goes down every day when America is sleeping it seems.

Maybe it's because of the au IP address. I would like 100 very much better.

I also have a couple of dud hubs that I like and have kept..... I hope you are having a great day!

Sa`ge profile image

Sa`ge 2 years ago

great information Earnest, i do not have an auto and do no plan on it in the future, i wish all cars were either solo or electric or both and all gas or oil were in the ground were it all belongs. we have some people running electric autos here and they well. anyways, great hub, thank you :) ~aloha~

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 24 months ago

Thank you for the comment Sa'ge. I just hope we can convert as many gasoline cars as we can as quickly as possible.

Eileen Hughes profile image

Eileen Hughes Level 3 Commenter 23 months ago

good informative hub. We did our ford with gas and then we did our Nissan with DGas as it was deisel. They both worked great. Although we went too far with the Nissan we turboed it and everything was brilliant. After about 1500 k's around australia, the g/box let go so all the money we spent went down the drain.

It was cheaper to buy another car even though we had spend many thousands of dollars and only got$4000 trade in.

One big lesson learned the hard way. But yes gas it great although out on the nullabor some towns to this day do not supply it at their garages. thanks for sharing this fellow Aussie.

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 23 months ago

Thanks Eileen. Gas certainly is the way to go for cost. The Nullabor is a big place. I am not too surprised that there are not many gas fill stations. Fortunately most gas conversions are dual fuel, so I assume you had to switch back to petrol for a while.

Paul 17 months ago

I am in Western Australia and the convertors rip us off even with the government subsidy about $1500 still to pay.

As for the car runs like shit no power less a quarter the range than petrol and when the time comes to change the tank at 10 years will rip the bloody thing out and run on petrol.

Also with the super market chains controlling the garages petrol is cheaper anyway and I run my car on petrol most of the time now since they control the pricing of LPG

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 17 months ago

Thanks for the comment Paul, you certainly have had a bad experience with gas installers. The car running badly is not too surprising to me for a couple of reasons. Some models and makes can be a lot harder to tune for gas than others, and your installer sounds like yet another incompetent mechanic, the world is full of them!

A consideration for the install price, is that some vehicles are anything but standard to fit up, and the subsidy will not cover the extra time or components.

If you have a mixture control in the system as some have, you may need to find it and give it a tweek. With a well tuned conversion the consumption should be about the same and performance likewise.

bjstroup profile image

bjstroup 17 months ago

A friend of mine had a small truck that ran off of LPG gas in the 90's. The Vehicle did have a few minor problems at first with it's running, but after some work with the engine components a lot of the poor drivability and power output was corrected. It is a large undertaking, but was worth while in the long run. What we found is that by the nature of LPG gas the equivalent petrol fuel would have an octane rating around 110 to 120, with a standard compression of 8.5:1.0 that the factory pistons gave with the 66cfm combustion chambers of the heads we had a loss of power. We went to a dome top dropped forged piston (overkill I know) and upped the compression to a more comfortable 11.5:1.0 without having to do any major head reworking. The subsequent effect was that the car ran much smoother, had a better torque range, and was more efficient as it was better able to utilize the fuel we were putting into the cylinder. The major downside with this was that having the dual system meant that we had to use not only a higher octane petrol, but we did experience a noticeable drop in petrol fuel efficiency. I'm sure with a little more work we would have been able to work out the petrol side of the engine, but as it was we felt that running almost entirely off of LPG was a much cheaper alternative considering all the work we had put in up to that point.

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 17 months ago

Thanks for the comment bjstroup. Interesting process you went through with the gas fit. I find the newer cars run very well on gas, but some of the early ones needed a tuning valve that could be adjusted which was a darn nuisance at times and these systems did not hold tune at all well.

himagain 7 months ago

I'm just looking into the LPG thing and am surprised at the vehement comments one finds about it.

On balance, from my research so far, the idiotic Government decision not to make it virtually mandatory for all vehicles over 1000CC (and thus meet our idiotic programme about Carbon REduction for peanuts) and stop wasting money on importing petrol and deadly diesel is insane when I see that they are actually phasing it out!

There really should be a penalty for all new vehicles over 1000cc NOT having LPG as of now, and a special stop-the-ripoff program for after-market installs.

Kits should be open-market and installations a flat $1,000.

earnestshub profile image

earnestshub Hub Author 7 months ago

Good comment himagain. Many of the conversions are dead simple now, and an averaged price of $1000 dollars an install should be possible in my opinion as well.

I see Holden and Ford both have a straight gas option.... They should all be on gas in my view.

Bill Haselhorst 4 months ago

I am ready to convert. Where to I get the kit and now how to change my vehicle? Thanks billhaselhorst@gmail.com

Ololade 4 months ago

With the ever increasing cost of petrol worlwide, i think we should go the way of LPG. Please how can i get the kit as i live in Nigeria. I will also need basic tutoring on the installation procedure, you can reach me at ololadeomolola@yahoo.com

Vladimir Goldberg 2 months ago

I need kit for LP gas Chevy S-10 4.3 L 2004.

Thanks

vgoldberg@cox.net

Big RAY 2 months ago

I live in Louisiana in the U.S. One of the problems that is holding people back from converting to LPG is that there are limited fueling stations around . I am a licensed

LPG dealer and can fill a vehicle bottle as well and as easily as a grill bottle. GAsoline today is $3.85 per gal and Propane(LPG) is on average $2.85per gal. I'm not sure on the consumption/mpg difference is but it would have to be drastic to not have a Dollar a galsavings add up. By the most places that fill propane bottles for grills ect can sell and fill a vehicle mounted tank as well. In La you must purchase an annual tax stamp to run propane in a vehicle cost $110.00 and no tax at the fueling plant.

Ahmed 3 weeks ago

Im looking LPG kit for marcary out board engine 250EFI boat if it's work please send me email alhur3004u@hotmail.com

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