The Camaro Club (UK)

The price of LPG is ever increasing, so is it still worth the conversion?

Petrol prices can't stay as they are forever, they've been fairly static for the last three years, which is great, but it's probably not going to last. LPG seems like a potentially viable option, as I intend to run my Camaro as a daily driver, and I often travel 40 miles or more daily in the line of work. Before I get my head into the arithmetic involved with how many miles I have to do before a conversion becomes viable, I'd like to know if it's been done already, or if it's even possible.

Thanks.

Okay, changed my mind. It was the drink talking.

Assuming I can get 18mpg from petrol, and 12mpg from LPG, I would need to cover 32,500 miles, and well over £10,000 in money, before it paid for itself.

Petrol: 32500 miles, 18mpg, £1.34/l = £10999

LPG: 32500 miles, 12mpg, £0.77/l = £9480
Plus £1500 for conversion. Total is £10980


Not worth the hassle. Taking it in for two weeks, all that extra weight, extra stuff to go wrong, all so that over thirty thousand miles down the line I might save myself nineteen quid.

£19 saving after 32,500 miles? doesn't seem worth it does it

Perhaps the future is a mixed KERS / hybrid system? I reckon that is going to be the next aftermarket vehicle boom industry - fitting some form of hybrid system to cars that haven't come with it from factory. Have been thinking about this for a while... When cruising on the motorway, sat in traffic, stop, start, waiting at traffic lights, why not utilise the hybrid system. Have an on off switch so that you can still enjoy the sound of your car when you want, but when on your daily commute or something, you can lower overall fuel consumption by not burning fuel when it's not required. I wonder if you can use a turbo compressor but modified to be used to spin a neodymium magnet based generator (non contact system = no resistance) or similar, to utilise the exhaust gases to charge the system, alongside regenerative braking etc. Just some ideas, based around some of the new F1 technology as well as the new models of sports hybrids out there. Hate the idea of having a solely electric car, so anything that can be done increase the mpg's and lower the amount of fuel consumed personally and globally but still enjoying the sound and experience etc has my vote. Seeing some of the claims for the newer cars mpg's does give me some hope... lots of details etc to be worked out before aftermarket conversions are mainstream but it may be the way forward?

And of course there's the whole fuel evap system thing... 3,000 or similar miles on a tank of gas scenario...

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I think the near future is stuff like Ford's Ecoboost.


I will stick with my big inline sixes and V eights for now - I'm not perfect but I'm more interesting than a Honda Jazz.

Why would your car only do 12mpg with LPG? Technically LPG if set up right is 5% less efficient than fuel... which is unnoticeable.

And if your car is only doing 18mpg, it needs looking at, unless that was just an example? In our house hold over the years we have had 4 LPG cars, Some V8, some Inline 4 All average the same MPG as petrol give or take 1 or 2. and the cars where used for various different driving types. from urban to motorways. At the moment we have a 1.8 Astra LPG, cost my dad 22quid to fill it and he can do 240 miles and still has some left over.

It averages around 33mpg. Which is about the same as petrol.

Problem Ive noticed(amongst a lot of friends and family) is most people with lpg (and American cars in general) don't have a clue about setting things up properly.

I shall be LPG'ing mine this year, but that's due to getting between 3-400bhp out the engine and hopefully running a lot higher compression ratio to make use of the higher octane rating LPG has.

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On such an engine, it can only be a single-point system, which can be up to 35% less efficient depending on the engine, and with an engine like the L03 TBI it's probably going to be pretty bad.

18mpg is a ball-park figure based on real-world examples as found on fuelly.com

Just drill straight into the manifold tubes and have it as sequential.

_________________
http://www.cubicinches.co.uk - for all displacement petrol heads in the UK!

I run LPG on my S10 Blazer and did my own conversion on my 5.7 92 Chevy Dayvan. I loose at most 2 miles per gallon on LPG and dont even notice the difference on the Blazer which actually runs better on gas. The conversion cost me about £740 doing it myself and I had to pay an engineer £75 to pass the installation fit for purpose or DVLA and insurance company will not recognise it. I'm thinking of towing to Spa in October and its only 50p a litre there so way to go!

BTW both engines have single point injection. My mate wired it into the loom to switch off the injectors but it was simple enough and works well.