Ford Flathead on Propane ?? I'm curious if anyone is running propane on their rod. Why I'm asking is when i bought my motor it already had been converted. I have seen people bring in heads for a valve job and the run clean! The owner's Father p***ed on around 10yrs ago and the son didn'y know it ran propane so was putting gas in tank and it wasn't connected to anything saying that it had carb problems and would just crank over not starting so he parked it. Since this was in a Ranch truck (1947) would it be efficent or am i asking for trouble!
I'm building mine just for propane now. Do you have any photos of the parts on the motor? The old fogger that sat on top of the gas carb or in the air cleaner is really outdated. They have dedicated propane carbs that are great, some even have electronic mixture control. Show me what you have and I may be able to tell you more about it.
The Who~~ " The Huh~`The What-a-machingy~~ Just joking I work at a parts house, haven't heard those words for at least 5yrs. Since i picked it up yesterday i really didn't look . Yup I'm miissing ****, maybe i can make it run on solar power ! Ha Ha!!!
To keep it simple... You are closer to running gas than lpg on that motor. That looks like a very old fogger set up, minus the fogger. If you wanted to dedicate it to propane, there are some neat carbs available that would likely use the base of a small 1 or 2 bbl gas carb, but you would need to start from scratch. For the money you'd spend refreshing that system, you'd be better off with new parts. You can even set up "3 dueces" and other multi carb setups to keep a vintage look. Here's some research material... The last one is one guys adventure. http://www.woodward.com/engine/gaseng/gaseng2/streamline.cfm? http://www.hendrixsystems.com/ http://fuelsforum.rasoenterprises.com/index.php http://www.propanecarbs.com/ http://franzh.home.texas.net/ http://www.lngplants.com/carbturbo.htm http://www.propaneguy.com/ http://cars.rasoenterprises.com/index.html http://www.topfuelers.ca/propaneconversions_.htm#Gann%20Products%20Company http://www.wps.com/LPG/index.html#INDEX
I have a late 70s R&C quarterly with a lengthy story on a propane powered 32 roadster w/a turboed, 300 Ford 6 on a cross-country trip. Ak Miller (a big proponent of both turbos and propane) had a hand in it and for the most part it was a very positive article. The big drawback was finding propane suppliers on the road when they needed it.
I think a big part of this drawback was the fact that back then nobody was really using propane that much for anything other than home heating. Didn't BBQ grills and propane powered forklifts only come on strong in the last 10-15 years? I may be wrong....
True, I'm sure availability is much better now. Of course that article was about a cross country trip in 78 . If the car was to be used primarily locally I don't think there would be much problem at all today.
I remember my father converting our 76 F100 to propane. The only problem we had was starting the truck in winter. But with a shot of carb cleaner that did the trick. May do that to my 63 c-10 the way gas prices are going.
These days, every KOA campground and U-Haul dealer has propane. I can get it readily all over Texas and AAA has directories to help. Cold starting is now done by engaging a priming circuit based on engine temp or a manual switch. Give it a short time to dose it with fuel and it works like a choke. The old days where propane made less power than gas died with the fogger systems. Since propane is a gaseous fuel, a fogger would actually displace a portion of it's air capacity with propane,. This reduced the effective cfm of the carb. With today's dedicated propane carbs, the fuel is introduced in the venturi, so the air stream is allowed full capacity. One 570 cfm mixer (carb) will support a mild small block. I plan on 2 of these on a 430 hp sbc. Depending on the source, octane is between 105 & 115, probably depending on the test method. That makes 10.5-11.5 compression on the street easy. Big manifolds like tunnel rams like it because the fuel is gaseous. There are no issues with fuel dropping out of suspension when velocity drops in the manifold, so no puddling and fuel distribution issues.
Worth investigating is compressed natural gas and liquid natural gas;even though your vehicle is already partially set-up to run on propane. Steve (V7)
http://www.gotpropane.com/ is another source for some parts. It is very popular in the rock crawling 4x4 world.
Hey Scotty! We talked about this at the Thirsty Thursday before the Round-Up. I've been running dedicated propane on my /6 '71 D100 for a little over a month, now. The changeover was easy and not too expensive. Franz Hoffman, who Scotty gave a website too, was very helpful. I've got a vacuum leak at the old carb throttle body that is giving my tuning problems, but after that it should be running better. I've got the computer to adjust air/fuel ration, but because of aforementioned leak, that isn't working too well. My biggest problem has been mileage---11mpg on the hwy and as low as 5 around town. I'm hoping having the vacuum leak fixed and the computer installed will improve this. Get a tank from Craigslist or someplace. They're the most expensive things. Oh--and LPG and Propane are the same things, but CNG is a completely different animal--it's stored under very high pressure and the tanks are way expensive. FWIW, Joe
Glad to hear it, Joe! I'll have to catch up with you and take a look. It's my understanding that most mileage issues go back to mixture and tuning. Once you fix your leak, check the O2 sat and see where you're at. I'll bet you have excessive pressure on the vapor hose.
What about dual fuel applications? I picked up one of these at a swap thinking I could use it on my '54 truck. r
Every Schwan's ice cream truck is propane. They would buy some new ones, bring them to our shop and we'd convert them from gas. Had to bump the base timing way up to 22 degs (I think), but they ran fine!
Here's where you break the old lost performance myth. Dual fuel will use a fogger over a carb. This runs ok on gas, but the air is obstructed by the fogger. On propane, the fuel vapor displaces much of the air capacity of the original carb, reducing overall intake flow. For performance (and improved reliability) on propane, the gas carb is tossed and the engine gets propane all the time. The new carb is called a mixer and usually mounts to a normal carb base plate to use that linkage and the ****erflies. They function with a constant velocity diaphram, much like motorcycle carbs of the '70s & '80s. I am using a pair of Impco 425 on a dual 4 bbl intake. One would be enough for a stock V8. Several mfgs make an X-450 that some prefer for V8s. Impco makes several smaller models that would suit 4 & 6 cyl applications. If you are adventureous, small multi carb setups on vintage manifolds could be worked out.
Ok, stupid question time. Which would be most beneficial, Propane or Natural gas? What are the trade-offs? r
I'm amazed some Australians haven't got in on this. LPG is very popular here. Ford even sells a dedicated LPG model from the factory. All the taxis run on it. It is more common with the "street rod" crowd though. I'm not a gas fan, but here the octane is good and it's cheap. The more modern the mixers the better, and can be used with blowers. Dual fuel not so good because you have to tune for two different fuels and the compromise means you can't optimise for either. That's it, I'm g***ed out. So where are the Aussie gas heads...?
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