For some reason a bunch of guys in Oz have these and I've heard good things... What's the general opinion of propane conversion? From what i've read it looks like your fuel system is actually a lot simpler afterwards... As far as a fuel gauge for LP goes these guys say their gauges can work off of a pressure sensor: http://www.thehoffmangroup.com/aurora/product.l***o?prodinc=gauges They're apparantly programmable but does anyone have experience using a pressure sensor that could be wired up to those type of gauges? How about where to get one? TIA
all I know I learned from forklifts. I think the parts ,regulators and such are pretty pricey.I don't think there is any fuel savings unless you can do it without road use taxes.
I have some experience with propane conversions. They rock as long as you don't try to go dual fuel. The best idea is to pick propane or gasoline and tune the motor to that fuel. I've seen 50 year old and much abused farm tractors that still run great on the stuff. Propane is around 110-120 octane, so you can advance your timing quite a bit. The biggest problem you'll have is finding a tank that fits where you want to put it and that is big enough to give you a good range between fillups. www.gotpropane.com sells overpriced kits, but they have some good info.
I've seen film of old chinese tractors that ran on sawdust and charcoal embers - they'd load up a sealed tank with sawdust and glowing charcoal and it would smolder away and give off flamable g***es which fed the motor - worked surprisingly well
www.propaneguy.com sells gauges onhis site. He also has a wealth of knowledge and is happy to answer questions. I'd shoot him an email and see what he says.
I am running propane on my 53 Studebaker flathead six. It does work well and is nice, but as mentioned, best to up the compression on your motor to take advantage of the higher octane and compensate for the lower BTU. If you do that, you can probably break even for power and mpg as compared to gas. Yes, with road taxes, lpg is a little less (here in SS area), but not enough to make a big difference. And having a road use fill option is not any where near as convenient as the portable tank options. The biggest advantage is if you have easy and cheap access to lpg and it does burn a lot cleaner and is good for off road types because it is a sealed system and doesn't care about orientation and gravity, etc. You can run a portable tank, like the off-road guys do, and save yourself the taxes and h***le of the perm. mounted tank. But, you need to consider that if you get caught on the road with it, it is essentially tax fraud and my understanding is that could potentially bring on some pretty big trouble. I have a 29 gal tank in my truck mounted under the bed and it was pretty easy to install. For a car, they usually go in the trunk. The fuel gauge is easy and is just a little electronic sending unit that is magnetically controlled by the unit inside the tank. You just wire it to your gauge in your dash and have to figure out the ohms and stuff, but no big deal really. I don't know how a pressure gauge would work with lpg as the pressure inside the tank is the same no matter how full it is and actually varies depending on temp., not how full it is. The higher the temp, the more pressure. And actually, at very low temps, you will get very low pressure. I don't recall what temp. lpg vaporizes at under normal pressure. But, for people who live in very cold climates, that might be a problem.
I work with a guy who raced a 460ci Galaxie on propane. 118 octane. The technology is getting left behind up here, except for cabs, forklifts and power sweepers. Impco should have everything you need to convert a car. Flatman
oops, the movie didn't work.... well, I guess I don't know how to do movies, but anyway click on this link if you want to see my engine running on lpg www.transmissions-gallery.com/stude-245-propane.mpg
not if its built for it. theres alot of industrial V8 fords and chevy's and running irrigation wells. There used to be alot of small hemi's around on wells. I wonder what happened to all those motors. Propane is a very clean burning fuel and usally those irrigation motor were in very good conditin. I just sold a flathead ford that was used for that purpose and was very clean inside
We have it here but we have a lot of armers and I heat my house with it etc. but it's not that easy to get after 5 pm.
The best info is in Italy followed by the UK ,where they have been using it for years. Even here in OZ LPG is a extra cost option on most most Fords and GM cars. You get a govt' rebate for 50% of the cost per installation too. For real performance gains you cannot go past injected propane because the mixers that impco and others sell are 1930's designs and are ****py beyond belief in the 21st century. The impco setups are just like a BBQ burner stuck on top of a inlet manifold for all the money you pay for them. If you want to real high power the ultimate set up is to inject liquid propane into the intake in the ports like EFI . it has to be kept cold right into the injectors so it remains liquid, a bit of a technical problem..ha ha ha . As for dual fuel,that issue was sorted decades ago with the invention of the microprocceser,dual curve ignitions are common now. I ran dual fuel on a truck for years ,and the switch circuit incorperated a dual ignition curve device which advanced the ignition on LPG .It gave more power than gasoline.
Every time the propane discussion comes up, I think of this '57 Willys Wagon 4x4 with the Ak Miller twin-turbo propane small block... pretty *****in' setup. http://toyotatruckworld.tenmagazines.com/articles.asp?page=tenarticle&aid=748&sid=18
I use propane in my cars , it is about $1.69 compared to gasoline at $5.00 a gallon so for me the saving is quite a bit The easiest for older cars is a impco system , it is simple system and quite dependable even in dual fuel applications. as far as Liquid propane injection , that is pretty complicated you have to keep your propane in liquid phase all the way to the injectors so you have to have a propane pump in the tank and they are troublesome. A simpler solution is vapor injection, made by prins (dutch company) for example. The guys from Mothers actually build a very nice chevelle running on propane with 16 vapor injectors for about 1100hp. They used Prins regulator and injectors and a ECU from australia/new zealand
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