[Closed] LPG conversion?

I had an LPG car a long time ago so no idea if current prices for the kit, fitting etc but I have noticed a lot of the LPG pumps disappearing over the last few years. I'm guessing with the rise of hyper-efficient diesels and the electric car boom that it's fallen out of favour for lots of people.

LPG still available locally to me at the moment, have only seen an i crease in pumps if anything. Sad to hear it might not be the case nationally then. Im assuming you wouldnt be able to run 100% LPG, some normal petrol must be required at some point. Im thinking maybe til tbe engine heats up tben switch over to lpg? Can it be done on the run like that?

I converted my subaru Forester about 15 years ago. I wouldn't do it again. The figures really don't add up unless you do a VERY high mileage. I sold the car 6 years later and it still hadn't payed for itself. Also, the valve seats weren't hard enough to cope with reduced protective fuel additives, and adjusting the valves on a subaru is a nightmare!
However, LPG is something like 115 RON, so if you help it burn quicker with the addition of methanol, then supercharge the engine , you can get very high power figures indeed!
But for economy? Nah... buy a volkswagen ...

Also, if you have a cheap lpg pump near you, within say 2 miles, it may work but otherwise you'll get fed up making a special trip to refill!

Yep, since Shell got out of LPG it's been kind of disastrous for availability. Like, I like just outside Edinburgh and the nearest station is 25 minutes drive away, the nearest cheap one 30- and neither really on a main route. There's a lot of places where that's not true yet, and I think if you're in a well supplied area with a bunch of stations from different suppliers, you can be fairly comfortable but then I wasn't expecting the rapid collapse we've already had (I figured that we'd probably never see another new LPG pump, but that they'd be slowly retired as they wore out or broke down, not that they'd be removed and scrapped wholesale)

I'm really glad I have it- I drive a fairly uneconomic car that also likes super unleaded, it wouldn't be practical if it didn't have the gas. But I couldn't justify adding it now.

Would not like to think about trying to run a vehicle on it.

I have lpg tanks in the camper and that's manageable due to time between fills. I have a retailer near work and there's another on other side of town if the one near work is out.

I only need to fill once every couple of weeks of use so rarely need to get on the road .... But when I have it's been a pain - but marginally easier than finding a calor retailer that's open beyond 5 pm

Was in the news the other day that one of the major consortiums of petrol retails were dropping LPG and moving to electric charger infrastructure in their place

LPG pumps are being removed all the time, I've learnt to top up my camper before going away on trips as finding it on the fly is always a hassle.

I think they will become rarer as filling stations decide the space the LPG tank occupies would be better used for 4 car spaces with fast EV chargers.

As mentioned above, it depends on the availability around you. I've done about 60k miles in the past 4 years on LPG and at average 27mpg it saves me about £1k per year vs petrol. Two months ago the price was £0.54-0.55/L. Now it's £0.85-0.90/L. A lot of places around stopped selling LPG or just can't be bothered to restock for weeks. Insurance will likely go up too.
Check the link below for rough idea of LPG availability. The map takes ages to load
https://www.filllpg.co.uk/

Autogas app much more user friendly.

Can't comment on converting a car to LPG but I'm told that quite a few Edinburgh taxis are re-powering using LPG conversions rather than scrapping the cab. I use LPG in the motorhome & there's only 1 pump close to me near Edinburgh. How long this will be there is anyone's guess as two taxi drivers have driven off recently with the nozzle still attached snapping the hose off at the strain relief! Getting it on the fly is becoming difficult. I'm hoping that the existing pumps don't vanish. Unless you've got a guaranteed supply it could be a gamble.

I had a big LExus 430 that had been converted, and even on a big high performance 4.3l engine like that I couldn't see any difference between petrol and LPG, except for cost. The main downside was that the tank (hidden somewhere underneath) would take enough gas for around 200 miles, so I was filling up every other day. Bigger tanks are available, but then you lose boot space.

Parents also have a Nissan Note that is converted - they don't do many miles though.

Have also seen that the fuel station in town (only one of three that sells LPG) has been out of stock for the last 3 weeks or so, which might be a precursor to getting rid...

Interesting thread. Was playing with the idea of running something monstrous like an old XJS V12 but having LPG take some of the sting out of it. Doesn't seem viable now though.

I’m guessing with the rise of hyper-efficient diesels and the electric car boom that it’s fallen out of favour for lots of people.

I'm surprised it didn't swing the other actutally, fueling a diesel engine with LPG solves a lot of the problems normally associated with diesel.

fueling a diesel engine with LPG solves a lot of the problems

Brings a whole host of other practical issues though such as ....doesn't auto combust . Still needs diesel as a pilot fuel. Still needs to be warm before switch over.

Then there's the cost......you think a petrol lpg conversion has a long payback! - and it's even longer if you opt for trying to get the paperwork for LEZ compliance done...... And even after all that there's still no guarantee you'll be accepted for LEZ.... Even if Geoff next door with the same conversion was...

I've got a lpg-powered v8 land rover, and another v8 land rover for which I've got a kit ready to install.

I'm only bothering to convert this one because there is an industrial gas supplier near me that I'm confident will have a pump for the foreseeable. In the last 3 years the availability of lpg has been decimated - I spoke to one garage owner who explained that the costs of keeping the kit serviced were outweighing the profits. Also, apparently LPG stations have to be manned - when my local supermarkets converted to unmanned operation they all got rid of the lpg.

Think very carefully if you'll be able to get it in the places where you want to go - both now and for the time you intend to keep the vehicle.

I had a factory-built LPG-converted Astra as a company car some years ago (02-reg), and it was fine to keep running on the gas at the time - I very quickly learnt where the filling stations were on my regular routes, and could find it reasonably easily in unfamiliar places. It would do about 35-40mpg on LPG, compared to high-40s on unleaded, so the price of LPG at the time meant that I was effectively paying the same £s as a car doing about 70mpg in terms of miles-per-pound, but the performance was noticeably flatter on gas, and it would run out of oomph on hills a bit. The mechanics were that the spare wheelwell had the gas tank in it, and a small rocker switch by the gear lever allowed manual switching between gas or petrol if required, although that was rarely needed. It would start from cold on petrol for a mile or two, then automatically kick over to gas when warm enough; took a bit longer in the winter. I think I used a grand total of 5 or 6 tanks of petrol in the whole time I had it, maybe 80k miles, everything else was on LPG. Only ever struggled to find gas once, I think, and that was in the Hebrides. As others have said, there don't seem to be as many places showing a price on their boards now as there were some years ago, which probably makes it seem a less attractive proposition these days. My local Calor supplier which had a tank and pump have closed their depot in Telford in the last few years, for instance.

Dacia market a bi-fuel engine currently, you might (maybe?) find one on a hire fleet
Around 2000-ish it was cheaper to drive to Holland and have the conversion done rather than here. A country that uses LPG might be worth looking at should you decide to try it

It would do about 35-40mpg on LPG, compared to high-40s on unleaded, so the price of LPG at the time meant that I was effectively paying the same £s as a car doing about 70mpg in terms of miles-per-pound,

Thing is - comparing the price to petrol is a falsehood when the same cars are available as a diesel. I had an astra of the same vintage - you're comparing to high 40s for mpg on petrol but with a diesel engine in the same car I could easily get 60mpg so an effective mpg of 70mpg on LPG (ie using a lot more fuel but paying less for it) is really quite a marginal. So the economy of using LPG isn't so stark and if theres a conversion cost to cover or any additional servicing cost for the LPG system then maybe thats very marginal indeed.

Theres only really an economy argument if the car you need (or want) is only available as a petrol because most cars cars - even the big old luxo-barges - will all have a more economical diesel version available.

Yeah but the diesel versions about to be outlawed or at least priced out of towns and cities.....

Thus makes more sense than just economic.

@macckruisken There's some truth in what you say, but I was comparing the relative consumptions of that specific car on lpg vs petrol. It also made lots of sense to have the dual fuel car at the time, as the BIK rate was advantageous, even compared to a diesel.
If the OPs yet to be bought vehicle is currently petrol fired, then things would make some sense, although local availability of lpg is likely a big consideration now, by the sound of it.

Random thought but is there any other way, other than forecourts, to fill up an LPG car, in the absence of a nearby pump? Can you, frinstance, transfer from a standard LPG tank? (safety and practicality thoughts here rather than legality since there might be fuel duty issues)

*engaged typing finger before engaging brain.