Autogas/Lpg, a viable alternative?

[Andy Collins]

Is it worth the cost of changing over your vehicles to Lpg? Are there adequate outlets for this fuel in your area? A couple of years ago I knew of several fitters supplying this system, and they've gone, I havent seen many service stations in my area selling it. What are your thoughts on this?

[Charlieh]

i know the national park up here changed a load of vehicles over, and mainly on the freelanders they had engine failure at about 30-60K miles on about half a dozen of them, they have scraped them and ditched the lpg in work trucks.

 

I have driven the dual fuel astra about 4 yrs ago and it was a dog, fine in petrol but with the lpg on you wouldnt overtake a lorry on the m'way

 

I have two mates who have lpg one on a freelander and one on an subaru legacy, mate with the free lander sold it when it started being a bit iffy, the legacy runs really well on it, virtually no performance issues,

 

I havent seen anything like enough benefits to merit paying to switch a vehicle, but most the petrol stations up here have lpg, two big ones in town, then several of the smaller independants sell it as well, so there must be some demand

[Mick Stockbridge]

Ten or so years ago I had a Hi-cap Landy with a petrol engine, it was really thirsty so I looked into having it converted. It would have cost a grand then but I was put off because someone informed me that the govt were gonna hike up the price of lpg after x amount of years, bringing it in line with petrol.

[Andy Collins]

The few people that I knew had changed over 3 or 4 years ago seemed to have either changed back or no longer run the lpg, for whatever reasons.

The reasoning behind my questions is that my cousin is starting out in Scotland a Lpg fitting service, and following our discussion on this (where I stated that it didnt seem too popular down here) I thought I'd see what you guys thought, running big 4x4s.

[skyhuck]

Up until recently petrol had become a fair bit cheaper than Derv, but it more or less the same price now, so I would imagine LPG will become more popular again.

 

I also think a change of government may help, one of the big problem this the current lot is they have to clearly stated direction (tax wise) in which they are moving. So people find it hard to make long term investments based on current taxation, as we just don't know what will change next. As Mick says many have held back from LPG because of that.

[gensetsteve]

I have a dual fuel Hijet. The gas has packed up, local fitter wants £100 to look at fixing it another £100 to service gas system and a further £100 to service truck. It has a very limited range on gas and does 30-40mpg on petrol apart from the enviromental advert I cant see why people bother.

[Justme]

I had a V8 Disco on LPG. At 12-14 MPG (heavy foot) it was the only way that I could afford to run it.

 

To be honest you could not tell which fuel you were using except that the petrol gauge was not moving almost as fast as the odometer. Even when full loaded & "fully" loaded trailer up hill it was unstopable.

 

V8 performance for diesel running costs.

[brewx1]

I have a v8 discovery which I had converted a couple of years ago. Cost about 1100 then for a basic system. Had no problems and have easily covered the cost of the system. Performance is not quite as good as petrol but in normal driving you wouldn't notice it. A bit more noticeable when towing, but still not an issue. Only other down sides is loss of space in boot due to tank (you can get tanks underneath at higher cost) and my system only has range of about 170 miles

No real problems getting gas, In fact it runs only on gas at the moment as the fuel pump has packed up and I haven't got round to replacing it yet. It's been like that for about 3 months. Longer journeys you need to know where the gas stations are but you can get a gas station atlas or just google your journey before you go. I've been to the middle of France and back without the petrol backup with no problems at all.

Prior to the discovery I had a vauxhall senator 3.0 running on gas, again no issues in the 3 years or so I had that.

You don't get the same mpg out of gas, I reckon 14 mpg in the discovery on gas compared to 17 on petrol. There was less of a difference in the senator.

Cost wise I think I save about 35% overall with the discovery.

Definitely would seriously consider conversion in any large engined vehicle with my previous experiences.

Incidently, the fuel pump on the discovery packed up due to running on gas and not noticing having no fuel in the petrol tank due to a leak which burnt out the pump. so do keep some petrol in your tank.

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

In a word: DON'T.

[Justme]

Mine had the twin sill tanks. Both covered by slider plates (as was most of the brakeables underneath).

 

Cant see the point in having a big booted 7 seater & then slapping a gas tank in the boot dropping it down to 5 seats & a metro sized boot. Also think its a bad idea especially on an open plan type car (but even in the boot) to have the tank in the "living" space. Better outside just in case it leaks as its more likely to do in the boot with stuff getting chucked in it.