Coils, spark plugs and misfires

With all the wet weather we have been having my Corrola started misfiring badly. Turns out that driving through big puddles at speed is not good for your engine! Who knew? So checked the old faithful into www.lpg-cars.co.uk and Gurch Samra replaced the two coils that were misfiring and put a new set of sparks in and we are back to normal operational status. ( It works properly) So moral of the story don;t get your coils wet.

Gas is still very cheap compared to petrol It Petrol costs are now pushing on up to the £1.50 per litre mark now that the £ is falling in value against the US $ and it costs more to buy in sweet crude for refining.

Stay safe out there and happy motoring

Govt rip off the motorist again 3 p rise in petrol Jan 2013

Yet again the Current Govt. have decided that the motorist is the best place to fund it’s profligate spending on propping up banksters, an overspent MOD a huge welfare bill and have decided to squeeze everyone with more duty on fuel. This is absurd given that they will be just fueling inflation at the very time when heating, electricity bills etc. have been increased by 6 – 9% ! Triple dip recession here we come.

With large businesses like Amazon Vodaphone, Starbucks and others all dodging their tax bills with tax avoidance schemes we the public are being forced to pay.

Spending on petrol has been reduced and Vol. of petrol sales has fallen by 15% since the credit crunch started as people use less on fuel. This has to correspond with a fall in tax take so they have decided the only way around this is to tax more to make it up.

You have to question when all the pips will have been squeaked and given the fact that fuel consumption has been falling it seems bonkers that they think they can get much more out of the motorist. With 60% of the price of fuel being tax the only way around this is to go for cheaper fuel options – LPG which has a 18 months – 2 year payback period has to be the only way forward as the maths get more and more viable for many.

My view is if you are fed up paying the tax man for the errors of others – switch to LPG and save now.

LPGGURU.

Good news for those driving on the M25

According to this little gem of an article - we can now get LPG on the south side of the M25 between Gatwick and Heathrow. This has been long overdue and frankly the more they roll out lpg the better - people will convert if it is in their area.

http://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/2012/9/26/autogas-opens-first-lpg-facility-on-m25/44902/

After some time It went a bit bonkers - Radio interviews

I have been super quiet on this blog for soooooo long. Interestingly what came up was a quite innocent comment made to @bbcshaneonair who does a breakfast show on @bbccovandwarks via Twitter sparked off a whole load of interest as the Office of fair trading started to investigate the petrol / pol retail market at the beginning of September. So on the morning of the 7th sept I had a call from Shane's researcher and was asked if I could go on air to explain why i converted my car to LPG. Then I had a call at work from @bbc3counties who then wanted me to talk the marvelous Roberto Peroni on his evening show.

Servicing and other stuff.

I have been massively quiet on this blog for ages now. News to report? Not much other than more fuel stations seem to be carrying the fuel and with Petrol now well over £1.30 a litre and I am onlu spending 69 - 74 p a litre I am very grateful I made the decision.

I have had my car lpg serviced and they found that one one of the injector hoses needed replacing and moving slightly as the plastic cover they put over the engine was pinching the hose a little it did not fracture it just was squeezing it slightly. Hence the occaisional misfire etc.

The car is running well and no real issues to report. Very pleased that I have spent lots less in the last 2-3 years since it was done.

Petrol Tax vs LPG Tax – Good news in the budget

So some really good news came through the recent budget for people who convert to LPG we have more time than we thought before the tax man goes berserk on LPG tax.
I thought I had only a couple of years more before it was open season but according to the LPG association here,

The Chancellor has not reducing the duty differential with petrol at the next increase announced for September 2009. The government has also extended the commitment fuel duty from 3 years to 5 years. It is is claimed that they will maintain the tax differential between petrol and LPG until March 2014 assuming we can trust the politicians.

The good news is that the duty differential will be reduced by no more than 1p on a litre of petrol each year see point 9 in hereSo bottom line is – if you get your car converted you have another 5 years or so before it’s open season on LPG Gas in the budget. Plenty of time to get your car converted, recoup the investment and capitalise on pure savings…Its not often I say this but ….Thanks very much HMRC.

gas injectors replaced runs sweet as a nut

Great News! The misfire has completely gone. My friendly helpful LPG installer replaced the gas injectors, plugged in the Lap top into the LPG computer management system and tuned the system perfectly! Its running sweet as a nut now. I have also managed to get the Flash lube system working right - basically it needs 1 ml per litre of gas used - approx 50 ml per tank full. The drip rate is just right now so that should keep the valves sorted. All told I'm one happy chappy. The bad news is that the oil price is starting to creep up again so everyone is going to suffer recession and high petrol prices - not a good combination. My advice is cut your running costs and get a conversion done soon.