Right then - basically been drivng a month now and all is well.
In the last month I have driven a good deal and spent £185 on fuel - the month before £277. If I can replicate that every month for a year I'll save £1110 a year. I'll pay for the conversion in a maximum of 18 months ! Good payback and better for my cash flow.
Basically my savings are are 33% from driving on petrol. I must admit I have been driving the car much harder and the milage will not be the same But the great news is I get 310 miles for £25 of LPG fuel and I can get places quicker. The month previous I had been driving very carefully and saving petrol as much as I could going at 3000 revs max and keeping the speed under 65 miles per hour. I suspect if I had been driving in the same manner the savings would have been higher. So the challenge now is to run for a month at a lower speed keeping revs down to 3000 and see if I can go further for less. But lets be honest am I going to do it? could I do it? What would the savings be? I suspect I could definately get to 40% savings month to month. But hey I'm happy and even happier that the guy round the corner is now selling LPG at 48 p per litre again! I put a tank of the morrisons stuff in and it seemed to run better more power / acceleration available. As with everything in life Its all about a trade off.
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Thursday, 28 August 2008
LPG Cars - Taxing your LPG car
DVLA - sometimes they know what they are talking about sometimes they don't!
Basically make sure you go to a DVLA office is my advice. You can't get the tax status of your car changed by post seems to be the message. They sent all the bits of paperwork back and told us to go down to a DVLA office.
So get your MOT certificate, your insurance certificate, your V5 log book and your LPGA conversion certificate and take it down with your existing tax disk. Surrender your tax disk fill in a V70 get them to run all the bits of info onto their rather complicated computer system. Then get them to re issue a new tax disc in exchange for your old one and then make sure they reduce your tax classification to give you refund we should get £ 20 back! Your car is then reclassified as running on "alternative fuel". They then don't give you a refund there they send off your v5 to the DVLA Swansea and get it reissued! I could have saved them the bother and sent it but procedures are procedures. Then the £20 back should be sent from DVLA Swansea.
Basically it seems like the DVLA swansea try and give some work out to the local DVLA offices and keep 'em busy. Nice to see bureaucracy is alive and well!
So I will await with anticipation my £20 back to spend on.... not sure yet.. answers on a postcard.
Basically make sure you go to a DVLA office is my advice. You can't get the tax status of your car changed by post seems to be the message. They sent all the bits of paperwork back and told us to go down to a DVLA office.
So get your MOT certificate, your insurance certificate, your V5 log book and your LPGA conversion certificate and take it down with your existing tax disk. Surrender your tax disk fill in a V70 get them to run all the bits of info onto their rather complicated computer system. Then get them to re issue a new tax disc in exchange for your old one and then make sure they reduce your tax classification to give you refund we should get £ 20 back! Your car is then reclassified as running on "alternative fuel". They then don't give you a refund there they send off your v5 to the DVLA Swansea and get it reissued! I could have saved them the bother and sent it but procedures are procedures. Then the £20 back should be sent from DVLA Swansea.
Basically it seems like the DVLA swansea try and give some work out to the local DVLA offices and keep 'em busy. Nice to see bureaucracy is alive and well!
So I will await with anticipation my £20 back to spend on.... not sure yet.. answers on a postcard.
Saturday, 16 August 2008
LPG CAR - THE ACTUAL CONVERSION
The conversion process is quite simple really. You take the spare wheel out and dump in a new tank in the well where the spare wheel goes like this. You then carry aorund a nice can of holts tyre weld just incase you ever get a puncture and need to reinflate your old tyre to get you to a tyre repair shop or back home to get your spare on the car.
Put a hole in the car and and fix in the filler conection point
Then run the pipe work to the engine bay into the fuel mixer
Run the pipe work into the top of the engine
Connect up a little fuel management computer
Connect up the flash lube stuff to the pipework ( this stops the valves in the engine getting damaged)
Hook up the little fuel gauge and switch and you are all set! 
put on the fuel filler cap after you fill it up with £25 worth of gas which will take you 300 miles down the road untill you need to fill up and get motoring!Simple really.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
LPG CARS - LINKS TO GET YOU STARTED
Right don’t take my word for it – do some home work yourself!
The only thing left to do is rummage around the internet yourself here are some links to get you started.
LPGA / Boost LPG – basically this is a site which promotes the stuff and the installers - Link
LPG forum – this site is a discussion forum about LPG to post and talk to others who have converted – Link
Calor LPG Autogas – Basic industry promotion stuff but has some useful links to installers / converters - Link
Calor LPG Sat Nav station finder – sat nav file for tom tom owners ( I don’t need a machine to tell me where to go plus too many accidents caused by them but useful if you are safe driving with the things – Link
Calor / Shell – Autogas TM – site promoting their autogas – Link
Auto Gas Map – simple to use site profiling all the sites they know about - Link
LPG store that stocks bits and pieces for lpg converted cars – Link
For the more adventurous of you who get your car over to Europe here’s a link for LPG fuel stations in Europe – Link
Energy savings trust blurb on LPG – Link
London congestion charge make sure you get the right installer ! - For those of you who want to get your car converted by an LPG installer who is recognised by the right people check out your installer here personally I hardly ever drive in London now anyway and this looks like some mafia style closed shop to me but hey I don’t make the rules– Link
Euro Tunnel info on LPG powered cars – at the moment they won’t take LPG cars - link
Ferries seem to take LPG cars though but check with them before you book. – Link, Link, link, Link, Link,
But basically the information is out there so crack on and see if you can save yourself some cash
Good Luck!
The only thing left to do is rummage around the internet yourself here are some links to get you started.
LPGA / Boost LPG – basically this is a site which promotes the stuff and the installers - Link
LPG forum – this site is a discussion forum about LPG to post and talk to others who have converted – Link
Calor LPG Autogas – Basic industry promotion stuff but has some useful links to installers / converters - Link
Calor LPG Sat Nav station finder – sat nav file for tom tom owners ( I don’t need a machine to tell me where to go plus too many accidents caused by them but useful if you are safe driving with the things – Link
Calor / Shell – Autogas TM – site promoting their autogas – Link
Auto Gas Map – simple to use site profiling all the sites they know about - Link
LPG store that stocks bits and pieces for lpg converted cars – Link
For the more adventurous of you who get your car over to Europe here’s a link for LPG fuel stations in Europe – Link
Energy savings trust blurb on LPG – Link
London congestion charge make sure you get the right installer ! - For those of you who want to get your car converted by an LPG installer who is recognised by the right people check out your installer here personally I hardly ever drive in London now anyway and this looks like some mafia style closed shop to me but hey I don’t make the rules– Link
Euro Tunnel info on LPG powered cars – at the moment they won’t take LPG cars - link
Ferries seem to take LPG cars though but check with them before you book. – Link, Link, link, Link, Link,
But basically the information is out there so crack on and see if you can save yourself some cash
Good Luck!
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
LPG CARS - STEP 3 GET DRIVING AN UPDATE
An Update
The great guys have converted both our cars and recalibrated the Verso now and all seems well. It seems to be behaving itself and pottleing along fine. So we are on LPG and loving it. Did my first proper fill up the other day which went well managed to get 56 litres into the tank for a princely sum of ....£35 nice. The first tank on the regular corrola lasted 256 miles - I monitoring the next one to see how much I get out of it plan is to mointor the consumption etc and then work out how much I am saving but this will be easy to work out when I compare my monthly credit card bills as my milage is pretty steady month to month. The cars are much quieter when running on LPG which is cool and you don't notice the switch over. granted there is a little bit less accelration power on LPG but its working great. I understand there are better systems on the market that do keep the power up better.
Flash Lube
Right then found out what the stuff is for - basically its a kind of lubricant that gets put through the injectors into the engine to lubricate the valves and keep the valve head running smooth and stop valve seat recesion - all i know is that it will protect the engine and keep it running nicely. Its kept under the bonnet in a bottle and it is supposed to use 1 ml per litre of fuel so I'll keep a close eye on how much it uses over the next tank and adjust accordingly.
I rang up the morrisons in coventry and they promised that the pump was getting fixed lets wait and see...
So the plan is run the car on LPG for 1000 miles get it checked over and all will be well.
Plans for future posts include
A nice set of photos of the conversion stuff (tank, filler point, inkjectors, flash lube, fuel management system etc. so people get to see what's involved.
Plus a full set of links to get people started on their own research.
Happy motoring people...
The great guys have converted both our cars and recalibrated the Verso now and all seems well. It seems to be behaving itself and pottleing along fine. So we are on LPG and loving it. Did my first proper fill up the other day which went well managed to get 56 litres into the tank for a princely sum of ....£35 nice. The first tank on the regular corrola lasted 256 miles - I monitoring the next one to see how much I get out of it plan is to mointor the consumption etc and then work out how much I am saving but this will be easy to work out when I compare my monthly credit card bills as my milage is pretty steady month to month. The cars are much quieter when running on LPG which is cool and you don't notice the switch over. granted there is a little bit less accelration power on LPG but its working great. I understand there are better systems on the market that do keep the power up better.
Flash Lube
Right then found out what the stuff is for - basically its a kind of lubricant that gets put through the injectors into the engine to lubricate the valves and keep the valve head running smooth and stop valve seat recesion - all i know is that it will protect the engine and keep it running nicely. Its kept under the bonnet in a bottle and it is supposed to use 1 ml per litre of fuel so I'll keep a close eye on how much it uses over the next tank and adjust accordingly.
I rang up the morrisons in coventry and they promised that the pump was getting fixed lets wait and see...
So the plan is run the car on LPG for 1000 miles get it checked over and all will be well.
Plans for future posts include
A nice set of photos of the conversion stuff (tank, filler point, inkjectors, flash lube, fuel management system etc. so people get to see what's involved.
Plus a full set of links to get people started on their own research.
Happy motoring people...
Saturday, 2 August 2008
LPG CAR - THE SECOND STEP - RECALIBRATION
Well campers the second step is recalibraiton - everything still works on the Verso but quite a few interesting warning lights appeared. Don't panic Mr Manwaring Don't Panic
A yellow engine symbol ( if it had been red we would have worried) and the traction control symbol and the VSC symbol came on. The engine runs fine although when it kicks into LPG it almost stalls on idle.
We spoke to our friendly installer chappy and he said it just needs some adjustments to sync the LPG fuel injection computer with the engine management system. All fixable in his opinion and this does happen occasionally so its back to the garage on Monday to iron out the glitch. Will keep you posted on developments.
Sunday, 27 July 2008
THE FIRST STEP- AN LPG CAR IS BORN
The First LPG Car.
Well our first LPG car was delivered to us in fine order. The car is a Corrola Verso and is working well - its our first Verso. We are still getting used to the car and the system. However the engine is running smoothly, the acceleration seems fine and the car runs well switching from petrol to LPG without a hicup.
Some stuff to get used to
We have managed to stall the car a couple of times as we get used to the bite point on the clutch and the basic revs needed to get a slightly larger car moving! The car came supplied with a handy booklet with LPG gas stations on it. There is a small button and indicator light which tells you if its running on LPG or petrol. The switch and the lights work well. However the only niggle we can find right now is the lights don't indicate how much gas is in the tank very accurately e.g. when we go down a hill it measures 3 lights! when on the flat measures 2 or 1 . The installer did say this was common.
Filling up when we didn't need to !
So after having a minor panic as the lights dipped to 1 unit we decided to fill up on the way home! Guess what, we only managed to pump in 6 litres before it was full. So we went in rather sheepishly to the garage and paid our £3.67 and pootled on our way!
Flash Lube - what is that stuff?
The only other mystery for us right now is the flash lube system that has been installed. I'll talk to the installer and get some more info about it, what it does, how it works and how to maintain, fill and manage the flow of the flash lube into the engine. Thankfully our installer runs a 1000 mile check up for the system once we have run it for a bit which should help us sort things out.
Morrisons in Coventry stop selling LPG?
Only bit of news we have is that the Morrisons super market near us that had LPG gas ( it still has the gas tanks on the forecourt is not selling it right now which is a shame looks like the pump has been removed. I'll ring the manager of the store and find out what has happened and let you know.
Well our first LPG car was delivered to us in fine order. The car is a Corrola Verso and is working well - its our first Verso. We are still getting used to the car and the system. However the engine is running smoothly, the acceleration seems fine and the car runs well switching from petrol to LPG without a hicup.
Some stuff to get used to
We have managed to stall the car a couple of times as we get used to the bite point on the clutch and the basic revs needed to get a slightly larger car moving! The car came supplied with a handy booklet with LPG gas stations on it. There is a small button and indicator light which tells you if its running on LPG or petrol. The switch and the lights work well. However the only niggle we can find right now is the lights don't indicate how much gas is in the tank very accurately e.g. when we go down a hill it measures 3 lights! when on the flat measures 2 or 1 . The installer did say this was common.
Filling up when we didn't need to !
So after having a minor panic as the lights dipped to 1 unit we decided to fill up on the way home! Guess what, we only managed to pump in 6 litres before it was full. So we went in rather sheepishly to the garage and paid our £3.67 and pootled on our way!
Flash Lube - what is that stuff?
The only other mystery for us right now is the flash lube system that has been installed. I'll talk to the installer and get some more info about it, what it does, how it works and how to maintain, fill and manage the flow of the flash lube into the engine. Thankfully our installer runs a 1000 mile check up for the system once we have run it for a bit which should help us sort things out.
Morrisons in Coventry stop selling LPG?
Only bit of news we have is that the Morrisons super market near us that had LPG gas ( it still has the gas tanks on the forecourt is not selling it right now which is a shame looks like the pump has been removed. I'll ring the manager of the store and find out what has happened and let you know.
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