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.

Coil testing ...sounds expensive...but not really.

Well my friendly LPG installer has given me some great service and we are on the way to tracking down the issue. We have eliminated the spark plug issue so far i.e. replacing all the plugs. We have diagnosed the engine misfire on cylinder one for definite. He simply swapped over the engine coils ! from cylinder 1 and cylinder 2. So we still have a misfire on cylinder 1 even though we swapped over the coils which hold the spark plugs.

Basically cars used to have distributors and leads and spark plugs - now they have coils and spark plugs and electronics etc. seems like loads has changed since I used to poke around under the bonnet of my 1000 cc run around at uni.

Next step - we will replace the gas injector on cylinder 1 and see if that helps things. he reckons this will be a 45 min job.

I'll let you know how we get on.

SPARK PLUG BONANZA!

Well its got to servicing time on the car. I have had at serviced at a main dealer (probably for the last time) the car is old enough now that I will probably get it serviced somewhere cheaper next time round. Before I got it serviced an engine warning light popped up as I was accelerating. No major problem took it in and diagnosed a cylinder miss fire on No 1 cylinder. So they changed over the spark plug on it. Then I decided to change all the spark plugs on it to resolve the problem totally. It has to a point it no longer comes on when accelerating between 2800 revs and 4000 revs in 3rd / 4th and 5th gear it only comes on between 3800 revs and 4100 revs. so the range of the problem is now reduced. I think it will need a little fine tuning on the engine management system to get the gas flow working a bit better when accelerating harder. Bad news however is my friendly LPG guy had a flood burst pipe due to the freezing weather - wrote off his diagnostic computer. So I will need to wait until he gets it back to fine tune the management system again. I did some research and apparently there are spark plugs out there that can be used with LPG systems - apparently NGK make them. What I do not know is if they are compatible with my Toyota corolla, the heat and burn rate of LPG and if they are worth installing. Any way I'll only pursue this option if these new plugs give up quickly. Some guy wrote to me recently and asked me for more details on the conversion on the verso. I'll get these pics up some time soon.

LPG CARS - LPG GURU GETS A COMMENT ON THE BBC

Well chaps and chapesses - I am getting the message out slowly but surely. A couple of days a go I entered a comment on the BBC have your say web page and although they did not publish my blog address they did publish my comment here link. Good Old aunti beeb. Oh and one of my mates at work did me a picture...not sure its much like me but hey..

LPG CAR - ONE MONTH IN.LETS DO SOME SUMS

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.

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.