Gas instead of petrol

[kaner]

can you guys tell me what r the Pros Vs Cons of runining gas instead of petrol in a V8 aprt from the obvious half the price of petrol?
like
how many Ks could u expect from a tank??
what does the conversion cost??
how does it affect performance???
ECT...........

[Lexx]

My current VN V8 is the second car I purchased with a standard LPG conversion in it.
The first was a carby 351 Ford ( years ago before I had seen the light!! ) and I hated it. Car never ran right on either fuel. Always played up or froze. So I sold the car.
This time I have similar problems and I have injection! I even totally blew up my air box when a back fire tore through my intake. Car was two weeks over due for service. Talk about temperamental!!
You can get better gas set ups, but the initial cost is excessive. Even for straight gas.
As for safety, ever seen or heard one of the gas tanks blow up even when half full?? Not pretty.
This time I love the car so I am going to turf the gas system. Sure, gas is cheap, but not worth it. I don't like the stuff

[Secki]

Get yourself a direct injection conversion, rather than a condensor type stystem ad you shouldnt notice any power loss at all. my next door neighbour is a Mechanical Engineer who teaches LPG Conversions and Mechanics at TAfE, he reckons an old V8 will scream on gas compared to petrol ie more power, better economy, but it all depends on who does your conversion.

[DazVYSS]

I put a gas conversion on my vp ss and found it really good I averaged 350 ks out of a tank approx $25 and a best of 500 ks on a trip wich works out to be 5l per 100ks if i used $25 worth of petrol,performance was a tad less on gas but hardly noticeable it ran smoother on gas but you must get a proper kit mine cost $2000 minus govt rebate of $500 =$1500 and took one year yo pay off in petrol savings well worth it .

[AirStrike]

If you are going to run gas run straight gas, then get a suitable cam and tune (chip) for it. The reason people find a loss in performance is when they run gas on a system setup for petrol. LPG acctually has a higher octane rating so when they do the chip you can advance the timming further, and possibly end up with more power then when you started.
AirStrike

[filtnineee]

I drive a vs commordore with a cat back exhaust etc. have been thinking of going to gas as i spend at least 60 a week just going to work. since i work near mechanics i talked to one about it, and he said people get backfires because of other parts of the engine, ie hasnt been tuned/serviced for a long time, and if your air box is blowing out, something is really wrong. he also said to go to stiaght gas, where the rip out your fuel tank and place a new gas tank, and then they dyno the car with new memcals etc to tuned the car just for gas, and I would at least get around 15kw extra just from the extra octane which is 108 with gas. though this setup would cost me about 2500, with the savings i would pay that off in a year, and not only that id drive the car alot more as filling up would be 25-30 as apposed to 60-70 now.
sp if people tell u gas is shit tell them to read the facts, the only thing u need to do with gas is clean out the condeser or what ever its called every few months.

now all i need to do is find a place who can do this for me, so far none of the big companys are returning my emails

[aokman]

I want gas but every time i go to pickapart i see all the wrecks that were on gas and it makes you wonder how much harder it is on the engine. My mate who works at Holden rekons it wrecks your engine aswell.

[Rossgo79]

If you were worried about petrol you shouldnt have bought a V8. My previous car was a v6 vt berlina and I have now got a vx ss and fuel consumption is only about 5-10 bucks more 100k's. New cars don't like gas and if still under warranty it becomes void!! Why you may ask?? Gas dries out the seals on your car usually the head gasket or stem seals are first to go. If I was worried about fuel I would get myself an old vb-vc V8 sle and put that on gas. All you would have to do is reseat valves , stonger stem seals and tune it to gas.If the car shits itself chuck it out and get another one!!!

[Infus10n]

When i bought my car if it had lpg and petrol i didnt even read the ad or have any interest in it. I find its harder to resell it on gas...

You get less k's out of gas so in the end you pay about the same to run both.

[pacey]

You get less k's out of gas so in the end you pay about the same to run both.

Not Necessarily. I have Dual Fuel and the car runs fine on both, very minimal loss of power with LPG. I found that LPG only sucks for city driving but being in the country and travelling 100k a day to work along a highway, I get better value for my money out of gas.

I actually did an experiment once. I filled both LPG and Fuel Tank, $30 and $70 respectively. I travelled the same road and used the trip meter to calcualte the distance travelled before running out of fuel. The gas got me just over 400km per tank, the fuel got me about 75km extra. NOW.. how good are you at maths coz it looks to me like gas would get you further on the same price you would pay for fuel.

$70 Unleaded = 475km

$70 Gas = 935km (approx)

Yeah of course these results would cause speculation "ohh well your fuel consuption is bad with the unleaded" or "For accurate results you'd need to do such and such" or "but it was a full moon and the planets weren't aligned and this could vary the results"

My opinion is, Gas is good for a mixture of long distance and city driving and the results vary from car to car. My car having gas has now practically paid for itself and atleast 1/3 if not more of the car since i've had it but this may not be the case for other people/cars. It all comes down to lifestyle and how you drive your car.

I don't think I would consider LPG for a V8 though!

[Wombat]

...what Airstrike said...

If you set up your engine for straight gas only and never run it on petrol again, with the proper cam, chip, and set up, it will have no power loss and if you go the whole hog and raise the compression to something like 14 to 1 or more (I think) you will gain power and economy even more.

People are soured to LPG by things like taxis and older conversions where it is just slapped on the plain jane engine, where it loses power and stinks.
As for it "killing" your engine...any engine will die if the correct maintanance isn't done on it. Yeah, if you can afford it, get the better valve seals, but that is about all inside the engine. The biggest thing is, what oil are these "dead engines" being run on? Penrite (for one) make a few oils that suit gas/petrol and straight gas applications...they are formulated to suit the "dry" gas fuel. I wonder how many people with LPG on their cars bother to find out the right oil to run in it?

I am hanging out until "direct injection" becomes more common and the price of fitting drops, then we have every intention of getting it fitted.

Yes, you might get less miles-per-gallon with the standard old "taxi" setup, but it costs half or less per liter of what unleaded does, so you pick up savings there. Injection does away with this and makes it vastly superior...as I said...we are just waiting for the price to come down and our VS-II Ecotec will cop the treatment.

[DJ Majah]

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