Gas Conversion?

[DJ 190]

@DJ 190 David my point was RoI: Republic of Ireland

The article you linked reported “hitting the European market except for the UK” implying it would be available in the RoI. Perhaps blinkered, partisan journalism?

In any case that has given me a great idea, and I should see if a bookmaker would like to quote odds: EU to put pressure on, and give huge subsidies to, the RoI to switch to LHD! ?

Andrew

My Partners' daughter lives in Italy. She's just purchased a Renault (Twingo?) E.V. for~ 10.000 Euro's! She had a petrol Fiat 500 that was poor condition and worth a maximum of 5000 Euro's. The government gave her 12,000 Euros scrappage towards the Renault! AMAZING! Why can't the U.K. be giving that level of incentive, here, eh?

David

 

[Valentin]

Have you purchased the kit and are you fitting it yourself? What is the make? Do you need a compliance certificate in Holland? What country are you located in? What is the LPG tank capacity? Thanks

David

Hello David, it's a Tomasetto Stag 200 with a 28 liter lpg tank. The installation need to be done only by qualified company and after conversion the car need a new "MOT" where they check all the work and emissions. The lpg tank is mounted near the battery and is not visible when you open the booth. I have this setup for more than 2 year without any problems. I am from Romania.

 

[Guest 4123]

The government gave her 12,000 Euros scrappage towards the Renault! AMAZING! Why can't the U.K. be giving that level of incentive, here, eh?

David

To be payed for by whom? The taxpayer of course, e.g. you and me etc. Your former company is first in the queue for subsidies, even now!

RAB

 

[StevieG]

I, too, am surprised at the low takeup of LPG. My other car is a '95 P38 Range Rover with a 4.6L petrol engine. I had it converted to LPG at 100k miles and now, with 326k miles, it has literally saved me tens of thousands of pounds for a £2000 outlay for the professional install. The saving is 10-15p per mile over petrol, depending on the prevailing fuel price differential, so, doing the sums, the saving has been over £23k, and as much as £30k. Total range is doubled to over 600 miles and when the electric in-tank petrol pump failed once, I could still drive using the parallel LPG system.

 

[DJ 190]

Yes, Range Rovers have always been favorites for LPG conversions. The higher the fuel-consumption, the greater the savings and the quicker to pay-back the cost of conversion. The use of LPG as a fuel is far, far greater in Italy and The Netherlands! It's never really caught on here and it's hard to understand why that is? There's great savings to be made with running on LPG and I'd really get a buzz from converting an A2, that's for sure!

Hello David, it's a Tomasetto Stag 200 with a 28 liter lpg tank. The installation need to be done only by qualified company and after conversion the car need a new "MOT" where they check all the work and emissions. The lpg tank is mounted near the battery and is not visible when you open the booth. I have this setup for more than 2 year without any problems. I am from Romania.

That's exactly the make that I've used to convert my Mercedes SLK! It's the latest 400 Plus! I'd have tried to fit at least a 50 litre tank on your A2, though?

David

 

[RantA2]

Hello, I've been lurking this forum ever since I owned an A2 FSI for a very brief moment a few months ago. I have been looking for a new A2 but since I live in Finland and there isn't really much choice in used car market here, I haven't found the right car yet.

I'm interested in converting an A2 to run on bio gas because of enviromental reasons and savings on fuel costs in the long run. Since some of you seem to have experience on this topic I have some questions. Is the 1.4 petrol the best one for the gas conversion? It's not too powerful without modifications, does the conversion affect the performance negatively? What is the best location to place the gas tank, would it fit under the trunk(boot?) floor? I'm mostly driving quite short distances (max. 70 km at a time) so the gas tank doesn't necessarily need to be too large. At the moment I would be driving mostly on my own but I'm planning to keep the car (whenever I find one) for a long time so the gas tank should be located somewhere it doesn't take too much space from passengers or trunk.

-JR

 

[Valentin]

you can convert to LPG also FSI engine, there are option for almost any petrol engine. The tank is 28 liters and fits perfect near the battery under the trunk floor, is the only tank the fits A2 under the floor trunk.
With a full tank of LPG you can make aprox. 250 km in urban condition with 1.4 engine, and there is no difference in power between LPG and petrol.

 

[DJ 190]

Read through this very thread and most of your questions have been answered. There's even a photo of an installed tank! My Bi-fuel Dacia has a 1 litre, 3-cylinder engine and is quite powerful (in fact, it delivers MORE power when running on LPG), so the 1.4 litre A2 should be fine. I may well do a conversion and I'd be looking to fit the largest tank that's possible!

David

 

[gangitano85]

I always thought that LPG is bad for the engine in the long run as it wears more (at least that's what Joep from Klokje Rond - my guilty pleasure - always says when commenting on a high mileage car running on gas).

 

[RantA2]

Thanks for answering. Sorry for the question, I read the conversation maybe too quickly so I may have missed the exact answers, I didn't mean to ask stupid questions. Most of the A2s found here have at least 200k kms so finding cars with less mileage might be difficult. I need to search if there's some more research on the engine wear. I don't drive much, I have only driven about 40k km with my current car in the last 6 years so the wear shouldn't be too big of a problem.

 

[A2Steve]

Does the cost of the conversion warrant the fuel saving given the mileage you do? Have you worked out the calculations?

I think the 1.4 petrol would be a safer bet for the job. The FSI is already a complicated engine when standard, so I can only imagine the LPG conversion would add possible areas for failure in the cars factory engine management system.

 

[RantA2]

Yeah, well the conversion costs quite a lot considering the price of the car, so it takes a lot of time to compensate the costs. In the last six years I've been studying so moving on to working life my driving distances will likely increase. As I mentioned there's also other reasons like the ecological aspect and not being dependent on oil. Oil here in Finland is mainly imported from Russia, compared to bio gas which is made here from local waste.

I read a lot of problem solving discussions here in the short period of time I had the FSI. It had misfiring in all cylinders and quite notable coolant leak. Most other FSIs I have seen on sale in Finland have had similar issues I assumed the 1.4 is the safer petrol option.

 

[DJ 190]

I converted my first car to LPG in the 1970's .... it was an Austin 1800 ("Land-crab" ) I've done many and I'm still doing them! I've never experienced any problem with performance or reliability. It's definitely a superior fuel and costs less than half the cost of petrol/diesel.. I agree with the comments regarding the 1.4 l being the best version for conversion. Finally, the cost of conversion ... there's a local firm offering a conversion for"from" £550! here https://www.lpgconversiondeeside.co.uk/ It's hard to see any negatives ....

David

 

[Guest 4123]

It's hard to see any negatives ....

...especially if you are a former oil company employee!

LNG lorries pollute up to five times more than diesel, suggests study

Lorries that are powered by liquified natural gas (LNG) emit up to five times more nitrogen oxide (NOx) than diesel, according to on-road tests commissioned by the Dutch government. The test involved driving three LNG lorries and six diesel lorries…

airqualitynews.com

Gas truck as bad for the climate as diesel in on-road tests - Transport & Environment

Trucks powered by LNG are a dead-end for cutting climate emissions and emit more cancer-causing particles.

www.transportenvironment.org

RAB

 

[DJ 190]

...especially if you are a former oil company employee!

LNG lorries pollute up to five times more than diesel, suggests study

Lorries that are powered by liquified natural gas (LNG) emit up to five times more nitrogen oxide (NOx) than diesel, according to on-road tests commissioned by the Dutch government. The test involved driving three LNG lorries and six diesel lorries…

airqualitynews.com

Gas truck as bad for the climate as diesel in on-road tests - Transport & Environment

Trucks powered by LNG are a dead-end for cutting climate emissions and emit more cancer-causing particles.

www.transportenvironment.org

RAB

I'm not sure of what is implied, here? Auto LPG attracts a very low rate of tax/duty. Why should that be? I believe that's because it's use results in a very low impact on the environment. If the converse was the case, it would be expected that there would be no encouragement (tax/duty wise) to use it?
I'm very proud of my former Employer and I even have an antique fuel pump outside of my Property.

David

 

[Guest 4123]

I'm not sure of what is implied, here? Auto LPG attracts a very low rate of tax/duty. Why should that be? I believe that's because it's use results in a very low impact on the environment. If the converse was the case, it would be expected that there would be no encouragement (tax/duty wise) to use it?
I'm very proud of my former Employer and I even have an antique fuel pump outside of my Property.

David

Low impact on the environment? By what measurement? LPG does have a low particulate mass emitted per unit of volume burnt but that's not the issue. The issue is the size of the PM produced. The vast majority of the particulates produced are 2.5um and below (ultra fine particles, UFPs), which penetrate far deeper into the lungs than the larger particles produced from say diesel. Even gas cookers produce UFPs There's no such thing as a clean fossil fuel. Not to mention carbon dioxide.

Londoners told to reduce physical activity on Friday due to pollution

Government advises older people and those with lung or heart issues to avoid strenuous activity altogether

www.theguardian.com

RAB

 

[RantA2]

I didn't mean to start an argument, but I think we can all agree that choosing the form of power our transportation runs on, is choosing from several not so great options. All forms of power have their pros and cons, I think the ecology of natural gas is questionable compared to petrol and diesel to say at least.
Why I started to wonder whether converting a car to run on bio gas is a good idea, is because bio gas is renewable unlike the previously mentioned. Of course, it's up to me if I would choose to refuel bio or natural gas, but for me it's kind of obvious that bio gas is by far the better option for the environment given the research results available. There's so much lobbying going on regarding fossil fuels, I think everyone wanting to find more ecological solutions should be skeptical from which source the information is found.

 

[Guest 4123]

I didn't mean to start an argument, but I think we can all agree that choosing the form of power our transportation runs on, is choosing from several not so great options. All forms of power have their pros and cons, I think the ecology of natural gas is questionable compared to petrol and diesel to say at least.
Why I started to wonder whether converting a car to run on bio gas is a good idea, is because bio gas is renewable unlike the previously mentioned. Of course, it's up to me if I would choose to refuel bio or natural gas, but for me it's kind of obvious that bio gas is by far the better option for the environment given the research results available. There's so much lobbying going on regarding fossil fuels, I think everyone wanting to find more ecological solutions should be skeptical from which source the information is found.

Lpg is a mixture of propane, butane and propylene. Biogas is methane. The former is used in vehicles because it is a liquid and you can effectively store more fuel in a given space. Biogas is not normally used for vehicles. There's also CNG, compressed natural gas, which is used for vehicles but cannot be used in LPG vehicles.

RAB

 

[RantA2]

I'm sorry, English isn't my native language so I'm not quite sure we are on the same page here. I might be on the wrong topic... What I'm talking about is gas conversion where the car is fitted with system which runs on methane-based gas, either natural gas (maakaasu in Finnish) which is a fossil fuel or bio gas (biokaasu in Finnish) which is fully renewable and made from bio waste or manure. Both of these are available to refuel from the same stations here and they can be mixed with each other. Now that I researched a bit I don't think it's even a thing to convert your car to run on LPG in Finland.

 

[gangitano85]

I'm sorry, English isn't my native language so I'm not quite sure we are on the same page here. I might be on the wrong topic... What I'm talking about is gas conversion where the car is fitted with system which runs on methane-based gas, either natural gas (maakaasu in Finnish) which is a fossil fuel or bio gas (biokaasu in Finnish) which is fully renewable and made from bio waste or manure. Both of these are available to refuel from the same stations here and they can be mixed with each other. Now that I researched a bit I don't think it's even a thing to convert your car to run on LPG in Finland.

Would that be CNG rather than LPG?