Apathy to petrol prices

Steve1977 · 21 November 2009 at 3:09PM

Anyone ever thought of converting their car to gas? I'm tempted to do this cause the price of fuel is ridiculous.

Wig · 21 November 2009 at 3:15PM

anewman wrote: »

I went off to read about WTC but came off more confused about what exactly they are and how much you get than when I started

OT,
When you phone them up they want your total earnings from the previous tax year and your expected earnings for the current tax year, I found this difficult enough and still have not managed to find out the information, so I have not phoned them again.

Wig · 21 November 2009 at 3:30PM

Steve1977 wrote: »

Anyone ever thought of converting their car to gas? I'm tempted to do this cause the price of fuel is ridiculous.

Yes, I used to drive VX Omega estate converted at my expense. When the car was in an accident I bought the exact same model (8V 2.0 engine) because it was more reliable and easier to work on and better fuel efficient than the 16V engine, and The kit could be more easily transferred to my "new" car as it was already "tailored" to that engine. The chappy transferred the kit for about a third of the original installation cost. Actually to save costs, I removed all the important stuff from the scrapped car myself, and just handed it over to him for installation. Anyway, I sold that car eventually. but whilst I had it on gas I could travel 340 miles on 113litres of LPG around town-city driving and on motorway I think I got about 580miles on LPG 113litres. With petrol aswell my non stop distance was was about 800miles (but I never did that due to the cost of petrol). Don't know why it was so much better on motorway, but when I drove round the city, I didn't spare the horses and it just returned a poor mpg (would have been equally poor on petrol) I didn't care because LPG was so cheap back then for me (one third the price of petrol). When I drove on motorways, the constant throttle position and my tendancy to drive 60mph on motorways combined to give remarkable results! I was amazed myself at what I got.

Now I got myself a Vauxhall Corsa Dual fuel "from new" car, but vauxhall still just outsourced the installations to an lpg fitter called "millbank" I think. They were not done in the factory. It works fine. I get 280 miles on 37 litres lpg.

My gas costs me 46p litre, I buy on account and fill up @ 24hrs unmanned pump

I use about one tank per week saving approx £23 per week £1200 per year, had the car one year now. Car cost about £500 more than the petrol only version when I bought it.

If you are thinking of doing this, make sure you find out how much your local gas supply is, then work out your annual savings and hence your pay back time before you are in profit. If buying a car already converted, the difference in purchase cost of the same car on petrol will be needed.

Payback time
6 months or less = go for it!
6 - 12 months ok
12months or more = Is it really worth it?

Rallydriver · 21 November 2009 at 9:32PM

Whats this rumour about 4 tankers sitting off the coast because speculators are trying to up the price then?
I can't see it working, sooner or later they'll have to empty them which will flood the market and the price will drop. The rises last year and this have all been down to meddling middle men only interested in making money for themselves.
If you want stable prices you need middlemen with morals, chance would be a fine thing.

DaveMacD · 21 November 2009 at 10:01PM

Rallydriver wrote: »

Whats this rumour about 4 tankers sitting off the coast because speculators are trying to up the price then?
I can't see it working, sooner or later they'll have to empty them which will flood the market and the price will drop. The rises last year and this have all been down to meddling middle men only interested in making money for themselves.
If you want stable prices you need middlemen with morals, chance would be a fine thing.

I think you'll find there's a bit more than 4. According to the papers, there are upwards of 30 sitting doing nothing, just waiting on the price to keep on rising.