Running / Converting Car to LPG

Windows

With the constant increase in petrol prices, I took the plunge and had my Citroen Picassio converted to LPG by official fitters in June 2011. Took 4 days which was carefully planned for and cost just over £1,000.

Initially was not sure if I had done the right thing as for the first 2 - 3 weeks I was a constantly having problems and I found myself switching back to petrol regularly; but those problems were ironed out and now 8 months on it works like a dream even in cold weather.

Formerly it was costing 19p a mile to use petrol now 10.5p a mile using LPG. Insurance is no different at all (I told my insurers and as long as it was done by an official company they had no problem with it at all and didn't charge to change the policy).

I am also fortunate as Picassio engines don't need the expensive oil that most LPG cars require to be added to the regular oil.

Also DVLA will reduce your road tax by £10 a year. (wow).

At 66p/l LPG to me has been a great answer and already I have nearly made my £1,000 back (saving £68 a month now and I only do 800 miles a month).

In fact the only expense I've found running it is the extra £55 a year it cost's to service the LPG system, but after saving £816 a year on petrol is a small price to pay.

gilbert_and_sullivan

ssh, don't tell 'em Pike, they'll all be jumping on the bandwagon and then the govt of the day, term used loosely, will put through an emergency budget and raise the tax on the stuff...;)

The oil you refer to is called Flashlube, it doesn't go in the engine, it is in a small dispenser that puts a few drop of special oil into the inlet manifold as you drive along, very simple and a cheap extra.

My car doesn't need it either, so they say, but for peace of mind i have a Flashlube kit on my car, costs me about £65 for 5 litres of the stuff which should last about 2 years i reckon.

A bit cheaper than valve seat recession which is a real possibility otherwise.

Well done for having the nous to invest some money in your perfectly good car that you know intimately, other people seem happy to send several thousand pounds on another car that appears cheaper to run on paper, then they find it has more electronics and stupid things like DPF's to go wrong and costs hundreds of pounds every so often in repairs to save £20 of fuel, its quite bizarre how peoples minds work.

Nice to be able to keep a sweet petrol engine, not a tractor engine under the bonnet.

Your experience of some fine tuning being needed is common, doesn't pay to go too far to have the system fitted, that £200 saved on fitting soon disappears when you have to take the car back several hundred miles a few times, in my experience a good LPG fitter will want the car back for recalibration after a few hundred miles anyway even if it seems to running perfectly.

Wig

To say "happy to be on LPG" is slightly innaccurate

I do ponder over the other cars available now which on paper are supposed to be very good, tax band A cars for example.
If a diesel gets 77mpg (or petrol gets 73mpg) or more then they are doing as good as I am on LPG..... and that's me driving with usually a heavy right foot.
Band A cars also save a wad of road tax each year, I pay £105 for my LPG car band E

Some of them get close to that so they are not as good as me but they have standard cars.
Some of them will possibly be chock full of expensive technology but my car isn't exactly free from complicated technology fitted as standard (pre LPG) either, and the LPG kit does cause it's own problems, access to parts of the engine in the engine bay and the tank in the boot.

But what really tickles my fancy at the moment is the notion that I could be doing much better if I was to invest in making my own biodiesel for 40p/litre and getting better mpg from a diesel engined car, which would be win win....I could cut my running costs by 40 - 50 %

KierNet

I'm toying with the idea about it in my 5 Series, I've put £200 in just under two weeks!

Just need to save a bit of money and do some research into it.

Do you notice a difference in performance?

Wig

You won't notice any difference in performance.

Would you notice the difference between 0 - 60 in 6 secs & 0 - 60 in 6.6 secs?