buying an lpg car

billysmum

at the moment we put in £60-£100 a week of diesel in our old car, (big 4x4 7 seater)we were thinking of selling it and getting a similar priced landrover discovery that is petrol /lpg, on paper it seems this will work out cheaper but at the moment we are not sure if in reality it will work out that way, does anyone have any ideas/opinions on this

Notmyrealname

How far do you travel? A friend of mine has a big 2.8l TD Grand Voyager 6 seat mini-van thing that weighs over 2 tonnes and doesn't put that much in. He does over 300 miles a week.

You should be getting around 35MPG.

LPG doesn't work out much cheaper than a properly running fault free diesel. The equivalent petrol model would only return at best around 60% of the MPG of a diesel assuming you're driving the diesel one properly and it doesn't have a fault. At the worse end, a Range Rover would return something like 16-20MPG if you're lucky. A LPG converted Disco won't be much better.

LPG is just over 50% of the price of diesel however it never seems to change whereas diesel goes up and down so some of the time you'll be better off, others not so.

Whilst the price per litre will drop significantly, you'll be using over 1.5 times as much.

You say your car is old and you want a similar priced Disco. Cheap Discos are cheap for a reason - they're knackered. The repair bills will most likely more than outweigh the fuel savings.

My advice to you is:
Go on an economical driving course. Most people will expect to see a 10% improvement.
Make sure your current vehicle is working properly.
Downsize if you don't need a big 4x4. Look at a 2 wheel drive version of what you've got.

billysmum

the car runs about 20 miles to the gallon and we do a lot of miles, unfortunately we need this size of car as we have 4 children ,we drive the car in 2wd most of the time and only engage 4wd when needed, hubby wont have a front wheeled drive car,

gilbert_and_sullivan

No it won't work out cheaper, well it might but by pennies.

Petrol Disco will do about 15/17 mpg in normal use, maybe 20 on a gentle run, with the best will in the world you're only going to get the equivalent of about 25mpg on LPG.

Another petrol MPV with reasonable sized petrol engine converted to LPG would be a better bet, the problem with 4x4's is that you're pushing 2+ tons of brick through the air, no aerodynamics at all, and dragging all that transmission round, especially permanent 4WD which Disco has.

Nothing wrong with getting one though, nice to have a quiet smooth petrol engine that doesn't stink and costs about the same to run as the Diesel equivalent, but in you case i doubt you'll save fuel costs overall.

You really have to research the long term prospects of LPG on any car you consider, some cars can suffer premature valve seat regression running on LPG, the fixing of which will soon negate any savings, running Flashlube helps but is no guarantee, indeed some cars cannot be converted at all, eg Mitsi direct injection models, eventually the heat of LPG combustion will destroy the petrol injectors, an unscrupulous LPG converter might not tell you that...i understand that there is a new LPG system out that can cope with DI engines but you really need to speak to a reputable converter before buying anything.

As an aside, i am always a bit wary of people selling used LPG cars, its an expensive conversion and usually such an expense that the sensible owner will run the car till it dies.

mikey72

billysmum wrote: »

................hubby wont have a front wheeled drive car,

That does limit your choice. you're probably better off with the car you have.

oscarward

Have you considered an lpg conversion fitted on the existing diesil car? I didn't think it was possible until I saw this on a jaguar car forum.

http://www.ozonlpg.com/diesellpg.html

They do claim 25% increase in MPG but offset by a £1000-1600 fitting charge.

billysmum

hey thanks for your help,we have decided to keep the current car,as we have had it for 6 years, and have done a lot of work on it underneath and we love it, we are going to look into getting more mpg on the current car,it has a great engine and auto gearbox, and also use my little polo whenever possible as its cheaper to run