What happened to LPG?

Ted_Hutchinson

The Volvo I bought to tow my new caravan is LPG. It's great. I stupidly filled up with petrol when I first went out and since then 3000mls later, it's still not used half the petrol in that tank.
I've put in loads of LPG though.
It's a 2.4 SP80 and does about 30mg on petrol but when on LPG for the same money and TOWING I'm getting the equivalent of 40mpg.
Not every garage has LPG and the price varies somewhat between 43p and 48p litre. But at £10 -£15 a tankful it goes an awful lot further than £15worth of petrol would take it. I've only run out of lpg once and really I didn't notice the transition back to petrol.

dieselglider

I can remember LPG the 1st time around. It was '81 or '82 (last century!), and I was learning to drive in an LPG converted Mini. There was a toggle switch on the dash, and you had to remember to switch over to petrol before stopping the engine, so it would restart easily. The gas tank took up just a bit of the boot space!!

Iirc, petrol then, cost about 80p/gallon

(The instructor then changed to one of those new Metro 'hatchbacks', which felt like a grown-up car, what with longer travel pedals and softer suspension...what a car!)

MiserlyMartin

Those were the days. I wonder if now the EU have given up on getting rid of our metric measurements if they will start selling fuel by the gallon again? Are LPG designed cars the same price as Diesels?

sideshow_matt

Usually cheaper Martin

Genie

Just thought I'd add my experience too. I bought a used Zafira 1.8. LPG about 2 months ago and already the savings are great.

It takes me over 200 miles on £15 so great for motorways. Local driving is much less, but still far better than petrol. It's also a factory fitted type, so no messing about with switches.

Good thing I have 2 petrol stations quite near by that do LPG, and I've added a the UK LPG petrol stations POI to my TomTom, so should be easy to find one out of the area.

It's like being back in the days when petrol used to cost about 50 per litre and I had a 1 litre nissan micra

mdecker_london

I too have a Zafira with the factory LPG fitted. Fantastic economy, and best of all it's congestion charge exempt, so zero cost for driving in the zone rather than the £40 per WEEK it normally costs.

ooo000ooo

We sold our lpg converted toyota picnic to a mate, last week she went into the local garage and connected the hose to the towbar mounted filler and started gassing up. One of the other customers saw her doing it and ran into the garage to tell the cashier that some "stupid" woman was pumping petrol up her exhaust :rotfl:

Wig

I know this is another bumped up old thread but I'm going to reply anyway.

mcfisco wrote: »

The government used to make some fairly subtantial [~70%] grants available for some cars to be converted

No they didn't it was all a con, you could get a good conversion done for 1000, or you could get a "grant" to be used with a govt "approved" converter. Trouble was these "approved" converters charged 2,000 - 2,500 to do the conversion, so you saved nothing by using them.

LPG has a calorific value of around 20% less than petrol so you can expect around that figure in less MPG than a petrol engine.

You can expect about 10% less on LPG


LPG is still a good option depending on how much you pay for your LPG locally, and high fuel useage is really the only factor that makes it worthwhile.

Buying a diesel banger and using cooking oil is probably the best thing to do.

harveybobbles

We sell lots of Volvo S60 LPG and Vectra LPG's. Lots of LPG places round here. There is a place in the hills of Manchester somewhere that will sell it to you for around 37p. Much cheaper than any price i've spotted at filling stations.

The Volvo's are good b'cos you loose no boot space. Vauxhalls you do...

I've also noted from selling LPG cars, that if you live/work in london, you don't have to pay a congestion charge...

Stan_Laurel

I'm new to the idea of LPG. I'm going to buy a factory fitted car. Any advice on used ones?