Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines Anybody using LPG

I am wondering how many people here r running LPG fuel? I read about LPG pistons in my chevy inline six book.
pat

ok is it even possible to use lpg in a engine?
pat

Federal Mogul makes a LPG piston for then 292 raises the compression up to about 9.3:1. In general LPG seems to have lost favor. There are not many folks running it all these days. There were LPG systems available that would let you switch between gas and LPG on the fly.

Larry


Larry

what are the pros and cons of lpg?
pat

Here in The Netherlands 80% of al the american cars ran on LPG because gasoline is expensive.
LPG cost a third of the price from gasoline.

An engine specialy built to run on LPG produces the same hp & ft/lb as a gasoline engine.

Important is that you buy a good lpg system, evaporizer and mixer.
I prefer impco, others says that OHG is the best.
With an impco system you can switch back to gasoline if nessary, in a moment.
But i don't know whats availble in the US.

good luck.

Chucky, the key words are "engine specially built". My Dad had a small RV built on a Dodge chassis. It ran 360CI v8, either gas or LPG. It ran fine on LPG as long you were on flat land. He switched to gas when he got to the hills. If you build an engine (to get mpg and power) for an alternative fuel, then the probability of running gas if you can't find your fuel is not good. I seem to recall that most alternative fuels require higher compression and larger jets. Which means on gas you will be pinging and running rich. Since the "powers to be" here in the USA have decided that alcohol is the alternative fuel of choice I've built an engine for alcohol. I've just got it together and ended up with more compression than I wanted 11.0:1. I'm having to push softly on the pedal, which is really frustrating, because this 292 has monster torque.

I just did a search for "price of LPG", kind of interesting, the first two pages of web sites were all in the United Kingdom or Australia. I seem to remember the last time I bought LPG it was two something a gallon here in California.

Larry

I saw it advertised today for 75 cents a pound thought that was a little high. I am not sure how many pounds of lpg in a gallon.

Larry, your right. If you want to built an engine for lots of power alcohol would be better.

In the netherlands is driving a car really expensive. So if you can save some money.....and run your engine on lpg

Holland is FLAT so you can drive everywhere, and you can find lpg everywhere. So we don't have to worry about that.
The gasoline in the netherlands has a octane of 95 and 98. So if you built an engine for lpg (10:1 CR) you can still run on gas if you want without any pinging or what so ever. Even higher CR's a posible with gasoline.

In holland we pay:
gasoline (95) 1.50 euro a liter (7,87 dollar a gallon)
LPG 0.50 euro a liter (2,62 dollar a gallon)

What octane has your gasoline in the US??
I've read a few times that you can't get any higher like 9.0:1 with regular gasoline???

Greets,

Chucky, There is a real difference in the price of LPG and gas there, like 3 times. I don't believe we have the same difference.

There two methods for rating the octane of a fuel, RON and MON, and to confuse things in the USA they average the two. Our octane rating ends up being 4-5 points lower than yours in Europe. Here's a link to an explanation;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating

What octane an engine will run on depends on more than CR. Combustion chamber design and cam play a part too. If I get into it any deeper, I'll be way over head.

Larry

Thanx for the link.

It is all clear to me now

I did not know about the MON measurement. I thought that there was only one octane rating (RON)

Greets.