diesels and Lpg

[hollywood]

yes i know its been hashed out time and time again but if you listen to the installers its bigger and better than ben hurr, my question is this, has anyone found or had system fitted to there beloved mud muncher that gives you value for money. i believe its about 4k or there abouts to have it fitted up, thats a lot of overtime, and what does it buy you. Is it stiil a wallet emptying exercise for horsepower or has someone finally designed a unit that gives you greater fuel economy so you can recover the out lay in a reasonable amount of time, and not when the truck goes classic, I have an STR 2.5 td it goes well enough for me but i would like to travel longer cheaper, not faster. so if you have a story lets go i wanna hear it , because when my warranty runs in may 2011 (from new) ill do what it takes (once only), chip n dyno or gas or whatever i just need the right input and where away cheers steve

[Clanky]

$4K is a lot of diesel and if the gas only saves you a portion of your total fuel use then $4K is a flippin huge amount of diesel = loads of Kms.

Other disadvantages I can think of are:
more weight
takes up space under bonnet and under car
If you are doing a remote trip will gas be available to max your savings?
more hassles with rego
If you go above 30% injection of gas it can be detrimental to the engine - It shouldnt, but it is controlled by one of them compoota thingies.

Gas on diesels are nothing new, been done around the world for years. Might be some tech articles from the UK you can read about, but they dont have the terrain we have

[snowy365]

Rudolf Diesel used coal gas with his original engines and gained about 43% more power from memory .. so its been around forever.

Difference is now that engines are heaps more efficent so the gains would never be as great as 43% .. Im running gas on my TD42 and it does make a difference to power and economy .. I found this out just recently when I hadden a sudden loss of power and used a heap of fuel .. The tank solenoid is going on and off all the time (havnt investigated yet).

But .. the old TD42 is nowhere near as good as the newer diesels when it comes to economy so at $4000 for a good system I probably wouldnt bother .. $4k buys a hell of a lot of fuel .. I calculated my payback at more than 10 years !!

Hope this helps

[Swills]

Had my GQ 1995 2.8 Turbo Diesel converted by Diesel Gas Aust. 3 years ago. A little bit more power & economy but tuning has been a nightmare, 2 computers and various "adjustments" done by their installers and still no better. Some bright spark at DGA in Adelaide told the mechanic to drill out the bucket valve at a last resort. Now a get a sh*t load of gas going through to the motor. I now regulate this flow by turning down the gas rooster on the bottle so I use about 35% gas in the mix. With economy, my better half who has a Maths degree has informed me that unless the price of Gas at the pump is less than half that of diesel, it is cheaper to run on straight diesel as was proved in Tassie were gas was around 88 cents a litre and Diesel $1.40. So for my $2000 outlay its going to take about 40 years (in Victoria) to cover the cost of the conversion. Does anyone know where I can get another "Bucket Valve" for the gas system??

[Swills]

Gas rooster, should read gas valve, the computer doesn't like the old name for a gas tap!