Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2006 4:03 pm**

Convert your car, make a buck

Motorists will receive the full $2000 subsidy for converting their car to LPG, even if the conversion costs less than that, Prime Minister John Howard has promised.

The subsidy for converting cars to run on liquid gas is the centrepiece of the Government's $1.8 billion plan to battle high petrol prices, unveiled earlier this week.

Conversions are expected to cost about $3500.

But some Sydney installers are offering to do the work for $1850.

Mr Howard said motorists would be allowed to keep the difference.

"You get the $2000," Mr Howard told Macquarie Radio. "People will shop around and the market will find its level. But I'd rather err on the side of generosity with something like this.

"And the more you get the double assistance, the greater the number of people who can take advantage of it."

Western Australia already offers motorists a $1000 subsidy and Mr Howard urged other states to follow WA's lead.

"If you've got a situation where you get $2000 from the Federal Government and $1000 from the state, that means that for many people it is effectively cost free and then you start to save that $27 a week on your fuel bills because you have converted to LPG," he said.

Motorists who owned more than one car would be entitled to a fresh subsidy for each car they converted, he said.

"I don't want people to imagine that I think this has solved the problem of high petrol prices, I don't," he said.

"I can't solve that because of the world forces, I don't control them. I see my responsibility as being to try and provide some assistance at the margin.

"And I believe this is very valuable practical assistance at the margin."

Mr Howard urged LPG converters not to start jacking up their prices as demand increased.

"They should (do the right thing) because they are going to get a bonanza out of this," Mr Howard said.

He said it would not be cost effective to convert the commonwealth car fleet because the Government subsidy would not be available.

But he said most Comcars in NSW and South Australia were already using ethanol-blended fuel.

AAP

The fact that you can get it done so cheaply, what are the pro's and con's of getting a Feroza/Rocky converted to LPG?

What effect will it have on power/offroad/etc?

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2006 4:59 pm**

A mate of mine has LPG in his falcon ute, along with 62L petrol tank.

He could cover about 300km on LPG and about 400 - 450km on petrol and it's an automatic.

In my view, the angle of department might be reduce to the LPG installation under the car? I don't think you are allowed to have LPG in Cabin but i could be wrong.

LPG cost less to fill up.. but mite not take u as far as petrol do on the same volume.

Anyone else wanna add something?

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:34 pm**

Saw a Feroza on LPG once (pics only) and it had the tank in the rear behind the seats. If you're going to do gas then make it "gas only" and then you can get decent power as well.

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:38 pm**

They say the milage of the LPG is half that of petrol...

If so, Gas is around 50-60cpl.. twice that is 100-120cpl.. not much difference to using petrol.

Then add on the cost of installation... u better do a whole heap of kms to get that money back.

I wouldnt be able to fit a tank under my Rocky, it would get hammered... and inside is no chance also, not enough room as it is!!

And remote areas dont usually have AutoGas.. so if you are touring stick with normal fuel

Also, the concerns of power loss would turn me away.. we dont have enough to start with.. lol

RockyF70 showed me a link to a diesel/LPG mixture setup that is becoming popular and they claim up to 50% power and torque increase!

http://www.dieselgas.com.au/home.htm

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:48 pm**

Maaaan if Diesel/gas is covered in ths scheme to hell with the muddys and new rims, i'm saving for this 1st

. More power, more economy, and you only need a 35L tank of gas for 2-3 tanks of diesel. (thanks to rocky's hideously undersized fuel tanks

)

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2006 8:51 am**

In the other thread it says diesel/lpg is covered

I mite get 100kw after its installed

hahahah

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2006 9:03 am**

yep, then what happens when, in a few years time, a lotof people have had this installed, and the govt has paid out all this money, they will want to recoupe this money, and they wont be collecting as much excise on the fuel, and the fuel companies wont be making as much profit because of all the people that are now buying gas instead of petrol, guess what, I see the price of LPG going UP, UP, UP.

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2006 10:02 am**

Yeh, well they already have said there will be excise from 2011 or something.. as soon as they get re-elected, this will move to the next year or two.

The thing is, we are just moving to another fossil fuel..

They should put the money into renewable sources

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:37 pm**

IMHO the whole scheme is purely to make sure Holden / Ford/ Mitsubishi dont lose more large car sales and cut jobs. If they were interested in helping out every car owner they could simply have cut the excise rate on petrol.

And I agree the excise on gas is guaranteed to rise soomer rather than later!!!

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:58 am**

Can't help but agree. As soon as people convert - watch the price go up with taxes.

I just can't see a usefull size tank getting into a Feroza without taking up the space we need fo other things ( like driver for example ).

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 4:20 pm**

At least with gas only you could get rid of the fuel tank and put something under there. The rear section is small enough without it being taken up with a tank (and even then you'd only get a small tank in there.)

Posted: **Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:01 pm**

my old feroza was on gas and petrol and you could get 450kms from a 60ltr tank of lpg and about 550 from ulp. it actually went better on lpg than ulp as timing was adjusted to suit the gas. and this was on 31 mud tyres out on the hwy

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:09 am**

built4thrashing wrote:my old feroza was on gas and petrol and you could get 450kms from a 60ltr tank of lpg and about 550 from ulp. it actually went better on lpg than ulp as timing was adjusted to suit the gas. and this was on 31 mud tyres out on the hwy

Went better on gas than it did on ULP before the conversion? or after you were running both fuels and had it tuned for the LPG?

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:27 am**

The straight LPG conversion has interested me. I have been hunting around on the net trying to find a company that can do this to a feroza. Nobody has replied to my emails just yet. Does anybody know of a place in Perth or anywhere for that matter that can do the conversion?

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:07 pm**

it was already converted when i bought it. On petrol it ran out of legs higher in the revs but on gas it would pull hard right up to 7000rpm.

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 6:32 pm**

[quote="HotFourOk"]They say the milage of the LPG is half that of petrol...

If so, Gas is around 50-60cpl.. twice that is 100-120cpl.. not much difference to using petrol.

Then add on the cost of installation... u better do a whole heap of kms to get that money back.

I wouldnt be able to fit a tank under my Rocky, it would get hammered... and inside is no chance also, not enough room as it is!!

And remote areas dont usually have AutoGas.. so if you are touring stick with normal fuel

Also, the concerns of power loss would turn me away.. we dont have enough to start with.. lol

RockyF70 showed me a link to a diesel/LPG mixture setup that is becoming popular and they claim up to 50% power and torque increase!

100-120cent per litre? Where in the hell are u shopping I need to go there !@#$ I paid $1.45 a fucking litre the other day. Fuck you john howard, cut the fucking petrol tax u tight stain.

In the research ive done on gas, it costs 1/3 of the price of petrol and you get between 50-70% of the km's a petrol motor would get with the same volumte of fuel, so your still better off. LPG will get just as expensive eventually, used to be like 20c/l !

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 8:57 pm**

I paid $1.18 per Litre today no discount vouchers either...and that was at Ashmore on the G'coast

Posted: **Mon Aug 21, 2006 12:09 am**

Rb25sil80 wrote:
100-120cent per litre? Where in the hell are u shopping I need to go there !@#$ I paid $1.45 a ***** litre the other day.

Umm.. re-read my post man... lol

The 100-120cpl came from doubling the gas price of 50-60cpl due to around half the mileage. It was just a rough guestimate

You QLD guys get it good due to less taxes on fuel also

Posted: **Mon Aug 21, 2006 12:10 am**

built4thrashing wrote:it was already converted when i bought it. On petrol it ran out of legs higher in the revs but on gas it would pull hard right up to 7000rpm.

What other mods did you have done? Stock Roza's dont really pull 'hard' at the best of times... let alone anywhere near 7k rpm ..

Posted: **Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:24 pm**

i had extractors and a 2 1/2in exhaust, home made snorkel and i adjusted the ignition timing for the gas. i also had the head skimmed when it was reco'd which upped the compression slightly.

On lpg the rev limiter didnt work as it cuts out the injectors not the ignition

Posted: **Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:57 am**

I have since had some replies back from various gas conversion work shops. Most of them have stated that there is no kit available for a fez.........surprise surprise. None of them had much interest in making up something to fit i guess because of thier new found demand courtesy of the goverment funding.

ie: No time mate to busy making easy cash from standard bang out jobs.

Its not looking good so far anyway for a hatsu conversion on my end. Has anybody else had any luck finding somebody interested?

Posted: **Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:12 pm**

Do you think it would be worth the money- even with the grant? Sounds like they'd slug you top $$$ because it's a "one off" too?

Mine only uses 10-11 litres / 100km around town (admittedly of 98 octane) but I wouldn't consider conversion unless I was doing well over 25000km per year. Plus you've got to weigh up the total loss of the already non existant boot space.

Posted: **Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:10 pm**

you could remove the stock petrol tank and fit a lpg tank there and with a bit of fab work get 2 20ltr pertol tanks made to fit under the car below the front seats or even FJ40 style under the seats in the cab.

Have been toying with the idea for my sierra. 2of the ford wagon scuba tanks where the petrol tank is and a small petrol tank (thin as possible) under the floor.

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 12:05 pm**

I have considered the loss of space and i came to the conclusion of doing the full conversion. ie:totally remove the petrol aspect converting to a straight LPG carberator then using the space where the petrol tank is to place the lpg bottles. In my reserch i have seen that there are different shapes of bottles avaiable you could opt to use 2 or 3 bottles with a smaller diameter mounted along side each other to preserve the clearance issues. This sort of set up has been proven in some aplications to give more horsepower. The main problems i can see will be the initial cost and most places aren't interested in expanding into smaller engines because of the demand at the moment.

Does anybody have any comments on these ideas?

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:19 pm**

That sounds like the best way to go. Just get a decent bash plate put over the tanks.

If you go totally gas you could rip off all the EFI system in total - ECU and all, injectors, fuel lines, pump etc. All you need to retain is coil/ distributor. If you can't get more power on just gas then whoever did the job would be next to useless.

Something like a Delta Digital ignition controller could also be good to get the best advance setup for gas. It's easily programmable via a laptop- other wise you'll be stuck with the current curve just advanced (unless you like playing with distributor springs and weights?

)

Posted: **Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:55 pm**

go straight LPG and get the newer injected type lpg systems.
same economy as petrol but more power than petrol...runs off the factory ecu.costs about $4000 but thats on a falcon...so id say around $3000 for a feroza.works the same as a efi car.

Most taxis are getting these new systems put on so next time when in a cab as the bloke about performance you should be surprised.

Posted: **Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:43 am**

rexgrunt wrote:go straight LPG and get the newer injected type lpg systems.
same economy as petrol but more power than petrol...runs off the factory ecu.costs about $4000 but thats on a falcon...so id say around $3000 for a feroza.works the same as a efi car.

Most taxis are getting these new systems put on so next time when in a cab as the bloke about performance you should be surprised.

But Falcons are common

LPG with the same economy.. is that based on litres/km or dollars/km?

Posted: **Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:16 pm**

The Feroza EFI system is very archaic and most likely not compatible with any gas injection set up?

Posted: **Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:56 am**

This time i decided to by pass the internet and give the good old phone a go. The waiting list for a gas conversion in perth is around april atm. When i asked about a feroza conversion nobody had an existing kit and nobody was interested in making up a custom conversion because there was no background on feroza conversions and it could become tricky to get the car running correctly. Some mentioned it would be expensive others said NO full stop.

Its not looking good anyway.....

Posted: **Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:14 am**

Given the similarities between Roza and Charade engines I would have thought it would be more common than that?

But then, again, who'd convert a Charade to gas? It's not like the chew much juice anyways

Luke

Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Want to run your 'hatsu on LPG?

Want to run your 'hatsu on LPG?