Propane Conversion?

[Anonymous]

Anyone do it?

I'm thinking about calling up the people at www.gotpropane.com

and seeing if they have something that will work on the ole Ford 6

 

[xctasy]

Yes, done it on my Aussie Falcon and British Cortina. They were lpg dedicated six cylinder cars. The Falcon was 250 cubes, the Cortina only a 140 cube V6 but had an IHI turbo. These had the gasoline tanks removed, and the propane tanks were to go under the rear floor where the gasoline tank was.

DISCLAIMER: All conversion work must be carried out by a licensed LPG installer / mechanic. The suppliers of all information cannot be held responsible for any damage or injury incurred from the supply of this information.

The best bits to use on our six cylinder engines from 170 to 300 cubes are:

an Impco CA 300 mixer (348 or 432 cfm, 216 to 280 hp potential)

an L oe E series Impco converter, (250 to 325 hp potential)

a VFF 30 vacuum lock-off (able to flow 325 hp with ease),

a nice 20 gallon LPG fuel tank with 5/16 lines

Use the Impco starter valve. (Very cheep and can be used with Fords 2-bbl emissions Fuel Control Valves).

Most Convertors come with EC1 lean cruise power valves, and they work brilliantly. All my conversion have used this feature

If the engine is below 200 cubes and in a mild state of tune, then you will need the Vacum Perfomrance Valve, which allows you to control fuel more accuratley.

With this set-up, you'll have the best great set-up for propane only use, and there is the option of running a dual fuel set-up.

Impco isn't the most modern carb system, but it is the simplist, and suffers fools gladly. In America, you have to go dual fuel unless you have a back-up propane depot of an illegal barbeque gas vessel to get you to a propane depot.

See http://www.kastang.net/fsp/xecute.html for my old 4.1 Falcon system. On a 170, 200, 250, a later model 72-84 head, direct mount 2-bbl Holley carb throttle body and Impco carb will work great. If you want petrol and then propane, then just go for the Holley Weber 5200 or Holley 350 or 500 cfm carb, and mount the offset adaptor made by Impco for the 350 Chevy dual fuel conversion.

They were common up to the early 80's during the gas cruch years

 

[66 Fastback]

Back in the 70's and 80's I remeber a bunch of trucks being converted to Propane in addition to running on gasoline. In the 90's, it seems the price differential did not justify the decreased mileage of the propane equipped vehicles.

I have to admi that I have not looked at the current pricing of propane to see if it is a viable alternative in todays market.. What is propane going for nowadays?
Doug

 

[Anonymous]

My work sells propane for 2$ a gallon, across the street, the gas station sells 86 octane for 2.65$ a gallon

 

[66 Fastback]

You may not be saving any money when you look at how much energy you are getting on a equivalent basis. Since I don't have my thermo books handy, I did a quick search and found the heating values of gasoline and propane from a gov't site. Exact heating values vary slightly, but the table listed the gross heating values of Gasoline as 125,000 btu per gallon. Propane is 91,300 btu per gallon. Doing the math, at $2.65/gal you are getting 47,170 btu's/$ with gasoline. With Propane at $2.00/gal, you are getting 45,650 btu/gal. Comparing the heating values, Propane hs 73% of the btu content of gasoline. at 2.00 per gal vs 2.65 per gal, Propane is 75.5% of the cost of a gallone of gasoline. So it is basically priced equivalent to its energy content. Unless the propane is converted more efficiently than gasoline, there will be no upside to converting at these prices. I seam to remember back in the mid to late 70's, when gasoline wast about $1.00, I seem to remember propane costing something like $0.35 to $0.45 per gallon. At that time, you were getting many more btu per dollar when you bought propane vs buying gasoline. Deregulation of the natural gas industry and a stronger demend for it brought the cost of natural gas up more in line with that of crude oil & gasoline.
Doug

 

[xctasy]

Excuse me for placing the market forces hat on, but the pricing of gasoline and other gaseous fuels like Compressed Natural Gas, Liquid Natural Gas, Liquid Propane Gas is exactly where it should be. The reason American automotive retro fitting and stationary engine companies like Century, Impco, the late OHG and the others got into the industry was becasue they made Gaseous Gear before the wholesale price of fuel went up. It went up because Americans prefered to make friends with its (Arab!) suppliers, rather than opening up its own reserves. Pretty smart.

In America and New Zealand, we have draconian environmental laws, and any new energy source is going to be very expensive to fund. Hence an existing LPG or CNG source is going to be slighly lower in cost to petroluem costs, and it will always be slightly cheaper than diesel.

There won't be wild swings again in gasoline and gaseous fuels relativity again. You can bank on that!

On a heating value BTU basis, the pricing of CNG for heating and LPG for industry is roughly similar to the total costs per unit of doing a nuclear power plant, and less than a hydro dam, and less than coal fired power. The costs of goverment compliance and enviromental impact reports, litigation, paying staff, the infrastructure, all factor in. Its pretty dumb to ascribe such price rises of CNG or LPG to local energy suppliers.

In New Zealand, our small market is certainly rigged becasue there is no competition, and CNG, LPG, coal, gasoline and electricty from hydro electric dams in controlled by the government in a socialist manner. There is no difference between a free market cost and a totally state subsidized cost. When we stopped looking for new CNG reserves and for more hydro thermal sources, the price of LPG went up with the increase cost of gasoline after the two Iraq wars. When the cost of hydro electric dams went up due to legal and environmental issues, the Todd Energy Group and companies like On Gas then had free reign to push up costs of the gaseous fuels to a similar level of electricity. Since the market only had a few sources of power, market forces govern the costs.

Last point.

Even though LPG is only 99 RON rating, or 96 (MON+RON)/2, it is a very efficent and clean fuel, which has no particulate problems, and is much cleaner than gasoline. On a dual fuel basis, and these days, as a sole fuel basis, there is a 5 to 10% fuel economy loss. This is because modern cars are designed to run 10 to 11:1 compression ratios and have optimised electronics. Shove LPG on, and its worse. On older pre 1986 vehicles, LPG is better if there are modifications to run it as a sole fuel vehicle. However, LPG is always more thirsty. When turbo charged things swing in its favour drastically. In addition, LPG is 4 times safer than gasoline becasue every LPG car must run 5 to 8 fail safe devices, whereas gasoline cars only have roll-over and impact cut-off swithces and partially burst proof tank requirements. In a crash, environmentally, and economically, LPG exceeds gasoline.

CNG has a 130 RON rating, and it is inferior in terms of mileage by a big margin to gasoline and LPG, but is very very clean, and is available locally as a muncipal dump or landfill waste by product. Long term, it will benifit from liquid injection, but its a while away.

 

[Anonymous]

I wasnt actualy switching over for price of the fuel.

I'm actualy planning to switch over due to the fact that my engine will run cleaner. and theroeticly last longer

 

[addo]

I often sense an almost antagonistic attitude to LPG in some posts. The majority of applications here are taxis, and they often are dedicated motors, not dual fuel. Safety is total. The force of impact that would cause catastrophic failure/combustion of a tank (assuming compliant installation and inspection), would probably kill a driver at the same time - so that's a non-issue.

In these taxi applications, it must have benefits - or they simply wouldn't do it. The days of LPG as a performance fuel are probably over because of diminished potency and raised cost.

Dual fuel is always a compromise. Corrspondingly, performance will reflect that!

Regards, Adam.

 

[Lazy JW]

Taxi cabs typically spend long periods of time idling in traffic. This is an ideal situation for propane fuel due to its clean burning characteristics. We run several propane forklifts at the sawmill, our mechanic rebuilt one a while back that had over 13,000 hours of run time on the engine (Mitsubishi). I inspected the bores when he tore it down, it could easily have taken just a ring job but they rebored it to .010" over. Yup, that is correct, it cleaned up with only ten thou, I was surprised that pistons were available at that small overbore. That amounts to only .005" inch per side. Spark plugs last an incredibly long time on these engines too, as does the oil. Figure out how many miles you would have to drive to equal 13,000 hours 8)
Joe

 

[Anonymous]

If you have an avarage of 35mph though out the entire life of the engine


455,000 miles