Ebay lpg conversion Birmingham

[daw003]

Hi, I'm looking to get my Nissan Almera Tino converted to lpg but on a tight budget. Has anyone used Autogazpol in Birmingham they advertise on ebay their website is http://www.autogazpol.co.uk/ with 4 cyl conversions from £750.
Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[mat_fenwick]

I can't comment directly on Autogazpol but a bit of general advice - are they local or will you have to travel far if problems occur within the warranty period? The fact that they don't have a landline number doesn't fill me with confidence either...

[billynoband]

Several people on here have used Birmingham Autogas on here. They will not be as cheap as you were quoted but that is too cheap. Saying that a few people on here have bought their kit's and made them work . If you need a standard non performance car converting then a standard kit will be ok and they are uklpg registered which will help getting insurance.
If you need a high performance car converted then go to someone like Hilton Autogas and have a Prins kit fitted.

[daw003]

I'm in South Wales, Swansea, I have contacted 2 companies near Cardiff who are offering the same service for £900-£1000. All three companies are offering the AC STAG 300 kit
I'm not after a high performance kit the car is a standard 1.8l 110bhp.
Can anyone recommend either of these?
LPG Wales http://www.lpgwales.com/ or
Profess Autogas http://www.professautogas.co.uk/

[stype3]

Professautogas did my s-type. THe attraction was that they could do it in one day, on a saturday.

At that time (and possibly still today) they did it without removing the inlet manifold. If I had known it would not be coming off they would not have had my car. They claim never to have had a problem with swarf from the drilling and tapping wrecking an engine, but maybe they are just willing to take the chance and replace a damaged engine if it happens.

They were using the Stag kits then, they may still do so today. The ECU is a piggyback unit and fairly bullet proof. If you have the cash go for the 300 premium rather than 300 plus. These kits are good enough, they fitted the correct sort of vapouriser for my car, but injectors leave a lot to be desired.
Three more things they didnt do properly: They never connected the lamda sensors to the stag ECU so the auto tune facility does not work. They also did nothing to corect the jaguars fuel pump/pressure system, so I kept getting MIL illumination and numerous other faults. I had this corrected by fitting a solenoid valve, restrictor and by paaline back to the tank. It runs well on both petrol and LPG, but if I had the chance to do it again I would have faster injectors fitted, and run with larger injectors. The final thing not done right was plumbing the vapouriser into the cooling system. It gave leaks for ages after, and required quite a bit of searching to find the problem.

One other point; make sure you fully discus the tank options. The tank fitted to my car is slightly taller than I would prefer, so the boot floor is raised a bit. I could have done with a tank 10l smaller in size, and a flush fitting boot floor.

The general fittings were OK, and the electrical work was also OK; the system so far has lasted just over 53000 miles.

good luck

[daw003]

thanks for the detailed review I was put off profesautogas when I spoke to them on the phone they weren't interested in talking to me and were pretty rude. also spoke to a registered installer who advised away from them as they've had cars in with problems after installs there

[RobTheShirt]

I used Professautogas 18 months ago to do my Grand Scenic and I have never had the slightest problem.
I certainly didn't experience any poor workmanship and the owner, Andy couldn't have been more helpful or pleasant.
For speed, professionalism and price I would recommend them to anyone.
I certainly thought it worth the trip from Poole to S. Wales to have it done even taking into account a nights B&B (I didn't want to drive home in the snow)

[stype3]

Yes, Andy was pretty helpful, and I would have used them to rectify the faults, but the distance involved was not worth taking to them.
Value for money: certainly.
Time taken to do the job: 1 day (OK a very long day, about 15 hours)
Would I go to them again? No, but only because of the distance involved, and the car. If I lived an hour or less away, and had a car where you did not need to get the inlet manifolds of to change plugs, and had a more conventional fuel system, then I would use them again.

I would make sure I got Andy on his mobile phone. Not all his staff speak English well


If I was to do it again, I would book time with a proffessional tuner, set up with rolling road etc. to properly adjust the system once it had done its first 1000 miles.



A question for the more knowledgable people. If running on gas, rather than petrol, could much be gained by changing valve timing and overlap (i.e changing camshafts or the settings for the variable valve timing). Even better would be a different ECU, so that when its running on gas, it has the correct ignition timing, as well as turning off the fuel pump and ignoring it. Oh well I cant have everything I suppoes.
good luck

[zafira4ever]

If you wish to see an installation PM me, and I will SHOW YOU in Kent my Zafira how it's been done by Profess Autogas.
Also a friend of mine has done his 528 with them without any issues, here you can talk to him.

[rossko]

Somebody else must be pretty bored, trawling through last year's posts. Not to mention paranoid - who did you think was a competitor? Which was the horror story?

[Gilbertd]

Only two lines and it's been edited twice too. Must have too much time on his hands......

[rossko]

It rambled on a bit about how the negative posts about Profess were fake horror stories posted by competitors. No evidence of that in this thread, but the remarks have now been withdrawn anyway.

[john_d]

If you wish to see an installation PM me,

just post the pics here, im too lazy to pm you, kinda like some ppl are too lazy to remove an inlet manifold

[Gilbertd]

I must be honoured, I got a pm from him......

Hi Gilbert,
Hope you are well.
Yes I edited cos Ross did not like what I said and I was not mentioning ALL installers, just a few.
Long story short, here in this forum I found many badmouthing guys who are not doing any great deals whit such forum entries only frightening away people to install LPG.
I had mine converted as a friend suggested Profess and I suggested to others.
Now a friend of mine comes to me, that he doesn't want his car running on LPG because he read here so much scary stuff, that he wants to stay on petrol. Who is it good for???
Nobody.
Is the Market that bad now?

Subject: Ebay lpg conversion Birmingham

Gilbertd wrote:
Only two lines and it's been edited twice too. Must have too much time on his hands......

[Gilbertd]

So, having a bit of time on my hands, I replied......

Having been on this site for quite a while, I would estimate that 50% of the people with problems on professionally installed, as opposed to factory fit or DIY, LPG systems have a Stag ECU and a system that was fitted in a day in South Wales. As an engineer I will argue with anyone that no matter how many people are working on a car simultaneously you cannot properly fit and fully calibrate an LPG system on a car in a day. On a simple install, particularly on a car that you have done a number of times before, it could be done but then you need to calibrate it. That will involve a road test of up to 50 miles of varying road conditions to ensure it is mapped correctly at all loads and speeds. Then you need to leave it overnight to confirm that the changeover parameters are set correctly for a cold start before doing a final calibration. So how can a system be properly installed and set up if the customer can collect it the same day as he drops it off? Looking at the gallery on the Profess website also does not instill any confidence. You only have to look at the placing of the fillers. If they are not in a plastic bumper (which I doubt meets the 50N shock requirement of CoP11) they are hung underneath so involve grovelling on the forecourt floor to fit the filler. All of them look to be rushed, which, if done in a day, they invariably are.

I have no doubt that some of their customers are happy. You certainly seem to be but I will put money on your injectors being mounted horizontally rather than upright. This will cause them to wear prematurely so you'll be looking at new injectors after 30 or 40,000 miles. Unless you are doing ridiculous mileages, that will be well after the warranty has expired so you'll be paying for them yourself. Then you'll be going around telling everyone that LPG is fine but you'll need to budget for a new set of injectors after 3 or 4 years. In reality, if the injectors had been mounted correctly in the first place, they should, unless they are real budget items, outlast the car.

Nobody on this forum is trying to scare anyone away from LPG. We all use it and are happy, I would not go back to a petrol car and would never even consider driving a diesel. But, what we are doing is trying to educate them into what is good and bad which will steer people away from the installers that will ultimately give LPG a bad name. We've all heard the scare stories that running on LPG will give less performance, premature engine wear, etc when a properly installed LPG system, suitably specced for the car and on the right car will give no difference in performance and actually extend engine life. But that is the difference. The system has to be properly installed and suitable for the car it is being fitted to. If it's chucked in, maybe working at it's limits in the car it is installed in and not fully calibrated, it will give problems and, ultimately, only add to the scare stories.

Don't use price and speed as a reason for choosing an installer. Let's face it, if you have to pay an extra £200 for a decent, properly installed system, you'll get that back in 3 or 4 tankfulls of fuel. If it's done in a day, then it's rushed so choose an installer that wants it for 3 or 4 days to do the job properly.

Don't forget that for every post on here from somebody with a problem, there's probably 100 other people that don't come on here because they have no need to, their car is running perfectly. If your friend is put off LPG because of the problems suffered by the few then it's his loss. But there's scare stories about most cars, irrespective of what fuel they use. Don't buy any MG/Rover car with the K series engine or you'll be changing head gaskets every month, don't buy anything Italian or you'll be stranded with dead electrics all the time (assuming it hasn't rusted away in front of your eyes the first time it rains), don't buy a Land Rover V8 or you'll crack the block and need a new engine if you ever overheat it, don't buy a Vauxhall Corsa or you'll get an urge to wear a baseball cap back to front and drive like a dick...... You've heard all the stories but while some of them may have had a little truth behind them, all are preventable if a car is looked after properly. LPG conversions are just the same, install the kit properly, look after it and you won't get a problem.

Richard (Gilbertd)

[mat_fenwick]

My 2p's worth: Profess seem to have a few bad mentions on here, but you could argue that maybe that's because they do a lot of conversions so will have a proportionally larger number of problems. As already mentioned, a lot of people only join up here when they have a problem (I did ) so that will skew the figures somewhat.

If we accept that we don't know the percentage of unhappy customers they have, the thing that would still worry me is the reported feedback that is given when their customers do have a problem - i.e. fobbing them off by blaming poor quality gas for injector issues. We have others who have had to, or chosen to adjust the calibration of their systems themselves shortly after the install, and achieved better performance and/or mpg. That should not happen with an optimally set up system.