Occasional Smell of Gas

[h4house]

Hi,

I recently purchased an MG ZT 180 fitted with a Tartarini system. In general the car runs very wells on LPG, slightly rough on tickover and very rarely hesitation when pulling away.

Every so often though I get the faint smell of LPG in the cabin. It happens when de-ccelerating to a slow speed on the motorway from 70mph or pulling up to a stand still. It's not very strong and perhaps it is slightly different to smell you get when disconnecting the filler hose, but its seems to be LPG related as it doesn't happen when runing on petrol. I have had the system serviced and they could find no leaks. They said this was not unusual, but I've never had this with any other LPG cars I've owned.

The catalytic converter is not in the best of conditions (the 'filter' has come loose and is rattling around). Is the smell just exhaust gases catching the car up, so to speak, or could there be an issue.

Will say that I trust the garage, they seem a professional outfit and have no reason to doubt them. Just a little concerned.

Thanks.

[Tubbs]

It could be a number of things, some of which you have flagged up already. Leaky exhaust, or even a porous reducer leaking a bit of LPG into the coolant. But it would probably smell all the time in that instance. Best thing is to do another leak check above tick over and see if it flags anything up.

[h4house]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. It has got me thinking. I had an odd problem with the car last week. It ejected a load of coolant for no apparent reason, but it appeared to happen just as it was switching to gas. The temp gauge dropped a bit then shot up. I pulled over and found the coollant in the engine tray. Is it possible the seals are going in the reducer and as it switched to gas it pressurized the coolant enough to force some out or perhaps it escaped from the vapouriser casing itself?

Been fine since, apart from the gas smell mentioed above. Haven't managed to find any leaks from the coolant system.

Thanks again.