Gas Converting a Hybrid / Milton Keynes

[josewick]

Hello All,

I drive a Toyota MPV (Alphard) Hybrid 2.4 Petrol and is seriously thinking of having it gas converted due to the heavy fuel consumption.

It was great to find this forum and I was already in touch with Dai who had been a great help and with previous experience doing another Toyota Hybrid MPV.

However as much as I love to have Dai to work on my car, I want to see if I can find any one else who is closer to me, as travelling an over 7 hour round trip and trying to get lifts is not easy, plus if there are any future attention I have to do the same too.

I have visited my local "shop" Gas4cars, who had given me, I think is good advice, but I have no idea on their reputation so would need someone to guide me on it.

He suggested that my hybrid start and stop he recommended one and only kit and that is I think called BRC that is capable in starting on gas than having to start on petrol everytime than change back to gas. And because its a toyota, he also said that I am going to need a lube kit with it as they suffer from valve seats problem.
He quoted a 3 day installation with a price tag of just short of £1600 which I think its a little steep where seeing all the others are around the £1200 mark. (Well Ecotec about an hour away had quoted me £850 which I am very wary about on how they can do it and in a day)

Any advice is greatly appreciated and my first preference is to support forum traders as I appreciate the advice and info I get from here.

Thanks

Joe

[Tubbs]

All the AEB based systems have start, stop capability, and a start on gas function. So that opens up king, zavoli, emer, bigas, romano etc. As they are all AEB based.
Have you spoken to dueltech ? He is in bedfordshire, so not too far away.

[classicswede]

The trouble with BRC (other than noisey injectors) is that you will limited on where can look at it for you with the correct software etc.

[Tubbs]

And they are bloody noisy brc injectors.. They sound like a knackered set of magic jets straight out the box

[josewick]

Thank you for your reply.

I have not much experience in LPG alone tho the concept is not new to me as my experience is in the automotive industry as well.

But I do not know if I need to find an installer that has experience with Hybrid cars or just any competent installer that does general gas conversion.

For longer reliability, is it advisable to either disable it running on gas if I am in serious town driving where the on and off will repeat very 30 seconds or so?

Is Duel Tech on board? any info on this company?

Much appreciated

Joe

[classicswede]

There should be no need to switch back to petrol with town driving at all. A couple of Hybrids that I converted a few years ago were Taxis so they were getting a lot of town work.

As to the installer experiance of hybrids is not essential (I had no hybrid experiance when I did my first one) but would help. They certaily need to be used to doing the wierd and wonderful.

[billynoband]

Don't forget that you need a system that will switch straight to lpg every time the car switches from battery to engine around town or any other time for that matter or else you will use lots of petrol waiting to switch to lpg after 40 seconds,60 degrees or 1400 rpm is reached or whatever as this is what most makes of kit do and will do. Not all makes do that to suit a battery car.
Cold starts will still be petrol of course or your lpg injectors will wear/break eventually before time.
This is where classicswedes kit will come into its own with suitability.
I know lpg cars in coventry have converted a honda hybrid.