LPG Discussion Forum

(Filled up at my local autogas/extragas depot today at 53ppl which has been the same price for years summer and winter and I was asking if they'd had any supply issues cos their external 24hr pumps haven't been working but they said they hadn't had any supply issues from the refinery s at all, however the parts and engineers to fix the pumps are in short supply with a 2-3 month delay on both at the mo, I think they said they've been out of action now for 10/12 months and they're a big depot, but they've still got a pump inside if you drive in during working hours tho technically it's not for use)

Interesting debate I get what Richard says if you're getting half price fuel you might as well enjoy it, but you mite as well get the most of the half price fuel as well going forward in the future with electric competition etc.

Never used cruise, suppose it saves calories!!, in the future maybe you 'll be able to work at the sametime on it, I could see if it enabled you to hold the most fuel efficient speed/rpm or perhaps peak torque in some ways that could make it more efficient but obviously maybe a bit impractical, it does sound like itd be good taking the human element out of it on motorways/some dual carriageway s, perhaps speed zones.
As Simon says accelerating/speeding up on the level in approach to a hill and accelerating outta the hills supposed to be the more load/consumption efficient.

I think the principles outta that pulse and glide method I mentioned are when accelerating make it briskly up to speed 3/4 throttle pre open loop up to peak torque rpm?
And try and take advantage of fuel cut off during deceleration/coasting by taking the foot completely off the throttle?

Don't get me wrong, I would rather pay less for fuel but at the same time I don't see why I should modify my driving style and make fuel saving more important than enjoying the drive. Do I think twice about poking the Sport button and flooring the throttle so my V8 revs up to 5,500 rpm before the gearbox changes up, no I don't. If I have to make the decision between using a bit more fuel to overtake a truck and get onto a bit of clear road or getting bored to death sitting behind it because not overtaking would maybe allow me to get an extra mile out of a tankful of fuel, I'll overtake. Then again, I don't exactly run the most economical of vehicles, two and a half tonnes of V8 Range Rover and a Maserati Biturbo Spider that, even driven gently, might just about manage 20 mpg on Super Unleaded, and I used that as an everyday car for 2 years. I consider driving to be a hobby, it's something I enjoy doing and hobbies, no matter what they are, cost money. Saving a bit on the costs is one thing, making that the sole reason is a step too far as far as I'm concerned.

I know that's brilliant Richard that's the beauty of lpg I've had a few v8/6 s in the past but was torn between going Lpg due to the lack of mileage for me at the time the hobby s changed a bit into a bit of a compromise of a nice-ish car that's sustainable compared to some of the newer vehicles after that now for me, I don't really rag mine v much but that's just me and traffic but yeah Lpg allows you to do that guilt free but I don't watch every revolution, but I get a bit of a challenge outta trying to run a nice-ish car cheaply, and it's the same principkdu it's just on a diff level to things like your biturbo etc, I always had a bit of a fancy for them, that's more my hobby I get a bit of a buzz outta now, I'm just at a lower altitude, and so I applaud what you do and that's the beauty of Lpg and hopefully may it long continue

So after filling up with 40l of lpg for just over £21 tother day, I treated myself to £21 of just 15l of Tesco momentum!! (normal unleaded was slightly cheaper at 1.33) but still prolly fairly cheap I would imagine.
So for 15l of petrol bought me almost exactly 40l of lpg.
So basically that's less than 40 percent the cost 37/38/39 percent.
So you can see theres still good savings to be had around at those sortta discounted rates.

Ok bit of an update again hope everyone's been ok, just ran out of gas again on 280 miles of urban driving so that's pretty good, I've just been trying to tweak my system a bit myself before a proper pro-calibration, anyway before my last holiday I plugged in my interface cable the wrong way around in haste and I had to order another one from Poland and then couldn't reconnect that either and I thought I mite have done some internal damage, I pulled out the fuse, reset and updated my laptop reinstalled numerous drivers and system software and I've finally reconnected despite my laptop and battery being on its last legs a bit, ive been trying to drive around on petrol and switching to gas and establish mapping points, which with my system as Simon mentioned can get numerous dots, and I've now got a fairly straight line, but checking on my obd reader I've had slightly high +ve STFT and LTFT readings (on my scan tool it's quite hard to read there's 3 stft values, stft bank 1, stft bank 3, not sure what that is on a 4 cyl, and bank 1 sensor 1 bx-sy reading and I don't know which one to read cos they all show different values, anyway I eventually got a P0171 lean code, so I thought I'd attempt to try and adjust my mapp a bit by moving the whole line slightly, anyway I lowered it, which I realised probably made it leaner in retrospect, and it ran like a bag of spanners before my laptop battery ran out!! Anyway I've tried raising it back again but it's difficult to know where it should be again now, trying to watch the pinj ms numbers switching to lpg and back without getting a change and monitor fuel trim readings, anyway I mite have to just start again and get a pro-calib, it's pretty tricky, I don't know which stft reading to take, my ltft s were pretty high without reaching the mil threshold, but I guess the lean code and figures could get triggered from any point in the rpm range you've got to cover.

I've realised that depending on your scanner you can ignore some of the readouts on the datastream as there sort of false, my lpg correction value starts at about 1.2 at idle and slowly drops off and flatlines to about 1 at 11ms onwards at the top of my mapp line.

Away on a long roadtrip hol again so ill give another update, gonna try and monitor my mpg a bit on this trip to see how affordable long range touring around trips are for my own info.
Still been getting pretty good fuel consumption figures 260 miles for 34L and 208 miles for 24L mainly urbanish so cant really complain there.
Driven to the Yorkshire coastline up and down for almost 3 weeks, ive cruised here used a bit of petrol up and down the M62 hills to try and preserve my valves, which is something i want to start thinking about now my conversion and engine seems ok.
What are the price and inconvenience differences between the electric flashlube kits and just the ordinary vacuum ones?
Ive been trying slightly to tune my system before a proper pro calibration but it is v tricky.
Im not too far off with my normal driving ive been trying to drive around with my laptop connected but its battery life is now @!##.
It eventually threw a p0171 lean code, but my code reader datastream which is confusing looked like it was running rich so ive tried to alter the whole range of correction line prolly in the wrong direction and made it worse, so my mapp lines were straight but parallely apart (on my system the mapp isnt numerical its purely by the way of a physical graphical line), ive attempted to straighten the lpg line slightly which isnt easy, then in trying to delete an amendment, i think ive deleted my whole petrol mapp line, so i mite have to do the petrol mapp point line again, tho its running ok.
Cant workout if just purely the actual pinj times go up when you switchover to gas does that mean the lpg corrections rich or lean? (And is it the converse if the actual pinj times go down after switching to lpg?)
Cheers hope everyones doing alrite.
Oh and although lpg supplys a bit sketchy round here at the moment, the price difference if you can get it cheap still is big compared to petrol at mo, i mite try and see if refillings possible on caravan sites while im here

Just filled up at redcar morrisons @62.9 it didnt appear on the autogas app last time i was here earlier on in the year funnily enough.
Getting almost precisely 300 miles to a tank at the mo, im hoping to get slightly more on long runs, like on the way home ill keep you posted.
Ps. During my trip my return ps hose sprung a leak near to a filter/cooler id installed down the line. Thought it was gonna be an expensive disaster on holiday, but ve managed to repair it quite nicely was a bit worried, luckily the return hoses arent on the v high pressure side, ive got to resecure my lpg ecu again tho as i had to remove it to get access.

Not been on here much cos haven't used my car much over winter but filled up again tother day at Morrison's and was gladly relieved to see it was still 58ppl could only full half the tank up tho seemingly surprisingly? so I'll have to monitor that one.

Wow! Which Morrison's was that? I thought they all went over 72p at least...

Yeah I hadn't filled up in a while but I was surprised too was expecting an increase, Eccles , Manchester but don't tell em!!

Maybe that's why they didn't let me get a full tank!!

Maybe your tank wasn't empty to start with. Or possibly theirs had very little left, and you had the last few litres out of it. I've had that happen a couple of times, where the station hasn't realised its got very little left in the tank.

Very interesting, perhaps they were trying to empty the tank for maintenance or replacement. They've done similar thing here few years ago when a petrol station were getting refurbished. They were selling petrol at 85p to empty the tank. Though I was already running on LPG then so didn't take advantage but told my neighbours and they rushed to have their cars filled up!

When I drained the tank at Northmead a couple of weeks ago, first I got about 3 litres then it stopped, released the button and pressed again and got a couple more. Kept doing that until it would only give me a couple of seconds worth before stopping again. They weren't aware how low they were until customers told them. So I doubt they were trying to empty the tank, they just let it run dry before ordering another delivery.

I see. When we had that conversation couple of weeks ago, I was gonna ask you about what actually happens when the tanks at the forecourts get drained so this is educational, thank you. I would have thought they monitor how much is going out to ensure the supplies to customers are not disrupted but in reality, obviously not...

I suspect the pumps detect they aren't pumping liquid but vapour and automatically shut off the same as a petrol pump. The guy in the shop told me that he thought they were getting low but he would have to check the gauge. I would think they would have a pretty good idea of how much they have but as it was one of the few in the area that still had a supply, they'd probably gone through it a lot quicker than they would do normally.

The petrol tanks generally have a gauge which is linked to the till system, having done a few till installations at forecourts in my previous job, the few of their forecourts that have had LPG tanks have never had visibility of the lpg level without going out to check something in the compound.

The local garage usually switches theirs off at 5% remaining capacity

To drain a tank, they would usually send a tanker and get it to suck out instead of pumping into the tank? Obviously with petrol or diesel its a different case though a lot of the time if the refurbishment is also including work on the tanks, then you may not want the contents of the tank anyway (not unknown for them to start leaking and ending up with water in the tank)

As Richard says above, you will find when its really low, you get the occasional spurt of activity from the pump then it stops and then comes back as it can pick more up. LPG is a bit odd like that, if you ever use cylinders when they are running low on something that uses a lot (our space heater being one example) then you can find that will carry on a bit longer if you either shake the bottle, or put it on its side to redistribute the contents. Don't put it upside down though else you end up with liquid coming out instead of vapour.

You can find similar with large lpg tanks - The one in the disco is 160 litres, and you can hear the lpg boiling off in that when its down to the last few litres left.

Something new I learnt today. Thank you guys!

Interesting, I only got half a tank in from empty but yeah it could be various things including my user error so I'll monitor it but it was defo still 58ppl id expected it to have gone up recently.