Some of you may remember that I had my Magna take out by an inbreed in a Camry (nearly took the wife out as well) and that I bought a Verada.

You may also know that I got it converted to dual fuel. Do NOT go to the dual fuel converter in Marrickville, they are the only one there. They are as DODGY as they come!!

Larry Mulder in Wollongong fixed the :swearing: stuff up by putting the correctly sized mixer in the line, the one that he took out was this piece of ROUGH AS GUTS cast thing!

Well, the wife and I are just back from Victoria. I was IMPRESSED with the fuel economy. From Canberra, over the Snowys (winding, twisting, up hills and stuff), along the Murry Valley Hwy to Wodongs, then onto the Hume.

560km from 60l of LPG, or $25 of LPG on dollar figures. And that was over the Snowy Mts.

wheres the tank? im interested in going down the LPG route with my magna, but i use it for work and i cant have any of my boot space taken up by a tank.. ive heard of them being put in the spare wheel well before... but then what to do with the spare?

***.. i only get 300 - 350 :(

my fairlane 4.1L was lpg/petrol. when tuned for both i used to get around 300km from 26 dollars of gas. and about 500 from 65L of super.

RJL25, the tank is an 83 litre (about 68l usable) mounted in the usual place behind the back seat. I lost a fair bit of boot, but I also own an 8 x 4 box trailer, so room isn't a problem :badgrin:

The spare wheel tank that you are referring to is a "donut" shaped thing that lives in the spare wheel well, and is usually in a wagon, the spare wheel being relocated to a bracket on the drivers side of the load bay. Mounting this tank in a sedan will leave you with nowhere to put your spare.

I used to have a '92 Fairlane (bloody piece of :swearing: ) that I had converted. The boot was HUUGE so it was great.

Tuned to run LPG an engine is 85% as efficient as a engine tuned to run say 95ron fuel. LPG is 50odd cents when fuel is 100 odd. your looking at substantial gains.


keeping in mind that a car tuned to run both fuels will be around about 70% efficient as petrol would be. this is due to mainly ign timing and cam timing, LPG is 120ron and af is around 5:1

I was looking at the duel fuel thing. I got a few questions
how much does something like this cost?
does it lessen the life of the engine?

LPG IS GREAT STUFF
I have had a few straight gas and dual fuel cars. The best economy was a Ford 3.9L dual fuel EB wagon ex-taxi with over 1M k's that used to do over 600km's on 75L's or $25 worth of gas @ 33cpl. I find that there are big differences in economy with different types of gas mixers, the best for dual fuel being the newer inline ring or nozzle types that hardly restrict airflow.
a properly set up gas system won't run lean under load at low rpm like the old vacuum diaphram style mixers did.

conversions cost between $600 and $ 2000 depending on what car, who does it and what components are used.
gas tanks have to be removed and inspected every 10 years, this can be costly
Taxis will do 500'000km plus on LPG fuel without internal engine work.
LPG is a dry fuel and has no ability to lubricate the valves and seats in theory this can cause the valves to be pulled back into the head. This can be fixed by fitting stronger valves and seats to the head.
Running Unleaded in a leaded engine is the same and only engines that were built for leaded petrol might have a problem with serious valve and seat wear from running LPG,
engines built for unleaded have stronger valves and seats, metal alloys that are stronger again are recomended for LPG engines.

I live on top of the great dividing range and home is about 1300m above sea level. I notice a slight drop in economy on both petrol and gas when driving at altitude compared to driving on the coast. (air density and oxygen content) this drop in economy at altitude is more noticable with LPG.
So the car will idle on gas I have to adjust the lpg idle mixture leaner above 1000m and then richer again when I go back down to the coast . This has been the case with all the LPG cars I have had.