Had my 2.0 converted in 2010 by Autogas solutions in heanor, Derbyshire. Travelled a fair distance to get there after hearing nothing but good reviews, most people see them as the best in the midlands. Cost about £1700 including vat and the flashlube valve saver system with a 2 year warranty (not had to use it)

Ive done about 40k since the conversion and it's not skipped a beat - cant fault it at all, most of the time you don't realise it's there. No difference at all in performance, if anything it seems to run smoother on gas. Currently costs no more than £35 to fill up (gas prices seem to go up in winter but drop back down in the summer) which I get about 300 miles from.

Only slightly annoying thing is you sometimes have to be patient filling up as most filling stations only have one pump.

Ive been thinking of trading it in recently but the cars I've been looking at (fabia vrs 1.9, mk5 gttdi, 320d coupe etc) wouldn't be cost effective for the miles I do - would work out cheaper to get something like a TT or Cooper S and convert to gas.

 

looking at that fill cost/miles and cost of doing it doesn't seem to be cost effective! we filled up on diesel yesterday £70.04 (140.9 ppl) and had filled up before and done 540 miles on that! which works out to 51mpg! (exactly what dash read) so on £35 would do 270 miles.

and we have a tdi 130pd! you can pick one up for anywhere from £1500 (prob a 110bhp but same mpg) up! so the cost of getting the conversion!

 

^^ thats not really the point of lpg conversions though is it, what it does do is allow to to drive a car that doesnt sound like a tractor for decent miles per gallon.

And as you point out he is actually getting more miles than you for £35, and i should imagine your derv needs to be fully warmed to achieve that mpg as mine certainly doesnt unless im doing significant mileage.

Im looking to do this to my t25 probably a self install kit though.

 

When I got mine converted, the conversion worked out a lot cheaper than a half decent economical diesel. Despite this I was still dubious and looked a countless diesels but the quality of what was out there was shocking. (I test drove a 18mth old corsa & its clutch failed completey 500yds into a test drive, 4yr old Focus with the worst gearbox I've experienced (I grew up on crappy old minis, metros etc) In the end it made sense to go for the conversion - at least I knew what faults my car had & that it had been looked after.

It might be a different story now if you can get a decent diesel for £1,500, but can you really get a decent TDI for that much?

£35 for a tank is what the price is currently, the last couple of summers the price has dropped by about 10p per litre - so it'll hopefully be more like £30 a tank once the weather gets a bit warmer.

 

Thanks for your opinions chaps[Y]

What got me thinking about this idea ironically was an episode of wheeler dealers I was watching on Sky (I must be getiing old as I quite enjoy wacthing Ed China restoring old classic motors lol) and they bought an old Range Rover V8 that they were going to convert to LPG.

What got my attention was that they said a typical coversion would cost around £800 ( They didn't mention if this included vat?)

They ran into problems when they found out they their Range Rover was runnning an early fuel injection system and would require a more technical LPG conversion pushing the cost upto £1800[:O]

On a personal note I've had my old girl (Petrol GTI Turbo) now for 10 years from new in March and would find it very hard to part with her after all this time, and to be fair if I sold the car, even with all the modifications that I have done what would I buy to replace her with at todays current value and money being a be tight at present?

If I could turn the clock back 10 years I guess I would have payed the extra money and had a derv, but hindsight is a great thing eh!

Dave

 

A chap I know ran his mk5 Evo on LPG, it made 296hp on petrol, and 309hp on LPG!?!

I was going to do it myself (diy kit), but you still have to get it tested to use on the road from my understanding (saftey etc).

Hth.

D

 

I've had my R32 converted for 9 months now and I can't fault it,no real loss in power and I can run a R for diesel money.

Here's a write up I did on the conversion on the R32oc forum

http://www.r32oc.com/r32-reviews/33878-lpg-converision-my-r32.html

One thing I would say is don't go for the fit in one day merchants heard to many bad reports.

 

Im looking to do this to my t25 probably a self install kit though.

I have an LPG'ed T25 (1987 2.1i Caravelle)

tbh, mixed results.

Its
not a multi-point injection system as I was told these engines aren't
new enough. That was some years ago (8yrs iirc). It doesn't do good fuel
economy tbh, only slightly better that petrol. Large loss of BHP under
gas.

The new gas system working on a 1.8T are excellent though, barely any different in performance.

As Lofty86 indicates, you can performance tune an LPG system on a turbo engine, but can lead to extra wear on piston rings, valves seats, etc iirc (it was a few years ago that I investigated it).

As a general note of using LPG itself, its well worth checkingn out avialabilty of LPG where you live before converting. Been in parts of the country where to use LPG would have meant any saving on MPG was cancelled out by distance to LPG fuel-station. Not mention the PITA of having to use naff commuter route to get to the fuel, rather than a nice quiet one.