Hello All,
It's a wet bank holiday and fun in the sun has been put on hold so I thought I would spend half an hour showing you my LPG powered 1.2 Aveo S A/C.
The car was bought as a post divorce poverty car to enable me to keep claiming my £4k/year car allowance from work, 6k on the clock, 9 months old, £5499, from Wilsons of Sc**thorpe. Ran it for a year, put 12k on the clock, paid myself back about £8k and car was faultless, and comfortable too. Christened the "Spaz Chariot" at work it was popular with my kids too. Then things changed a bit, work wise, and the chariot went into storage for 18 months. Roll the clock forward, another 8k on the clock, another £4k in the bank, and it's time for a new car, right? Wrong! It's time to experiment.
The car has had no problems and suits my purpose well, so I decided to keep it. Coupled with a 5 month contract requiring some 700miles/week, I looked into an LPG conversion.
I am a well experienced amateur mechanic, having been keeping my cars alive, building kit cars, and resurrecting hopeless cases for over 30 years, but have no experience at all of LPG.
Based on convenience, price and a casual look round their place, I let autogaspol do the job for £650 (I paid an extra £35 for a concealed filler as we shall see later). The job took from 08:30 until 16:00 on a Saturday, so about 7 hrs working time.
You can see a list of parts very similar to those used in the conversion, at autogas-lpg.
The price being £430. Hence in very rough terms, Autogaspol are charging £220 for 7hrs labour/skill/facilities/overheads. Very reasonable.
Specifics
Tank
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The tank fitted is a 41 Litre Stako toroidal tank in the spare wheel well, along with the multivalve assembly. A 41 Litre gas tank will hold a maximum of 80% of it's capacity in terms of liquid gas, to allow for expansion pressure, hence theoretical volume is around 31 litres. In real terms, full-empty capacity is about 29 Litres (roughly 6.5 gallons), which, as we shall see later, equates to 200-225 mile range on LPG. There is just enough room to keep the jack, wrench, etc down the side of the tank.
Reducer/Evaporator
The car is fitted with a steffanelli reducer, to take the liquid gas to gas phase for the injectors. It is heated by being plumbed into the cooling system by means of branches on the feeds to the heater matrix. A temperature sensor connected to the ECU allows control of the gas valve, and the gas injector rail, as well as turning off the petrol injectors at the appropriate time. From a cold start on a frosty morning, the Aveo needs 2 miles to get up to temperature for gas operation, if the engine is under load at the time there is a faint "bump" on switchover, if on overrun it is not perceptible. Subsequent starts are almost instantly gas. If the car is left all day after a run, it needs about a mile to get up to temperature.
Injectors
These are standard OMVL sequential gas injectors. Autogaspol left them "loose" on top of the spark plug cover, which looked inelegant to me, so I made a little bracket up. They feed gas to the engine via tubes tapped into the plastic manifold, and sit adjacent to the petrol injectors.
ECU
This is a PRIME sequential controller, wired in to use the existing sensors, etc. The cabin control is wired in too. This allows manual switchover to petrol if required. It also has a 4-LED gas level meter, which as any LPG driver will tell you, is as much use as **** on a boar pig, the only way to know how much gas is left is the trip counter.
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Filler
I've opted for the "discrete" filler hidden behind the petrol flap, rather than the big plastic one. This causes no end of anger at Morrisons, because they always put the gas pumps in the middle, and fists get waved because I don't move forward.
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The adapter to full size is hanging on the cover.
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Costs
Firstly, although LPG is less than half the price of petrol at time of writing, you DO NOT make a 50% saving. LPG is around 15% less potent than petrol, and YOU WILL lose 15% of your economy. I have historic data for my car, and it uses almost exactly 15% more gas than petrol. My daily commute is 130 miles and I consistently use 16 Ltrs of gas, (3.5 gallons, 37 mpg). Hence my running cost is around 7p/mile. My best estimate is of a payback mileage of between 13 and 15000 miles.
Downsides
You lose the space taken up by the spare wheel. In my case this is utterly irrelevant as the car has only myself and my dinner in it for over 90% of it's usage. You need to use LPG spark plugs to avoid misfires, and these cost £62 a set, rather than £16 for the normal ones. You need to fill up much more often, and annoy people when you do. People think you are a nutter/geriatric (but then they do anyway if you drive a T250/T255-for record I am a nutter so no big deal). You lose 15% of your power at max revs, so don't try racing M3's at the lights. You may limit your market for reselling the car. There are still myths out there about "bombs in the boot" etc which although nonsense do affect some people. My daughter (who will be 17 next year) is already showing a lot of interest in the Aveo though, wonder why....
Autogaspol- Disclaimer
This article should not be seen as a recommendation or criticism of Autogaspol. I picked them at random and they did a reasonable job that has caused me no problems and appears to have been properly done. I would be happy to use them again, but others may not be. They are a company run by Polish nationals and there may be the odd language problem. If you have a problem with Polish people working in the UK, then steer clear (I don't, 30% of the population of my town is Polish, <strike>and the girls are nicer than the locals</strike>). Poland is the third largest user of LPG vehicles in the world, so maybe they know a thing or two about them?
Comments/Questions
Are very welcome, fire away, but remember that I had this conversion done for "fun" out of curiosity, so telling me I must be mad will cut no ice.
![]()
It's a wet bank holiday and fun in the sun has been put on hold so I thought I would spend half an hour showing you my LPG powered 1.2 Aveo S A/C.
The car was bought as a post divorce poverty car to enable me to keep claiming my £4k/year car allowance from work, 6k on the clock, 9 months old, £5499, from Wilsons of Sc**thorpe. Ran it for a year, put 12k on the clock, paid myself back about £8k and car was faultless, and comfortable too. Christened the "Spaz Chariot" at work it was popular with my kids too. Then things changed a bit, work wise, and the chariot went into storage for 18 months. Roll the clock forward, another 8k on the clock, another £4k in the bank, and it's time for a new car, right? Wrong! It's time to experiment.
The car has had no problems and suits my purpose well, so I decided to keep it. Coupled with a 5 month contract requiring some 700miles/week, I looked into an LPG conversion.
I am a well experienced amateur mechanic, having been keeping my cars alive, building kit cars, and resurrecting hopeless cases for over 30 years, but have no experience at all of LPG.
Based on convenience, price and a casual look round their place, I let autogaspol do the job for £650 (I paid an extra £35 for a concealed filler as we shall see later). The job took from 08:30 until 16:00 on a Saturday, so about 7 hrs working time.
You can see a list of parts very similar to those used in the conversion, at autogas-lpg.
The price being £430. Hence in very rough terms, Autogaspol are charging £220 for 7hrs labour/skill/facilities/overheads. Very reasonable.
Specifics
Tank
The tank fitted is a 41 Litre Stako toroidal tank in the spare wheel well, along with the multivalve assembly. A 41 Litre gas tank will hold a maximum of 80% of it's capacity in terms of liquid gas, to allow for expansion pressure, hence theoretical volume is around 31 litres. In real terms, full-empty capacity is about 29 Litres (roughly 6.5 gallons), which, as we shall see later, equates to 200-225 mile range on LPG. There is just enough room to keep the jack, wrench, etc down the side of the tank.
Reducer/Evaporator
The car is fitted with a steffanelli reducer, to take the liquid gas to gas phase for the injectors. It is heated by being plumbed into the cooling system by means of branches on the feeds to the heater matrix. A temperature sensor connected to the ECU allows control of the gas valve, and the gas injector rail, as well as turning off the petrol injectors at the appropriate time. From a cold start on a frosty morning, the Aveo needs 2 miles to get up to temperature for gas operation, if the engine is under load at the time there is a faint "bump" on switchover, if on overrun it is not perceptible. Subsequent starts are almost instantly gas. If the car is left all day after a run, it needs about a mile to get up to temperature.
Injectors
These are standard OMVL sequential gas injectors. Autogaspol left them "loose" on top of the spark plug cover, which looked inelegant to me, so I made a little bracket up. They feed gas to the engine via tubes tapped into the plastic manifold, and sit adjacent to the petrol injectors.
ECU
This is a PRIME sequential controller, wired in to use the existing sensors, etc. The cabin control is wired in too. This allows manual switchover to petrol if required. It also has a 4-LED gas level meter, which as any LPG driver will tell you, is as much use as **** on a boar pig, the only way to know how much gas is left is the trip counter.
Filler
I've opted for the "discrete" filler hidden behind the petrol flap, rather than the big plastic one. This causes no end of anger at Morrisons, because they always put the gas pumps in the middle, and fists get waved because I don't move forward.
Costs
Firstly, although LPG is less than half the price of petrol at time of writing, you DO NOT make a 50% saving. LPG is around 15% less potent than petrol, and YOU WILL lose 15% of your economy. I have historic data for my car, and it uses almost exactly 15% more gas than petrol. My daily commute is 130 miles and I consistently use 16 Ltrs of gas, (3.5 gallons, 37 mpg). Hence my running cost is around 7p/mile. My best estimate is of a payback mileage of between 13 and 15000 miles.
Downsides
You lose the space taken up by the spare wheel. In my case this is utterly irrelevant as the car has only myself and my dinner in it for over 90% of it's usage. You need to use LPG spark plugs to avoid misfires, and these cost £62 a set, rather than £16 for the normal ones. You need to fill up much more often, and annoy people when you do. People think you are a nutter/geriatric (but then they do anyway if you drive a T250/T255-for record I am a nutter so no big deal). You lose 15% of your power at max revs, so don't try racing M3's at the lights. You may limit your market for reselling the car. There are still myths out there about "bombs in the boot" etc which although nonsense do affect some people. My daughter (who will be 17 next year) is already showing a lot of interest in the Aveo though, wonder why....
Autogaspol- Disclaimer
This article should not be seen as a recommendation or criticism of Autogaspol. I picked them at random and they did a reasonable job that has caused me no problems and appears to have been properly done. I would be happy to use them again, but others may not be. They are a company run by Polish nationals and there may be the odd language problem. If you have a problem with Polish people working in the UK, then steer clear (I don't, 30% of the population of my town is Polish, <strike>and the girls are nicer than the locals</strike>). Poland is the third largest user of LPG vehicles in the world, so maybe they know a thing or two about them?
Comments/Questions
Are very welcome, fire away, but remember that I had this conversion done for "fun" out of curiosity, so telling me I must be mad will cut no ice.
