• Scam Alert. Members are reminded to NOT send money to buy anything. Don't buy things remote and have it shipped - go get it yourself, pay in person, and take your equipment with you. Scammers have burned people on this forum. Urgency, secrecy, excuses, selling for friend, newish members, FUD, are RED FLAGS. A video conference call is not adequate assurance. Face to face interactions are required. Please report suspicions to the forum admins. Stay Safe - anyone can get scammed.

Whelp, there goes the neighborhood.

Tecnico said:
Problem is they’d have to crawl over the marketing types, bean counters & lawyers to get close enough to get a look!

D :cool:
Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth!

Sadly, the wanna be motor heads in government have made sure that the days of spacious engine compartments are long gone.
 
6.5 Fan said:
Hmm, a few engineer types need to look at the pics of that engine compartment. So much room, you could crawl in with the engine and have party in there. :D
Click to expand...
Years ago I had a 69 Ford 1/2 ton pickup w/ a 360 & manual tranny that saw frequent engine work (No comment...). We got to the point where we could remove the hood & rad, pull the engine, put it on the bench & have the intake & heads off in about an hour (the cast iron was still warm). No power tools & leaky hydraulics on the front end loader. A buddy had a '65 w/ a 390. Same thing.

This was all facilitated by the fact that you could stand on the ground in the engine compartment. I miss those days...
 
JustaDB said:
Gasoline would yield far more power than propane on this setup.

And, in Alberta, we use tarp straps to hold our battery down... :p
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be so sure of that. The setup is definitely a factor, but raw potential isn't "far more" different. Propane requires a richer mixture but the combustion process is faster and the combustion products have more volume. Even using a vaporizer like in this setup can equal gasoline power output if properly calibrated. Unfortunately, most aftermarket setups make ridiculous claims and don't really optimize the process so the end results with Propane are often disappointing. The claims of better emissions for both Propane and Natural Gas conversions are pure bull shit. They can be better than gasoline if properly optimized, but never are. The aftermarket simply doesn't have the ability or resources to do that.
 
Ive run 4 LPG vehicles in my life.

In the early 80's I met a gentleman in Penticton, Vic Starret, him and his buddies started a company called OHG (which stood for over the hill gang)

They designed and manufactured the first Lpg equipment in canada in the late 50's, which was first used in field pumps in the oil industry long before used on the road. They invented the converter.

The first vehicle was a GMC 2500 I pulled out the 350 V8 and put in a 300 6 cyl, I did the complete conversion myself then got an inspection and the sticker. I think lpg went up to around 25 cents a litre at that time. I was 18?

The second, I got a used1979 E 250 ford cargo van, existing lpg system. Around 280,000? km when I got it. That was about 1987
Propane was 18 or 19 cents a litre, just over half the price of gasoline.

3rd, in 1997, a 1990 F350 1t dually with a 95 l tank between the frame rails behind the axle. I built a custom flat deck on that. Came with the conversion but i had to pull out the tank, it was very pitted under the mounting straps. Sand blast and prime the tank make new mounting straps and put it back. I was always nervous about the rust pitting but it never ruptured

4th (2005) was a 1980 F250, pulled off the box did some rust repairs, burgundy paint, mounted air bags and put on a welding deck with a new miller 300D . That had a fitting in the tank for the cutting torch. Put a big size oxy tank.
Again, did the conversion myself.

At that time I got a 1000 L tank with a dispenser from a co. called Autogas.
I got wholesale pricing i think that was around .45/l.

I was filling the welding truck, the 1ton, ran 3 sets of cutting torches, a 12 burner forge, heated both my buildings, filled everyones BBQ tanks and even cooked my oatmeal in the morning on the lpg converted kitchen stove. We filled the trucks at the end of the day and never ever had to stop and waste time at a gas station. We had total efficiency and huge savings.

In 2010 I closed the welding business after 18 yrs, sold the trucks. Propane was getting much more expensive, conversions were costly so that was the end of the run.

When I had the dispenser, the tank was hooked up for building heating, I had wholesale pricing and the BEST PART OF ALL.... I paid ZERO road tax for over 10 yrs! kinda hard for them to check for purple propane! Lol

Vic told me propane has a higher octane than gasoline. The colder the air the better...have some kind of duct from the grill to the air cleaner to force the air. Injection is definitely the way to go now. LPG burns without carbon I could go 20k between oil changes cause it never got dirty.

A long time ago I did some rough calculations and I figured I'd saved oh... around $85,000 in vehicle fuel costs. And that was 5 yrs or so before i stopped using it.

Some said ."Oh, but you get less performance on LPG!
I didn give a dry rats anus about that.
When I was pulling up a hill with 3000# and my lpg 460 under the hood I had all the power I needed.
I just laughed at those guys.

Sorry about the long winded story.
It was good to try to remember all of that.

Best to you all.
R
 
Susquatch said:
I wouldn't be so sure of that.
Click to expand...
Drove an International 1700 3-ton w/ a vapourizer propane conversion on a 404 w/ an 18' body job back in the early 80's. It was the most gutless truck I ever drove. The other guy in the fleet had a GMC 366 gas pot & he could accelerate faster than me & pull hills far better.

Knew a few guys back home switch over to propane on their farm pickup trucks, again in the 80's. Some were vapourizers, others I don't know. Wasn't one of them happy w/ the decreased power or the mileage. I've never talked to a single person happy w/ their propane conversion. If there's a silver bullet solution somewhere nobody around here seems to know about it.
 
wmetfab said:
Saving 10's of thousands made me very very happy
Click to expand...
Good for you. In fairness, the Cornbinder's fuel bill at the end of the month was less than the GMC's. But it didn't offset the lack of power or the difficulty starting it in -35 (or colder) weather.
 
There was noticably less power 15-20% ? I Didnt care about that was never a problem. The $$ savings more than made up for it
I burnt up a few heads but re did them with hard valves and seats.
 
I remember now we had to adjust the distributors to account for the octane and the upgraded heads helped.
The F350 came with a black box (brain) that made it run better they never had them in the earlier days
 
wmetfab said:
I Didnt care about that was never a problem.
Click to expand...
In a commercial vehicle that was frequently loaded to max GVW (and occasionally overweight) and a few steep, long hills on the route, it was a significant issue. With a 5 and 2 on a split shift I was often down in 4 low, 4 gears from the top hole. I had one town I sometimes delivered to that was about a mile away from one of the hills. If I had to deliver there, I was climbing the hill in 3rd gear.
 
JustaDB said:
In a commercial vehicle that was frequently loaded to max GVW (and occasionally overweight) and a few steep, long hills on the route, it was a significant issue.
Click to expand...

wmetfab said:
I remember now we had to adjust the distributors to account for the octane and the upgraded heads helped.
Click to expand...

All of your experiences are totally valid. I witnessed all of that and more in my job at an automotive OEM.

Propane and CNG were very hard on cyl head valve seats because there is no lubrication at all in a gaseous fuel. We switched to stelite valve seats and hardenened valves at the factory to make them last.

Loosing a lot of power was perfectly normal in the after market. Even if you played with spark advance you couldn't do more than shift the whole curve when a whole new curve was actually required. Same goes for fuel delivery - no way to calibrate a vaporizer mixer system to deliver the right fuel mix at the right time. That's why so many were gutless wonders. The factory vehicles would make your eyes bulge. Very nice! It's a great fuel and also very clean when properly calibrated but filthy when not. The market imploded when the fuel suppliers refused to formulate fuel to a reasonable standard.

We did complete engine mapping and used OEM systems to deliver fuel and spark tailored to LPG or CNG.

No question about the early economics either. You could pay for everything in just a few months. Most propane is a bi-product of other petrochemical extraction so it's free money to the oil companies. So free that many of them just flare it off.

The chemical formula for propane is C3H8 so it definitely has carbon in it!
 
JustaDB said:
See indoor forklifts & Zambonis.
Click to expand...

Not sure what your message was but they are downright filthy compared to your car.

I'm not condemning them by saying that, I'm really just pointing out how clean your car is and thereby also pointing out how much cleaner a forklift or a jamboni could be.
 
Last edited:
We had a propane tractor ( MM)on the farm for a # of years in the mid 60's but it was a late 50's technology build. The biggest complaint we had with it was that the commercial available nurse tanks weren't transportable, you had to go home every night with the machinery to re-fill until we built our own transportable tank trailer.
The benefits were the absolute clean burning system, engine oil was as clean at 200 hrs as it was when it was put in. The second, & most important plus was that when the tractor was in a light duty operation in the field we would turn the draw pipe in the tank up out of the liquid level and it would just draw vapor off the liquid...significantly less HP than when it was on "liquid" but that damn thing would run for a week on just the vapor in the tank, cost pennies per day to run.
 
historicalarms said:
The benefits were the absolute clean burning system, engine oil was as clean at 200 hrs as it was when it was put in. The second, & most important plus was that when the tractor was in a light duty operation in the field we would turn the draw pipe in the tank up out of the liquid level and it would just draw vapor off the liquid...significantly less HP than when it was on "liquid" but that damn thing would run for a week on just the vapor in the tank, cost pennies per day to run.
Click to expand...

A couple of comments.

It wasn't really all that clean. But gaseous fuels don't wash the carbon off the cylinder walls and combustion chamber into the oil as well as gasoline or diesel does. So the oil does "look" a lot cleaner. Unfortunately, it isn't a good thing to leave all that crud in the cylinder. Fortunately, it's a tractor - they live forever given the low hours vs a car or truck.

Running off the tank vapour makes for much colder fuel which can improve power. But not nearly as much as vaporizing it in the intake or cylinder.

When you are not drawing gas from the tank, a vaporizer near the engine intake uses the engines cooling system to vaporize the liquid fuel before entering the engine. They are not always perfect which usually means a richer fuel air mixture feeding the engine.
 
From 2010 to 2021 I sold and installed this equipment, tower fans for frost control in orchards and vineyards.
Over 200 of them.
It was by far the best and most lucrative job I ever had.
The LPG version had a Ford V10 factory industrial engine package that was tuned to 170 hp at operating speed if I recall was 2670 rpm.
Fuel consumption was around 38-42 litres per hour.
We had to use these because they were EPA certified for stationary industrial engines.
They were specifically designed for LPG fuel
There were also 2 diesel versions Cat 4.4 and 6.6 l
Mower, u will recognize the 2 of them in Lillooet, I put them there
 

Attachments

  • 20200402_114904.jpg
    20200402_114904.jpg
    3 MB · Views: 2
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top