lpg

[mattn388gfc]

i am thinking about getting lpg fitted on 2.5 850 any advice on and is worth it

[Axionknight]

Depends how many miles you do a year...... How many do you do?

[Jimcoted]

Much will depend on your annual mileage. I have two cars on LPG a Grand Voyager which being 3.3 litre is a right pig on petrol and a chipped V70 T5 ditto on the petrol. The V70 system came off my old 850 T5 so I have well had my monies worth out of it fitted about 7 years ago at a cost of £1350 at a time when I was doing quite heavy mileage it paid for itself in under a year. The Voyager I bought already converted, £2000 for the W reg car bought 4 years ago and the guy had paid £2150 to have it converted just 6 months earlier?? The problems I have had is on the Volvo it's an OMVL Dream system which has failed three times in the 7 years down to solenoid failure £14 two minutes to fit and then last year the ECU played up got another on Ebay for £60 reprogrammed it myself, dead easy and that has been it. Voyager in 4 years has needed one solenoid, being Prins they try to get you to take it to a dealer but I found the solenoid on Ebay germany and got it bought and delivered for about £18. I would not have a diesel again nor have a car running just on petrol but as has already been said you need to be doing the mileage initially to cover the cost of it.

[catflem]

Have a butchers at http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=183

[mattn388gfc]

not sure on my annual mileage but i have done 600 so far this month and on petrol it returning 19.9 around town 36.6 on a run on avarge

[Axionknight]

Well thats fairly low mileage, 19th day of month and 600 miles - lets call it 850 miles a month, for arguments sake.

AS A ROUGH GUIDE BASED ON ASSUMPTIONS:

850 a month, split say 70/30 town/distance driving, so thats 595 miles around town at 19.9mpg, so 29.89 gallons based on £1.41 a litre is £6.40 a gallon x 29.89 gallons, so your town driving costs £191.29. Your distance driving is 255 miles at 36.6 mpg so 6.96 gallons at £6.40 a gallon is £44.54 a month.

Total theoretical fuel cost a month: £235.83 x 12 = £2830 a year in fuel!

Based on a direct conversion of gallons used (which isn't accurate as an LPG vehicle suffers a slight dip in MPG), the yearly LPG costs at £0.79 a litre would be £1585.99 so a saving of £795 over petrol.

HOWEVER as stated. An LPG car has a lower mpg than when it was run solely on petrol and you'll also have to factor in running the car on petrol the first few miles, plus the cost of the kit and installation which can stretch from £750 upwards, so given all this you are looking at it taking at the very least two years to pay back, your first year will be a loss due to kit installation/purchase and still needing to start the car on petrol.

Personally I'd say you'd be wasting time and money converting the car - 5 minutes of rough maths has shown that, so unless your mileage doubles your wasting your time/money.

[capt jack]

You need to be doing 20,000 to 25,000 miles a year, and keeping the car for at least 100,000 miles, to see any benefit from installing LPG.

Payback time is 25,000 to 30,000 miles.

That's based on the experience of converting my 1997 V70 in 2005, and then having done 210,000 miles on LPG since.

Cheers

Jack

[mattn388gfc]

ok so it there anyway i can get a bit more mpg out off it. any help would great

[capt jack]

Yep:

• Keep your right boot light - try not to let the engine exceed 3000 rpm too many times. Brake gently and well in advance.
• Change the oil and filter regularly.
• Change the air and fuel filters, plugs, leads, rotor and dissy cap in accordance with the published service schedules.
• Keep the tyres correctly inflated, get the tracking and balance checked at intervals.
• Don't carry too much clutter in the car.
• Make minimal use of the air-con.
• If it's manual, try to stay in as high a gear as possible for as much of the time as possible. If it's auto avoid thumping the kickdown pedal too much.
• Make sure that the handbrake is releasing correctly.
• Fill up with petrol when the day is cool. You pay for any petrol that evaporates on it's way from nozzle to tank!
• Make sure that the thermostat is working properly - the temperature gauge sitting at the midway point all the time.

That's about it!

Happy motoring

Cheers

Jack

[semavi]

I have c70 2.3 T5, and use LPG... no problem about performance and economy. In Turkey, Oil price is very high... In Turkey 10-15K kilometers enough to see benefit...