Propane for fuel mileage

Any members have a 2500-11000 tanker at their disposal???

 

HAHAHAHA, it is stated that "Your right man, it's the holy grail. Works perfect every time for every application. Saves tens of thousands of dollars every year however nobody except a few people know this. Must be a conspiracy by "big oil", LPG injection kits are hidden on a shelf beside the 100mpg carburetor. " BUT I JUST STATED ITS ONLY LIKELY TO SAVE A THOUSAND OR TWO, DEPENDING ON MILES DRIVEN. YOU STILL HAVE TO MONITOR EXHAUST HEAT, ITS NOT FOOLPROOF YET. AND IT AIN'T GONNA WORK PERFECT UNTIL THERE'S SUBSTANTIALLY MORE TESTING, RETUNING FOR IT TO BE CLOSE TO PERFECT.
and when stated " it does increase power/economy to a diesel engine. BUT it's not free, the system isn't free " YOU'RE RIGHT, BUT IT AIN'T THAT EXPENSIVE, under $1500 with tank, about double that includes labor. Truckers spend THAT for performance/power upgrades regularly. The biggest reasons again are independance from foreign oil, carbon footprint, efficiency, etc. Probably not the biggest thing on everyones minds but it shouldn't be ignored. " ITS BEING IGNORED NOW ". THIS IS OUR FUEL. It keeps USA dollars here. We pay foreign oil for their product and the only way the money comes back to the USA is when they buy our Real Estate, or they send over Terrorists to blow us up. So if you're happy about that, instead of keeping OUR MONEY HERE, THAT's YOUR RIGHT BUT IT DOESN'T MAKE "IT" RIGHT. YOU MIGHT AS WELL HUG EVERY MOHAMED WITH A WARM THANKS. NOT ME.
AND JUST BECAUSE MOST MEMBERS DON'T HAVE A TANKER AT THEIR DISPOSAL in the next post, means most don't have enough entrepreneurial spirit, thats our fault. That's o.k. though, when there's no more carry-outs to buy the Mohameds will start buying and selling LPG. We should thank them for THAT.

 

Haha, well since you put so eloquently with the "mohamed" remarks (your spelling not mine) I'm all in! I'm ordering 7 systems today. I was going to wait until tomorrow but since you used caps lock I'm afraid to wait. I'm also driving to Utah to get a tanker. Sure it's a 1969 but at $180k it's pocket change considering the millions I'll be saving. Just kinda stinks the cat's out of the bag, now everyone is going to be doing it.

 

Let me save you 25 grand and the're newer 3 to choose from http://www.littleleagueequipment.ca/inventory/LPG.html
But I want a cut of your savings

 

summerizing those tests?

i have seen diesel/propane tests dating back to 1960

have not found one test result that shows any benefit.

 

you haven't done enought research if you haven't found any benefit from tests done with propane fumigation on a diesel engine.
And when burning LPG you pay about $.25 at the source of the seller for the fuel tax.

 

All cards on the table, I run a propane company, so I drink the cool-aid but here's my experience...

We've run propane as the primary fuel in our fleet for over 60 years. For a long time it was really simple. You popped a propane mixer on top of the gasoline carburetor, advanced the timing, ran a line to the tank, and sent it down the road. 90% of the power, 90% of the mileage, 40% of the cost, and 2-3x the engine life.

The power issue, though, is because the engines were designed for gasoline. Propane is naturally a 104-110 octane fuel. It has 92,000 BTU +/- vs 120,000 +/-, so you should get less fuel mileage, but more power and more pep IF the engine is tuned right.

Then, enter the world of fuel injection, variable cam timing, etc. etc. Sadly the propane industry didn't keep up. These were the days of Jfaulk99's friend's anemic Chevy 350. The industry lost any foothold they had on the engine fuel market.

Again, sadly, the answer didn't come from a US manufacturer, but rather from European aftermarket companies. Prins is the best one we've had experience with, though recently Impco, who was the "kleenex" of propane carburetion for about 60 years, is catching up.

Today, after-market propane systems run as reliably, with as much or more power as a gasoline system. They successfully mitigated or eliminated a lot of the long-time objections to using propane (difficult cold starts, lack of power, backfiring).

Some folks have described FACTORY propane, and yes, that's true. Ford is teamed up with Roush (the makers of the NASCAR engines) to build a factory propane engine. Now, it's not technically factory, it's actually a Ford vehicle, driven down the road to Roush in Livonia MI, and converted to propane, then sent back to Ford. However, this is done with the full backing of FOMOCO, and is considered by Ford to be a Ford factory conversion. Also, Blue Bird School Bus Co is taking Chevy chassis with the Chevy 8.1L engine, and converting those to propane with a setup that is in all intents and purposes a factory job. And lastly, GM is going to be producing shortly a 7.9L or 8.0L engine (currently marine & ag engine) that would be truly factory, done inside a GM plant as far as I understand. Ditto on Mopar. I think it is Dodge that is looking at offering an LP passenger car.

Most of the after-market kits today use a vapor-injection system in which liquid propane is delivered to the engine compartment using natural pressure of propane, then converted to a vapor, and injected using separate propane injectors. An on-board computer shuts off the gas injectors and turns on the propane ones.

The factory systems are using a liquid-injection system, which uses a fuel pump (eliminating problems starting in cold weather) to pump liquid propane into the engine compartment, and injecting it into the cylinders as a liquid. It's a lot more efficient, with fewer components that could go bad, and is enormously more reliable. One drawback to this system is that it is not typically a dual-fuel system, so you've only got propane. With the vapor-injection system, it's often dual fuel, propane and gasoline. So if you run out of propane and can't find a fueling station, you can fall back on gasoline.

Bottom line is that the propane industry is really making enormous strides in improving the quality and reliability of propane motor fuel. It has a huge list of advantages, and the only drawbacks really are that the network of refueling stations is not as broad as gas or diesel. Then again, how many diesel pumps were out there in 1975? It just takes time to build that market. So to anyone out there who's considered or considering propane, I'd say you can't base your decision on rumors you've heard from years ago. it's a whole new world today.

 

Below is a recap of the baseline test. These results were without
propane.

In the first 10,000 mile all of the numbers are correct but in the 2nd and
3rd there is something wrong with kr's fuel gauges. I tried to tell kr but he
did not want to help with it but I did recently talk to Aaron Yount by phone and
gave him my idea's on what might be the problem, he said he agreed with me and
would see if it would fix the problem.

The full 30.000 test period results seem to display fine and thats where I
got my overall average of 8.16 for my baseline fuel mileage.

I am doing my test in 10,000 mile periods. This is to simulate an average
solo driver in a 30 day period. This is the first 10,000 miles


Second 10,000 miles


Third 10,000 miles


Full 30,000 mile baseline test without propane.





April 17th started using propane. Mileage 878,011 refilled propane tank at
882060= 4049 miles average 83.66mpg on propane usage.


When I first put the system on my truck I was told to set it to 40mpg usage
which gives you a higher overall fuel mileage but you of course you use more
propane to do this. I carry a 73 gallon tank for the propane so at 40mpg I can
go 2,920 miles before I have to refuel that propane tank but with this first
tank of propane used, my propane mileage was 83.66. With this I can go 6,107
miles this will allow me to get from low cost propane to low cost propane
locations much easier or if I wanted I could use a much smaller propane
tank.


This will depend on my return. If the savings are the same at a low
consumption as at higher consumption of propane the user could decide turn up
the propane usage for higher fuel mileage or turn down the propane usage for a
smaller tank size. This all depends on what my tests show. I am going to leave
the settings where they are for now.


I am doing my test in 10,000 mile periods. This is to simulate an average
solo driver in a 30 day period.
First 10,000 miles running with the propane, here are the results.





First 10,000 results (its more miles but will average out in the
end.) an average increase of 8.84 mpg, 8.58 is break-even so at this time I am
making a profit of roughly 1.5 cents per mile.
This is the second 10,000 miles below.


At 20,000 miles into the test an average increase of 8.95 mpg, 8.67 is break-even now so at this time I am making a profit of roughly 1.5 cents per mile.
At the first 10,000 my break even was 8.58 but fuel was higher now its down so even though my average gain has gone up from 8.84 to 8.95 I am still making the same profit overall. If you were to look at the last 10,000 mile it show average mpg of 9.09mpg for that period that is a .02cpm profit for those miles.
Started using propane at 878011 to the most current fuel receipt 898258 for total miles of 20,247 cost of diesel $9160.21 total gallons used 2261
Diesel average cost for test period $4.05. Average MPG for test period 8.95.
If this was diesel only at the baseline of 8.16mpg I could of only went 18,449.76 miles that means I still had 1797.24 miles to drive to equal the miles I drove with propane at an additional cost of $892.01 for the additional diesel I would need plus the $9160.21 for what I spent for the diesel already totals $10,052.22.
Up to this point I spent 575.06 on propane plus the diesel cost of $9160.21 totals $9735.27.
This is a total savings of $316.95 this breaks down to a savings of .015 cpm

I made 3 Blogs so everyone can look at the fuel receipts and compare them to what I put on fuel gauges the 1st one is the diesel receipts from the Baseline test :
http://letstruck.com/profiles/blogs/baseline-test-no-propane
2nd one is for current receipts.
http://letstruck.com/profiles/blogs/diesel-receipts-using-propane
3rd is the propane receipts.
http://letstruck.com/profiles/blogs/propane-receipts

​

 

I was talking to a highly respected engineer yesturday, he does all types of work like shorting diffs, building high performance race engines etc. He told me that LPG injection with desiel is great, get this they got a desiel engine and mounted a infare red camera inside the cylinders, then ran engine on desiel only and filmed it, then did the same with LPG injection. the results are that desiel by its self leaves a cool/cold area around the outer edge of the cylinder wall (so uneven compression/force on the piston and unburnt desiel) but with LPG there is no cold areas (it creates a even down ward force on the piston and better burn of fuel sourse). so from LPG injection you get less desiel wasted and less soot and better fuel effeicent because all desiel is used, less soot out the stacks and less soot into engine oil, and claener running internals. I also asked him about using 2 stroke oil mixed in with desiel and he said that it is not even close to what LPG does, but it is benifitial to use because it allows for a more even burn of the desiel. he said that when he looked at the way the desiel burns in the cylinder, that it actually starts to burn as soon as the stream of desiel enters the cylinder from injector nozzle. so the stream of desiel burns like a flame thrower. i found this fasinating.

 

yeah, I see these systems on domestic range trucks over here, they use LPG ore CNG. People say CNG is better but no CNG gas stations over here.