Propane Vehicles

[thechknhwk]

I just read the offroad diesel thread and it got me to thinking about propane on my pickup truck.  It's an 03 chevy with a 6.0L gasser in it.  Anyone here doing it?  I've seen a couple of suppliers in the past, but just found this option of adding propane to the gas to increase mileage.

http://www.dieselperformanceproducts.com/gasoline.html

Ideally I'd like to have a 500 gallon pig at home that I could fill my truck from.  I'd also like to retain the ability to burn regular gas in case I'm away on a longer trip. I'd also like to have a large underbody style tank if possible.  It seems the cost savings would be significant; I think LP is about 1/2 price of gas.

[Red Good]

This is a buddy of mine he has converted everything to propane including his lawn mower . If you want to talk to him email me and I will get his number for you . He has several you tube vids up there .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAKhiZ2gpIU

[Ianab]

It's practical, especially with something like a pickup where you have space to mount a tank. There are still a fair percentage of vehicles here in NZ that run on LPG (propane / butane) mix and you can fill up from quite a few gas stations (or refill your BBQ bottle)

Mainly used by fleet vehicles, taxis etc where they are doing a high mileage, and they can recoup the cost of the conversion in a sensible time. I think Ford in Australia produces factory dual fuel cars, or at least they did recently.

Lovato from Italy is one of the main suppliers of the kits
http://www.lovatogas.com/

Ian

[Rockn H]

I didn't know they offered pro jection for gas engines, but I've seen several diesels that have had propane injection added and it does increase performance.... a lot   Propane is like nitrous oxide for diesels. 

I don't know if you'd really see much over all savings on fuel cost though.  The diesels I'm familiar with don't really see much total fuel cost savings.  With Propane being $3.00 a gallon.  The main advantage is the increase in power with propane being injected into the intake to help get a hotter burn from the diesel, or I guess in this case gas.   

[Al_Smith]

Historically  propane was used to some extent to power farm machinery in some of the southern states at one time .With the technoligy of the time however it didn't go well in the more northern states as they  became difficult to start if not impossible in cold weather.

Then it becomes a problem to get it refueled .It's not like going to the local gas station and taking on 15-20 gallons of gasoline . The idea might be economical for fleet operations but I doubt it would work out for the average motorist .

[Rockn H]

Up 'till maybe the early 80's here in south Arkansas it was common to see pickup trucks with a propane tank (for vehicles) in the bed.  With most of those setups the carburetor was left on and the vehicle could be ran using either straight gas or straight propane. All the kits got removed in the 80's when propane became too expensive.  There's still a few tractors left over that run only propane, but their resale is pretty low normally because not too many people want to deal with fueling them.  The pro-jection in the link doesn't use straight propane like the old kits.  It sprays propane into the intake so it mixes with the normal air/fuel mix.

[Al_Smith]

Propane gas in general and in my opinion has to be the most manipulated method for home heating of them all .

They seem to wait until your tank is just about empty,in extremely cold wether and jack the prices on you .They have nobody to regulate them .They do as they please weather you have a fixed rate price or not .I dealt with those pirates once in my life which I'll never do again if I can possibley avoid it .

[WmFritz]

The video is impressive, but the skeptic in me wonders how much of the clip is manipulated. Is he waiting to top a hill and turn the system on?  ???

It is interesting though and worth researching more.
The questions I'd have are: how far will one gallon of propane go on the gas/propane injection mode and how large is the tank for the system.

Like Al said, without the infrastructure in place for refilling, your limited to filling at home. I've heard its getting built up in the western states, both LPG and NG.

A different subject, but I'll  toss it in here.  I've driven both straight LPG and NG powered pickups at work. The mpg's and power are comparable to running E-85.

[Windy_Acres]

I only know of one downside, if you farm out your mechanical repairs, you might need to find someone who is ok with working on it. Ive got a good friend, ASE MASTER certified tech, owns his commercial  Indy shop, a local guy has a propane converted ford pickup, and my buddy used to work on it, but no longer will, because the additive to the fuel, makes him violently ill.

He does not want that truck in the shop, much less work on it anymore. Im guessing the guy found someone else to work on it, but Im in the same boat, while it does not make me ill, you could not pay me to work on it, just from the stench. Id rather work on a garbage truck. If it wasn't for the smell, it would be fine.

And I know, some of you guys are thinking "its just fuel system", yeah, you crack the hood and the motor just reeks. Over time that stuff must permeate fittings, gaskets, and what not, but the whole engine bay just reeks.

[Al_Smith]

Probabley what you are smelling is the captan ,an odor producer used in both natural and profane gas because in their natural state are odorless .

[pineywoods]

My experience pretty matches that of Rockin H, just goes back a few years earlier. There's pluses and minuses. Propane is definitely not a cold weather fuel. On older engines, the exhaust valve seats would erode away due to no lead to lube the valves. Newer engines all have stellite seats, no problem. Propane is a very clean burning fuel, the engine oil stays clean and there's no buildup on valves and pistons. There is one safety situation. Propane is heavier than air. Any leaks will accumulate in low spots.
Natural gas is pretty much the same, except it's lighter than air, any leaks rapidly dissipate into the atmosphere.
The energy density of both is a bunch less than gasoline, consequently tank size is several times the equivalent of gas. 

[Al_Smith]

They don't produce nearly the power on profane as they do gasoline .On the bright side though bottled gas makes a pretty good fuel for the barbque grill .Not as good as hickory charcoal but it doesn't take half a day to grill a hamburger either .

[Ianab]

An engine will produce comparable power on propane vs gasoline. I believe the factory LPG Ford Falcons from Australia actually produce 2 kw more than the petrol version.

Propane being stored as a liquid means the tank size (and energy density) is comparable to gasoline. With natural gas you take a performance hit of maybe 20%, as well as a much lower range between fill-ups and a heavier (high pressure) tank, so that's gone out of favour.

Ian

[Dave Shepard]

I had a conversation with a retired Cummins engineer who won't go near the stuff. He was working on a propane powered bus project and they had some trouble with them. Apparently they were developing a leak around the engine, and when the drive would start the engine it would blow the back end of the bus out the garage door.

[Windy_Acres]

Probabley what you are smelling is the captan ,an odor producer used in both natural and profane gas because in their natural state are odorless .

Yes, "captan", I could not remember the name of it, but that is what my buddy cant not manage, the smell of the additive. The stuff works, a little to well.

[Al_Smith]

Captan is the shortened version.---- Ethanethiol, commonly known as ethyl mercaptan, is a colorless gas or clear liquid with a distinct odor.

They make a spray that will dissipate the captan smell .It can be nausiating to some people .I just think it stinks myself .

[julio]

We run a fleet of Cng trucks at the city I work at. I love it. The price of CNG compared LP is a big cost saving . WE just converted a 2011 Ford F150 for $3500 and CNG cost about $1.00 a gallon. Should pay back in less than a year.

[sawguy21]

I have never been a fan of propane as a motor fuel. As pineywoods mentioned valves and seats on earlier engines didn't last very long on it. A former employer had a fork lift on dual fuel and I had to maintain the DanG thing. The crew kept gasoline in it so they could switch over if the bottle ran dry. It didn't work, the gas went skunky and the carb leaked everywhere as the gaskets had dried out. I finally switched it to straight lpg, cost was the same as repairing the old system.
I get a kick out of seeing propane tanks on 500 dollar beaters. The conversion costs more than the vehicle and has to be repeated when the pos dies at the side of the road. LPG is cheaper per gallon than gas but it's a wash with a 10% loss of power and fuel economy coupled with shorter engine life.

[Saki]

One of my old tractor books has a stat that claims the ethyl mercaptan is added to propane at a rate of 1 pound per 10,000 gallons. Propane is about 4.2 pounds per gallon so the final dilution would be 1 to 42,000.

Makes you shudder to think what that must smell like in its pure form!

[Randy88]

Years back LP conversions on pickups were a big thing, before diesels came out that is, those pulling big livestock trailers loved them, they'd put a 125-250 gallon tank behind the cab and even with poorer mileage compared to gasoline, they still had a lot of miles per fill before filling again, that is until a couple were involved in accidents, when the trailer gooseneck hitch would slam into the lp tank in an accident, the tank would rupture and explode.  I know they passed laws on tanks sizes, locations and quite a few things, but I don't recall what they were now off the top of my head.   I do know after several were killed in explosions, everyone went away from them here.   Then shortly after that diesels came out, and as they say the rest is history.   

If they could get propane, lp gas or natural gas which are all pressurized gases to somehow be safe in the event of an accident, then they'd have a cheaper alternative to gasoline.   But when one is involved in an accident and the photo's look like a car bomb went off, people shy away from them, add in the difficulty refueling and most don't want anything to do with them, as they say you can't just carry a couple gallons of fuel and walk two miles to get your car filled up again, couple that with people who can fix your vehicle and you now have even less buyers. 

There are area's and countries using natural gas, but its an area wide or country wide mentality and thinking, not just a few who want to try it, they have the infrastructure to support it and the public opinion to embrace it.   

Years ago I had an lp gas tractor, it worked great even in cold weather, it overall was a great cheap alternative to gas, but diesels were so much more fuel efficient, that lp tractor took so many gallons of lp that it really wasn't cost effective to own compared to a diesel, so we got rid of it.   

[Thehardway]

Interesting to hear the various opinions and views on this, many of them contradicting each other, and especially from different countries/regions.  Has to make me wonder if we are comparing apples to apples when it comes to gasses.  I know the energy content of LP gas in BTU's can vary from supplier to supplier and have witnessed this with my grill.  Some tanks just burn a lot hotter than others at the same flow.  Likewise, Gasoline differs greatly in formulation from region to region and season to season. There is 10% difference in power between gas with 10% ethanol and 100% pure gasoline.   A 10% loss or gain is not a lot when it comes to these variations.  Likewise, cost varies a great deal regionally for gas and propane.  It can vary more than 10% just based on different road taxes by state.

One thing is for sure here in the US, if you convert a vehicle to propane and use it as a road fuel without paying road fuel taxes, you can face fines when the G-man catches you.  No different than using dyed diesel in your truck.  Propane is formulated and dispensed for off-road use without highway tax.

Here in VA they just passed a law regarding use of hybrid and electric cars, which will now tax them to make up for the lost revenue from fuel road tax.  Go figure, you get a tax rebate for buying a hydrid/electric and then a tax penalty for not paying fuel tax at the pump.  http://delray.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/virginias-hybrid-tax-on-path-to-repeal


I do think CNG is going to make a surge in the near future.  More of it is being produced right now than can be consumed and mass storage is not cheap or efficient.  The only thing holding it back is lack of filling stations and the cost to install high speed filling stations.  This will not always be true but right now it is.

I personally would not want a propane powered vehicle, where I live, it tends to have less power than gas and cost more per gallon. We are currently paying $2.94 p/gal for 87 octane with 10% ethanol.  Propane is over 3.29 gal.  Primarily due to cold winter and increased demand for use of propane for home heating.

In addition to that, I would always fear parking it a garage.  When I was just out of college, a local Ford dealer was supposed to perform basic service on a propane tank truck they had sold to Amerigas.  The truck was brought in for service the night before and parked in a service bay.  Overnight propane leaked from a crack in the propane tank and filled the service area with gas.  When the service manager came in the next morning, he flipped on the light switch and the whole place exploded.  It broke all the car windows on the lot and could be heard over 3 miles away.  Our neighbors car was also in for service that day and it was burned to a crisp.  They ended up with a replacement car.  The bad thing about propane is that it is heavier than ambient air. When it leaks it will pool in low spots, often times you will not smell it as it is lower than your nose.  It does not dissapate as readily as NG which is lighter than air.

If you decide to convert, make sure your garage or parking area has plenty of airflow and there is no place for vapors to pool.

I would use propane as a refrigerant in my cars AC system though!

[Al_Smith]

        . I would use propane as a refrigerant in my cars AC system though!

I've heard or people doing it in lieu of Freon 12 .Quite frankly that would scare me to death.

I could just see myelf being a smoker turn on the AC on some hot day ,lighting up a smoke and blowing myself into the next county .Not good .

[Thehardway]

Al,  If the Propane doesn't kill you the smoking will. I guess the question is do you want to go out slow or with a bang 8)

Seriously, the flashpoint for propane is higher than many other refrigerants.  Propane is much more efficient than most R12 replacements. It is much cheaper.  It will not combust in an oxygen deprived environment (ie. in the AC system).  Leaking into the passenger compartment is a risk but typically the leaks develop elsewhere and  just to be on the safe side...I don't smoke... ;D

[Ianab]

It's from experience here in NZ, it's Natural Gas, that sucks. It was used in the past, but an engine running on it looses too much power. LPG (a propane / butane mix) is still used, and works well, with little power loss, good economy and arguably better engine life. It's generally only used in fleet vehicles that are doing high mileage, where you get a sensible payback.

Safety? There is an extra regular safety inspection for gas powered vehicles. But in terms of accidents, they don't seem to be involved in any more incidents than petrol. When you think about it, carry a big can of petrol around in your car isn't 100% safe either....

This is just observations from a place where the fuels HAVE been tried on a fairly large scale.

Ian

[Randy88]

After digging some on the internet, the btu's on gasoline vary from 110,000 btu's per gallon to over 115,000 btu's per gallon, lp gas like is what's wanting to be done here, is near that 90-92,000 btu's per gallon, diesel varies from 128-140,000 btu's per gallon.   

Now bear in mind, its been decades since I had a propane tractor and people had propane powered pickups in my area and my memory isn't what it used to be, but there was a vaporizer before or on the carburetor to covert lp gas to a vapor to be burned in the engine.   The largest drawback to lp vehicles was in the winter, its been stated here before they didn't start good or at all in the winter.   I didn't have issues with this, but we also didn't run that tractor in extreme cold either, we would have vapor pressure issues in the winter, meaning it couldn't generate enough vapor pressure to overcome the amount of fuel feeding the engine, even though it was liquid draw, again if I remember right, and you'd lose power, the tank would ice up and the engine would quit, or if the conditions were ideal to develop icing, the vaporizer would ice up and the engine would die or start to miss and lose power.    So just because the btu's were there, doesn't mean they were available 24/7/365, also the lower the tank got the worse this condition was, basically there are a lot of variables to figure into your overall mpg's of gas you purchase, not just in theory of x gallons equal x btu's and that translates into x mpg's, its not quite that simple, again from memory, but when I did it lp gas was under 50 cents a gallon.   

The other problem we'd have is exactly what's been stated by thehardway, where if it were parked in a garage or anywhere warm, they could leak, the issues we had, back in the day, long before the dot, epa and everyone else got involved was, if you filled the tank in extreme cold conditions, say below zero, then brought it into a warm shop or garage, the liquid would heat up, gas expand and literally leak past the overflow or fill valve, just like a 20 lb lp tank would do on a hot summer day, times a lot larger tank and put gas into the garage or building.   

Now if you want to put a 500 gallon tank at your house and fill off of that, this is how we used to do it, we'd take a hose from the tank, drawing off the liquid side of the pig tank, hook it the tank needing filling, and since you probably wouldn't have a pressurized fill system, you'll need to bleed off the vapor to allow liquid to get into the tank, so we'd hook up a spigot to the vapor side of the tank being filled, much like opening the fill screw on a 20 lb tank, but my bleed off vapor valve was 3/4 inch open spigot, and the vapor would shoot out, just like opening a valve on the tank less the white smoke, and you'd fill the tank, 120 or 250 gallon and fill the whole yard with lp vapor until the white smoke came out, shut down the vapor valve, shut off the liquid fill line from the tank and release the pressure off the fill hose and your done, smell lp vapor, yes you do, your usually covered in lp gas vapor before your done, so don't smoke until you've showered and changed clothes.      Now if you do this in the dead of winter, good luck, your going to need a much larger tank than just a 500 gallon, plan on at least a 1000 gallon or more, or else invest in a pump, and vapor return line setup, some had them in my area too, but I've got to tell you its not for the faint of heart, also when you release the vapor pressure in the air, you lose lp gas in the equation factor, if you pump it, your going to lose lp in the equation factor and your not going to be able to get anywhere near empty on your pig tank either, bleeding off the vapor, and just using gravity to fill with it can't be done, the pressure and fill levels will equalize between the two and things just stop filling.    Every time you hook up the hose to fill, you have to bleed off the pressure and let it go into the air, losing gas, otherwise you'll burst the hose when the temp warms up.   Now this may have all changed since I did it, I know there are stricter regulations you have to abide by now, also it depends on your location, I'm guessing you'll need a fill station installed now with a pump and vapor retaining system now, can't imagine what that would even cost, other than ask at the local lp place, but be prepared for a shock.   I'm pretty sure a 1000 gallon tank is about 2k right now, depending on where you buy one. 

Also don't forget to factor in the added weight to carry around, its been a few years now, like I said, but the last I remember a 125 gallon tank full of gas was more than enough weight for a small pickup to drag around, the reason why only the big boys with 3/4 or one ton's had them with big v8's under the hood, you were carrying about 500-1000 lbs or more of dead weight at all times.   

I do know that in the dead of winter you got less mpg's than in the heat of summer, but don't ask me what the difference was, its been too many years ago now.   

I do know if your thinking about it, contact your insurance company first, ask them questions on premium cost increases, home owner insurance cost increases if you plan on filling at home, and lastly contact your area gas companies and ask questions on what you have to do in your area to even be able to do this, who has to install it, maintain it and where and when inspections have to be done.     

If after reading all this, your still thinking on converting your pickup over, I can tell you this from personal experience, at first its great, something different, most times cheaper in the long run, but after time, I just wanted something simple, quick and easy, and diesels got far better mileage and no problems to contend with and any idiot can go fill up the truck, tractor or whatever it is that's diesel.    Best of luck sorry for the long boring post.