injected LPG (again)

[R-Jay]

i live in western Sydney (fairfield)... and down the road from me, there is this autogas place.... never bothered to go check it out for the whole 10 years i've been in the area....

anyhow, for months now i've been thinking about injected autogas..... and i've been doing research and calling around.... anyhow, i had half a day off this week and decided to drop in to that place down the road and ask some questions..... ends up, they do injected LPG conversions (slaps forehead)...

all this time and it's been just down the road.

Airod (they're located in Villawood NSW)

had a chat with the lady in the office.... seems like a whole conversion will cost between $3800-$4000 AUD.... apparently, the gas is injected directly into the cylinder (never thought that was the case).... and not into the inlect tract..... anyhow, she was saying performance will be about equivalent to the stock engine on petrol....

i also asked if extra injectors could be plumbed in and the air meter signal be intercepted..... she looked puzzled at first, but then told me the ECM for the gas injection system reads off the O2 sensor....

not a problem really cause a piggyback can intercept that signal too.....

there ya go.... and it was right under my nose.

 

[cribbj]

With due respect to the lady you spoke with, I couldn't find anything on their site that indicated they were doing injected conversions; it all looked like mixer technology. If they are doing injection, it almost has to be vapour injection at the manifold. As I'm sure you already know, direct cylinder injection of LPG still in liquid state hasn't been fully commercialised yet, and when it is, it'll probably cost substantially more than a vapour injection system because of the extra circulation pump, special injectors, and/or booster compressor required to keep the stuff from vaporising. Sure would be interesting if you find out something to the contrary.

John

 

[R-Jay]

John, i thought the same thing at first.... but after quizing this lady a little further, i found out that it was actually injected vapour going into the cylinder directly...... she didn't care to explain too much though..... i actually suggested that it was manifold fed, but she quickly corrected me.....

just to clear things up, this lady was one of the research technicians..... knew her stuff...

anyhow, after telling her what i wanted out of an injected system, she quickly told me to look elsewhere as they weren't willing to do more than install standard systems... but she did put me onto a company from the netherlands called Vialle. These guys actually manufacture LPG parts.

www.vialle.nl is the site. Might be an idea to send an email to find out what they have and what they can do.

 

[cribbj]

Well, she's right about Vialle, they're the one "big name" OEM who claim to have a commercially available, direct liquid injection system. From what others have said, however, they don't respond to emails. I haven't been interested enough in liquid injection to chase them up with a phone call, but that might be the way forward with them. Wonder if your local shop might be one of Vialle's installer/dealers?

I've had some good luck recently and have found a Canadian autogas dealer/installer who is also a hotrodder. He runs a vapour injection system on his own car which is a 4.6l supercharged Cobra. Says he's optimised the ignition map for LPG on a DynoJet, and it now actually makes slightly more power than with petrol. This is consistent with what others on the LPG mailing lists are discovering with simple aftermarket ignition advance boxes. We're working on configuring a system for my project and I hope to have a quote next week for it. I'll keep everyone posted on how this progresses.

John

 

[edz]

I've been talking to my gas/dyno tuner man in Canberra about lpg injection for a couple of years in the hope of a decent gas injection system. A few aussies have tried the liquid lpg technique but none successfully. He seems to think the lpg injection that works at the moment is vapor injection, the only problem is it is a european system and the injectors are quite small. For a 4 litre v8 you would need 16 injectors (around $2500) but he says the system works well. He is just not convinced it's any better than the systems we currently have which are a lot cheaper to setup..

 

[Peewee]

And just exactly how do they plan to modify a head to inject the lpg AFTER the valves?

 

[400ZED]

Peewee has a really good point there fellers.

 

[turboandrew]

Perhaps "directly into the cylinder" just means port fuel injection, aka, one injector per port. IMO I don't see much of an advantage other than per cylinder tuning. I even wonder if that is any advantage at all considering you are injecting a vapor, and any ports that flow better or worse should flow better/worse LPG as well, provided it had enough time to mix.

 

[cribbj]

And just exactly how do they plan to modify a head to inject the lpg AFTER the valves?

From what I've "heard" on other lists, Vialle have a direct cylinder LPG injection system only for the very few OEM setups that are already setup for it with liquid fuel. That's probably why they're not responding to anyone from the aftermarket. I still don't believe it's fully commercialised 'cause I seriously doubt if the run of the mill LPG installers could handle an LPG retrofit of one of these systems, and even if they could, no one in their right mind would want to pay the price.

Even port injection of liquid LPG is a tough nut to crack 'cause it just doesn't take much heat at all for the stuff to vaporise. I think the only systems that will be successful doing this in the future will have to raise the entire system pressure substantially. Shoot, just to keep the stuff liquid at 100 degrees C, you've got to raise the pressure to nearly 44 bar which is more than triple the pressure the vapour systems run at now. Then, once you've got the only liquid LPG injection in your neighborhood that has to run at triple the pressure of anyone else, who's going to refill it? If it's designed to be refilled at normal pressure, then there has to be a booster compressor fitted onboard the car after the tank, etc, etc. $$$$

John

 

[Pro]

just to update this thread - LPG injection is now done in WA too - so it must be over the whole world by now coz we're the last place on earth to get everything.

last check it was $5000 AUD drive in drive out with "very programmable" standalone CPU. gas injectors replace std injectors. no mods required to motor.

not bad really when you consider the fuel tanks alone are $1500AUD.

 

[hi-lex]

this is the reply I got back from gas injection

Hi Russell,



Thanks for your enquiry; The New Inventors was a fantastic boost to the commercialisation process. I have been working at raising the capital necessary for commercialisation and am having some success but it is difficult to raise capital for an automotive project in Australia. We will hopefully have product available in 12 - 18 months. Those Toyota V8’s are a nice engine and it’s conversions like that we will be trying to supply. If you know any investors, please contact me.



Best Regards



Bill Campbell

Gas Injection Technologies.

Ph: 02 9720 1119


Im sure you guys know of this I have posted it before, I assume its vapour injec but as it uses new larger injectors but retains factory ecu check the link http://www.gas-injection.com so if everyone emails them it may help, seems like the age old aussie prob of good idea but no one wants to back it

 

[T_Terror]

Heres one for the VIC boys

$1400 for a vapour system for a V8 PLUS a Haltech ECU!

Over here its near impossible to get a late model blown car engineered due to emissions. To get a test is $2000.00+ depending who you go. THats for a test, pass or fail.

I think LPG is a serious alternative just from that viewpoint.

 

[3rides]

Vapor injection on the cheap.

I would like to direct your guys attention to a Canadian company.

www.technocarb.com

I have spoken with them and they have a certified vapour injection system for $1400 Canadian (install yourself and source your own tank). It is a manifold injection system that runs a piggy back ECU. This system is designed to run dual fuel (liquid petrol and LPG) as they are Canadian and we get cold weather. It starts the vehicle on petrol until warmed up then automatically switches to LPG. I explained to the tech that I planned on running it in on a 1uz in my Toyota Tacoma 4x4, he figured it would work very well with this setup.

I'm sure the system is easily modified to run straight LPG if that is what you are into. I plan on running a small petrol tank along with a large LPG tank. The beauty of this system is the simplicity. It merely modifies the signals from the factory ECU therby using all the factory sensor signals. So the timing will automatically advance to adjust for the increased octane rating as an example.

Get in touch with them and see if they can set you up.

 

[S-M-R-T]

Is the ECU able to automatically control the timing so that it is optimum for the LPG. The one thing that I hate about dual fuel is that the LPG generally has to run at the pump gas timing which is not as efficient and you lose power. The price sounds better then most. Some dual fuel setups are so expensive that I can't see how you could possible save $5000 or so over pump gas in a reasonable time frame.

 

[3rides]

Yeah the computer (a piggy back) willl compensate the timing based on the info sent from your knock sensor. Provided you have a new enough engine.

 

[urtwhistle]

hey guys got a simple idea that im trying on my skyline turbo project. instead of the radiator water running though the gas converter i will be pumping the water from a Air- water intercooler, ie the intercooler gets cold water and the converter should stay warm enough not to freeze too. if it doesnt work well then i just gotta re route a few pipes and add a little radiator for the IC.

chris

 

[steveblade_uk]

I worked for a Cowboy outfit here in the UK retro fitting LPG (auto gas) systems. The run of the mill kit was realy bad. I hated hacking up customers cars to fit junk that mostly went wrong and blew inlet manifolds an plenums to bits! The only kit that I worked with that was any good was from Holand and made by AG. This was sequential injection kit and vehical specific and worked well compared to the crap Italian kit I generaly worked with. This was about 4 years ago so maybe auto gas has moved on a little but I dont think so. In my present job I have to service and maintain many LGV and HGV's. Mercedes sell a dual fuel Sprinter van and its fitted with the same Italian kit I used to work with, its just added on at the factory. Very low tech in my opinion, overall the savings here are realy good with auto gas costing 32p to 39p per litre (petrol is 90p/litre ish) but there are so many complications I wouldn't realy consider it my self. Urtwistle thats a good Idea, I think it's workable.