Thread: P38 on gas

Personally I'm not a gas fan... I would rather a 100+ litre second tank for those very remote trips. Gas is not available everywhere out bush and if you use 14l/100km on petrol you'll use more with dual fuel.

How bad is your fuel consumption? There are things you can do...

My '99 Bosch 4.6 uses around 14 to the 100km around town and about 11 on the highway, 18 is the worst I've seen on a very remote, mostly low range trip. Fully loaded with 255/70 muddies...

Hey there,

I am a fan of LPG on the rangie, I have it on both my P38 and my classic.

LPG is not cheap here at the moment so its not the best savings. As a basic rule of thumb my cars used roughly a third more LPG than petrol to get the same distance, so if LPG is 78c a L as it was today, petrol would have to be less than about $1.05 L to be the better option, as as ptrol this afternoon was $1.45 here, you can work out the savings. But I do about 500-600 k a week and estimate LPG has paid for itself and saved me roughly $6,000 in fuel over the past 6 years and 100,000 kilometers I have done on LPG.

When the P38 was in better nick it got about 300k's from a tank I once got 59 L into of LPG.

My car's seen better days and probably needs a new cam and top end rebuild more than anything but on average was getting about 240-250K's around town out of the tank which on average I put 55 L of LPG into.

I have 95 GEMS, and its a single point venturi setup, and is set to for a squirt of petrol in to start the car but be running on LPG straight away - none of this warm up and cut over stuff.

I ran a little bit of petrol through it, running half a tank or so of petrol probably once a month or about every 8 or 9 tanks of LPG - when the car was my daily drive.

There's plenty on the forum who have thor setups with injection and run fine.

There's a few things to look for depending on what type of engine you have, but in general I lost no noticeable power on LPG and have only had issues due to my own sillyness and lack of maintenance on a few hoses I knew weren't looking good, so can't complain at all about LPG. My Petrol consumption went up a bit after the conversion, but thats because the car was setup to run mainly LPG .

My real beef was I had to fill up twice a week and its a pain, but thats because all I got was a donut tank in the spare wheel well.

get onto P38 Ron or especially beeutey - he's the LPG genius

Originally Posted by jsp

get onto P38 Ron or especially beeutey - he's the LPG genius

Agree that Ron or beeutey will get you the best info/feedback/direction on the subject.

Bee is THE GAS GURU.

Mine is a 2001 4.6/THOR engine, with about 155 000km on the clock. I drive about 500-600km a week and average about 14.3L/100km for that kind of commute.

When I took the car up to Kalbarri, it averaged maybe 14.0L/100 sitting on 100km/h on the way up. On the way back I sat on 110km/h and the consumption was about 14.8-14.9L/100.

I talked briefly to my workshop about a year ago about it - Lifestyle 4x4 in Morley - and they have recommended a direct injection setup, which will cost me around $2750 after the rebate (provided it's still going now)

I have done a few P38's, some with injection, some without. Injection is better if properly set up. The installer needs to be very vigilant about doing the electrical intervention for the petrol injection, then the LPG injectors need to be set up correctly. I've seen enough crap work to know there are risks associated with LPG installs so you need to find a trustworthy fitter.

As for tanks, the cheapest option is an ex-Holden VY-VY wagon donut tank made by APA and have it retested. They hold 60 litres of LPG. Otherwise there are donut tanks of 72 litre capacity available new from Manchester Tank.

In both cases you will need to have a safe and legal mount for the spare tyre, either inside the back or on a swing-away carrier. Carrying the spare loose is not legal. The LPG fitter is required to make sure there is a complying alternate spare tyre mount before signing off on the job.

The federal government rebate is $1000, WA may still have their own $1000 rebate, you need to check your local scheme.

My injection install (on a D2 but essentially the same)



VT wagon tank:




Spare tyre mount inside:

My LPG runs fine, but has (non-acute) insidious side effects and so I have stopped using my LPG, I am sick of chasing fault codes from O2 sensors "catching out" the system as being too lean.

If you get LPG, you will spend more money in the long run if you get a cheap system, guaranteed. Get the correct direct injection system with "good" O2 sensor emulators AND "good" injector emulators. To avoid fault codes being thrown and forcing the petrol system into open loop mode.

If your LPG system starts killing MAF sensors and throwing your long term fuel trims out for petrol, its all way more trouble than its worth.

I got gas injection, more torque (70nm) as per dyno, get about 300km/75ltr donut tank tuned for 95 octane. It runs smoother and cleaner but its a shame about the price of gas though. I use it for aux tank on trips were no gas is available.

Mine was installed by G. Coopers in Sydney cost $5400, then $1200 rebate from gov in June this year.

Rob

glenhendry:
Just get an early Gems without O2 Sensors... problem solved