propane injection

[john55blaze]

I have been doing a bunch of research on the possibility of running propane injection on my 6.0 lq9, I have run across some decent info on doing so with a carb but not with fuel injection. Has anyone on this site thought about or attempted this? There are a ton of interesting perks: obviously price of gas, no fuel pump, smaller radiator requirements, turbo/blower friendly both for heat and octane, tax and licensing breaks, oil change intervals....I feel like I could go on forever! Yes you loose some fuel economy (5-10%) and about the same on power but you can make that up with timing and compression and with it being half the price, who cares...The mothers chevelle did it and fleet vehicles use it often....any thoughts on how to do it?

[john55blaze]

90% of US propane is produced...guess where? The United States!

[GeoffP]

I had the same thought a few years ago but have never found any good info. Good luck with it and post updates if you find out additional info!

[john55blaze]

Did I ask this question in the right place?

[R0gueNomad]

I had looked into this for my Jeep awhile ago. They don't do EFI. Here is the link to the site. http://www.gotpropane.com/p267.html Also here is a quote from their site, "If you have an older, carbureted vehicle, and your local emissions laws allow it, this kit is perfectly legal to run on the roads. Each and every component in our kit is D.O.T. approved and as long as it's installed according to our instructions, meets NFPA 58 installation standards for vehicle use."

another site: Nashfuel.com

[neki67]

I've given it some thought but haven't investigated it yet. Here in the Netherlands there are quite a lot fuel injected cars running on propane. Another part of the world where they are running their cars a lot on propane: Australia! In contrast to the Netherlands, their car park has a lot of V8's.

So have a look @ www.ls1.com.au. You have to become a member to search their forum. If you don't like that; you can also 'google' and you will get the archive files e.g.: http://www.ls1.com.au/forum/archive/index.php/t-127869.html

A few companies to look into:
http://www.orbitalautogas.com.au/
http://www.icomnorthamerica.com/

And have a look at this 1000hp propane powered Chevelle: http://www.autoblog.com/2007/10/31/sema-2007-1-000-hp-propane-chevelle-by-mothers/

Keep us posted!

[avewhtboy]

I was in Dominican Republic for a few months last year and noticed that a lot of the cars there are running on propane. I have a buddy that owns a taxi service with a couple new Ford Escorts or the like that were converted from petrol, he said it cost about $3000usd for a kit from China that allowed the conversion.

Having already converted a car from petrol to electricity, I too am now looking into this for another project.

CNBC spent a whole day showing a conversion of a new F150 to propane, said the cost was around $9-10k.

[john55blaze]

$9-10k must be our tax dollars "hard at work" I was thinking $2k might be more like it...especially if you could link together 2 or 3 aluminium fork lift tanks with some sort of manifold system. I have found dot approved used ones for $90 each which gives you your a 30 gallon fuel capacity for around $400 with all the bits and pieces

[john55blaze]

The propane chevelle that mothers polish built says that they used "stock" fuel injectors for their liquid propane injection system, I tried emailing mothers to see if they would give me any information on the build and got no response (along with a few other propane conversion companies). I'm wondering if you could have a factory GM computer reprogramed with a propane fuel map taking into consideration the difference in octane rating and any other differences; why couldn't you just treat it as a different type of gasoline. ANYBODY??? Bueller???

[Kenova]

The propane chevelle that mothers polish built says that they used "stock" fuel injectors for their liquid propane injection system....
I would be a little skeptical of that claim. In it's liquid form propane is pressurized to 125psi (approximately). That is considerably more than most gasoline injection systems, but a mere fraction of the pressures seen in diesel and direct injection systems.

Ken

[neki67]

The propane chevelle that mothers polish built says that they used "stock" fuel injectors for their liquid propane injection system, I tried emailing mothers to see if they would give me any information on the build and got no response (along with a few other propane conversion companies). I'm wondering if you could have a factory GM computer reprogramed with a propane fuel map taking into consideration the difference in octane rating and any other differences; why couldn't you just treat it as a different type of gasoline. ANYBODY??? Bueller???

When you look into the specs of the Pro Pane Chevelle, you'll see that the LPG system is supplied by Prins. Prins is a Dutch Propane system manufacturer/developer. They use Keihin Propane injectors not regular gas fuel injectors: http://www.prinsautogas.com/en/products/components/injectors/injectors.html
59052

To answer your other question concerning the reprogramming of the factory GM computer; a couple of years ago I did some research in that direction and, as far as memory serves me, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Specifically the E67 ECU's (perhaps even the E38's) are suitable since you can program them for both gas and propane at the same time depending on which port of the ECU gets (12V) power. So basically you can use it as a bi-fuel ECU depending on the position of the switch, i.e. gas or propane. Hope that makes sense.

[Kenova]

I would think that injecting liquid propane into the port would have a huge cooling effect on the intake charge. It may even be enough to eliminate some of the smaller intercoolers on some forced induction systems.

Ken

[neki67]

Exactly the reason why it was banned from racing in a lot of classes during the sixties/seventies. Mainly due to Ak Miller who realized the natural partnership between Liquified Propane and turbo charging. His creations were so superior to the competition, it was seen as an unfair advantage.

[john55blaze]

I talked with the guys from PPI who supplied the fancy extruded aluminum fuel tank for the mothers Chevelle (which I guess has become my benchmark for this whole idea) and they said that they are trying to get orders for fleet vehicles (150 total orders) so that they can cover DOT approval/fees and that once they have that, they will make their tanks available for purchase in the US; hopefully in the coming year. Once that is all said an done they said that their tanks cost right around $600 (69 camaro fit) plus valves, which all things considered didn't sound too outrageous

On a slightly different thought, it seems like it would be a hundred times easier to do a carburated style set up and use an MSD box for the ignition...I have seen a hundred of these set ups (well maybe 3 or 4) on 4x4's and rock crawlers and they can be pieced together for a few hundred bucks??? Just thinking out loud...

[DoABarrelRoll]

Heh, I thought this was a thread about rock crawling.

[neki67]

Propane injection is far superior to any carburated kind of running on propane; start up wise, performance wise and hence fuel efficiency wise.

[2boostedsilverado]

I used LPG Fuel Injection from Technocarb on my LM7 5.3L

Amazing tech. The ECM from the LPG system was connected to the GM ECM to obtain all the sensor data. Easy to read and install schematics were supplied.

That system autocalibrate it self using the Original O2 sensors.

Was smooth and ran great. It always started the engine in Gas, and then in a few seconds changed to LPG.

http://www.technocarb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=80

Only thing that the LPG didnt forgive was a bad plug cable or a bad plug. The LPG is very sensitive to Electrical ignition fail. Other than that was superb.

[paul67]

I had a prizs on my 2003 dodge ram for over 5yrs and no problems.1/2 the price of petrol over here in the uk and about $4500 to convert,but got it back in about 8months.

[Olav]

I have a BRC system on my 2002 Tahoe LM7 . Works perfect and half the cost compared to fuel.

http://www.brc.it/default.aspx?lang=en



Olav

[383hq]

Propane fuel and propane injection is fairly common here in australia (actually it's a propane mix). Basically a few decades ago the propane was being wasted, so the distribution network was setup to use propane mix for taxis (cabs?).
Myself I have a propane mix (LPG or liquid petroleum gas) powered sbc with twin throttle bodies/ vortech T trim in something similar to an american el camino with a rolls royce type grill.
We have cars availabe from the factory with LPG injection. kits can also be purchased - do some research on LPG, and look for differences between OZ and (im guessing the USA)

Recent advancements in liquid injection have shown more power then petrol (gas?) like for like

Over here they are also injection a small amount of lpg into the diesel turbos to improve torque fairly significantly. Get the mix wrong though and it's a time bomb.

If i had my time again, I'd stick with petrol (usa gas), simple, available, and cheap. it was a hell of an interesting learning curve, and with only a few psi, i had 420 rwhp on barbeque fuel. Never went back to the dyno to get numbers once i had 6+psi, so I'd be guessing......


from memory JTG sell injection kits, you could also do a search for orbital lpg injection.
You might also want to look up gas research australia (GRA) to compare to the liquid injection.

i think form memory there are hundereds of pages on ls1.com.au about the different kits,the results etc of injecting ls1 and up on "LPG" . HSV sell an injection option on our version of the LS3 holden (chev) GTS (sort of a 4 door camaro?)

hope this helps
julian

[john55blaze]

Big thanks to all you guys "over the pond" who are way ahead of the curve on this stuff than us Americans! I will definitely be looking into the companies listed above