LPG

[oze30]

What is needed for a full conversion to LPG?
Whats the best type to get (sequential or ...?)

Thoughts?
Cheers

[klu99apm]

Try a search on the zone as Brianmooore posted photos of his installation some time ago.

You could go full injection - £Â£Ã‚£ (good idea if you're upgrading to something like an M50,52... at a later date perhaps, or are concerned about ultimate performance) Alternatively you can just run a closed loop venturi system which works fine with something like the M20 and presumably M30.

Basically you need:

1) Tank in boot / spare wheel well, and filler mounted to bodywork somewhere
2) Pipework up to engine bay
3) Vaporiser
4) mixer plate in airbox
5) Lambda probe if you haven't already got one
6) Some sort of ECU to monitor the lambda and adjust mix accordingly (I use a Leonardo ECU)

Thats all you need. If you go for a DIY conversion the cost of new equipment is about £450 otherwise always lots of 2nd hand on ebay cheaper.

If you do a DIY conversion you can get it certificated but even then some insurance companies may still not insure you. The LPGA has leant on them to only insure installs carried out by their members.

Hope this helps

[Brianmoooore]

As above really - nothing much more to add.
There's several insurance companies who will insure without any certification. Plenty more who will if you get it certified (about £50), and a few who insist on"professional" (read LPGA) installation.
My local "professional" LPGA installer has cleared off to Spain, and as a result, I get to see a few of his "professional" installations!!

[oze30]

Cool.. Now to keep a lookout for that stuff on ebay!!

[oze30]

What size tank will i need to almost close the rear floor ( I remember the group buy thread that has vanished) is it 65l?

[Brianmoooore]

50 litre is the biggest that goes in. That's actual capacity, not LPG capacity, which is 80% of this.

[oze30]

so will a 40 litre sit under the floor or will it need to be braced up?

How high is the well?

[oze30]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LPG-toroidal-tank ... dZViewItem


or this one

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LPG-Tank-Ring-typ ... dZViewItem

[oze30]

Also, Is there any ruling about where to place the filler? Can it be inside? or...?

How big is the filler hole?

Would it be possib;e to fit the fuel and lpg filler in the same aperture behind the cover?

Ive seen it done on some 4x4's.. but not sure about on a car.

[Brianmoooore]

The tank diameter needs to be 630mm for an E30, and to be of the type where the multivalve sits inside the toroid, like the type in the first ebay link above.(Which doesn't look a bargain to me!)
Maximum height is 225mm,IIRC, which raises the boot floor very slightly. In my touring there are 10mm thick strips of plywood glued around the edge of the load space wooden floor to support it.
The centre of the torroid has an air tight lid on it, and the chamber containing the multivalve has a plastic tube going down from it and out through the wheel well floor. All wiring and pipework goes down through this tube as well.
The front of the filler needs to be outside the car, but the back can be inside (i.e., flush mounted), but has to enclosed in an airtight box again, with a tube venting outside, through which the pipework passes.
Ideal point on an E30 is just behind the petrol filler flap where the locking solenoid is inside. By fixing it here you can brace the back of the filler to the central flange of the wheelarch, so that the bodywork doesnt bend when the heavy LPG filler nozzles are attached.
If you're not into cutting 60mm holes in your bodywork, a bracket can be fitted underneath the bumper.
I think there is at least one car around that has a hinged number plate, with the filler behind.

[oze30]

Its a touring, so it could be interesting making a hinged number p[late.

Is there anyway of making the black strip in the bumper hinge? Kinda like the tow point cover?

[Theo]

Why do you need LPG Colin? I thought Spadge said that they aren't bad on the fuel?

[oze30]

I just did a 300 mile trip for 50 quid/55 litres. So if anyone can work that out.. mpg wise.

I'm planning to do a euro roadtrip come june/july if my contract doesnt come through, so mileage/range will be heaps better when I get it.. that and the fact petro, back in oz is about 1.20 a litre. Equivalent would be 1.20 GBP a litre.. with LPG being about 50p


Theo, whats actually wrong with the seats? They dpont do the forward recline? or worse?

[Brianmoooore]

Its a touring, so it could be interesting making a hinged number p[late.

Is there anyway of making the black strip in the bumper hinge? Kinda like the tow point cover?

You have a tow bar?
Fix the filler on a bracket the opposite side from the electrics socket.
That's where the filler was on my wife's touring for the first three years.

[oze30]

No tow bar.. and RD body kit

[oze30]

will it matter if I get one from a v8?

[Brianmoooore]

will it matter if I get one from a v8?

Get what from a V8?

[oze30]

the whole set up

[Brianmoooore]

Bits of it might be usable, but V8 engined cars tend to have bigger road wheels than E30s, hence bigger wheelwell and LPG tank.
Vapouriser may be useable, as may be the filter/splenoid valve
Mixer is very unlikely to be usable.

[Brianmoooore]

Keep looking on ebay; they come up from time to time.
I bought a complete kit, including 'Leonardo' ECU, software and laptop lead for £165 back in January.
Only parts needed to fit it to were E30 are some 6mm copper pipe and a mixer. Only six miles from whee I live as well!

[oze30]

i can get a full kit used for a rangie 3.5/3.9 v8 for 100 squids.. just need to get the biuts to make it work on my car.

Any idea on price for a mixer plate? (What is it and where does it go?)

[Brianmoooore]

Mixer for an E30 is usually fitted to the inlet side of the AFM, (iside the top of the air filter box on mine), and at a guess is about £25's worth.
Tank from a rangie is likely to be some huge cylinder tank which is likely to occupy some serious space in an E30 boot.

[oze30]

So if it comes off as is, without the tank, I just need to get a mixer plate?

I'm assuming that if it's EFI, It would have it's own ecu?

Would this work with mega squirt and or 6 coil packs??

[Brianmoooore]

The type of LPG system I'm on about is basically fitting a LPG carburettor with a lambda controlled feedback loop to fine tune the mixture.
A petrol carb. needs a fuel pump to feed fuel to the engine, a float chamber and valve to provide a constant pressure feed a venturi and jet to atomise the petrol and then hopefully enough swirl to keep the petrol droplets in suspension and into the combustion chamber.
LPG feeds itself to the engine, just needs a reducer to present it at a suitable pressure, and is already a gas which mixes readily with air, so very few of the problems associated with a petrol carb.
There are much more expensive LPG vapour systems available which inject LPG as a vapour very close to where the fuel injector inject petrol. These give a little more power (if set up correctly), but the main advantage is even better emissions (to keep the OBD happy), and a very important point in the case of modern cars with plastic inlet manifolds, less likelihood of an inlet manifold blowback.

[oze30]

If I start with a single point, can I upgrade it to multi point?

How will my ecu work with it? Does it get replaced by the lpg ecu? If I get MS, What happens then?

[Brianmoooore]

Only thing common to single point venturi and multi point vapour injection is the tank, filler, pipe to the front, and the connections to the car cooling system.
Venturi systems use a stand alone ECU controlled by a lambda sensor (if they use any electronics at all0, whereas most multipoint systems use a add on ECU to the normal engine ECU which modifies the petrol injector pulse according to an internal map.
Either sort would work with MS, or you possibly could program a second map on the MS to control the LPG injectors directly, as well as a second timing advance map.

[exup]

If I start with a single point, can I upgrade it to multi point?

How will my ecu work with it? Does it get replaced by the lpg ecu? If I get MS, What happens then?

if o re going M/ THEN U DO T NEE A FULL LPG SYSTM AS SUCH , JUST THETANK , AND PIPE WORK , AND ET IF SEQUENTIAL LPG INJECTS WHICK M/S CAN BE MAKETO DRIVE ,I VE BEEN SPEAKING TO ANT ABOUT THIS but hes too busy to reply at presnt ????

[oze30]

Right. Managed to get a kit off a 735 for good money. What exactly do I need to look for to make it multipoint?l

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Advanced-Lambda-C ... dZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Autogas-Lpg-Part- ... dZViewItem

[Brianmoooore]

Right. Managed to get a kit off a 735 for good money. What exactly do I need to look for to make it multipoint?l

What sort of kit have you bought/ Multipoint suggests it's vapour injection gear, which doesn't go with any of the stuff in the two links.

The engine ECU on E30s is too dim to need emulators by the way. Disconnecting the common live feed to the petrol injectors is all that's needed.

[cro320]

think that MPI system is waste of money when talking about M20/M30 engines, they should work fine with lambda controlled SPI and quality LPG equipment.
But you need to prepare yourself for some unwanted intake detonations , sometimes. Been there done that , not a very pleasant experience.

[oze30]

BRIAN..unsure as its off a 735 with a single braided line to the rubber hose just before the AFM.. so I'm guessing it's single. Just trying to find out whats needed to go from single point to multi.

I mean in plain mans terms.. not tech speak. (Sorry.. new to all this stuff!)

Cheers

[oze30]

Will this tank fit?

[Brianmoooore]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Advanced-Lambda-C ... dZViewItem

This is the kit you need to upgrade the kit you've bought, although it's not AEB.
With this, you won't need much, if any, of your original wiring.

[Brianmoooore]

Will this tank fit?

Will what tank fit? Can't imagine a spare wheel well tank for a 7 series will fit an E30, but most cylinder tanks will go in an E30 boot, although it will probably occupy at least half of it.

[oze30]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Advanced-Lambda-C ... dZViewItem

This is the kit you need to upgrade the kit you've bought, although it's not AEB.
With this, you won't need much, if any, of your original wiring.

Right, So if I get this, it become a multi point, and then I only need the pipes?

Then I need the CD to map it aswell?