Diesel engines running gas.
Submitted: Monday, May 05, 2003 at 22:22
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relaxed (Fraser Coast-QLD)
Here's a good one for you diesel gurus. Have just come back from a weekend at Landcruiser Park Mountian at Jimna in QLD (first time there). I noticed a diesel 4by in one of the events with a LPG cyclinder under his tray. The announcer for the race made the comment about this bloke running gas with his turbo diesel saying he gets better performance and economy. I made a visit to the promoters tent site to enquire about this new concept (to me anyway). The bloke told me that running gas in a diesel engine prolongs its life by reducing carbon build up in the cyclinder bores and a cooler runing engine. He said that I could expect on my Patrol 3lt TD a saving of fuel of between 13 to 15 cents a litre. The installation cost is $3000 and would recoup that cost in around 18 months from the savings I would make on buying fuel.
Has anyone ever heard of this idea? The sales bloke reckons this concept has been around for many years, but mainly used on bigger diesel engines such as buses and prime movers.
If anyone does have this set-up, how do you find it.?.
And here I was thinking diesel engines only run on diesel (give myself a slap around the dial)
Relaxed
Reply By: Truckster (Vic) - Monday, May 05, 2003 at 23:02
Monday, May 05, 2003 at 23:02
Ive heard of it lots before, one of the blokes building a comp GQ on the PAtrol list was going to run it, but decided to go V8 Petrol instead.
The thing is Ive never heard of anyone using it around here.. Theres sites on the subject, www.google.com.au is your friend on that one.
Would I do it to a GU 3.0? Probably not, they are $17k to rebuild if something goes bush on them..
Also what do you do in the middle of nowhere, when theres no LPG around? Once its set for the mixture, its set, thats why Col went against it in the end.
AnswerID:
19214
Follow Up By: Old Jack - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 12:24
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 12:24
the injection of Lpg dosn't affect running on oil (diesel) it supliments it nstead. It's not like using a gas mixer on a spark ignition engine instead of injection or carburettor. No Lpg just means all oil.
have seen the lpg injection system(CO INJECTION) used on 400hp CAT engines in trucks, lowers total fuel consuption by about only 5% at best but the differance is that the LPG is 49c lt instead of 95c a lt for oil. no performance differance was noted but they are usually pretty carefull when the motor is worth about the same price as a new car
FollowupID:
12075
Reply By: Kev - (Cairns,QLD) - Monday, May 05, 2003 at 23:22
Monday, May 05, 2003 at 23:22
The Yanks are into it and think they call it propane injection, personaly i wouldn't mess with my engine as i want to keep it as reliable as possable.
AnswerID:
19216
Reply By: relaxed (Fraser Coast-QLD) - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 07:52
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 07:52
I don't think I'll be fiiting one either. For one where would you fit in a wagon without scarificing space and two your quite right truckster, if something went wrong in the bush, you'd be up the creek without a paddle. My question was just to see how popular this concept was in the diesel 4wd community barring of course the comp boys and girls. Because I've never heard of it before.
Learn something new every day.
Relaxed
AnswerID:
19223
Reply By: tour boy - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 07:58
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 07:58
Check out difflock.com/lpg/ I think that this will help.
AnswerID:
19224
Reply By: Savvas - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 09:15
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 09:15
There's quite a few buses in
Sydney running compressed natural gas (CNG). I always wondered whether they were converted diesel engines or large petrol type engines.
Can gas ignite under the same principles as diesel? That is, high compression leading to heat generation and ignition. Or are other modifications required to generate the ignition?
AnswerID:
19229
Follow Up By: Old Jack - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 12:38
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 12:38
yes the compression engine will happily run on any fuel that you can get into the combustion chamber, rudolf diesel created the engine to run of any cheaply available fuel, there are large "diesel" engines that run of powerded coal! used in ships, etc.
another writer here talked about generator sets running on "gas" this is usually natural gas where available. motor runs usually gas only in this case.
the injection system that runs oil/gas combination is pretty neat, really suited for hight pressure common rail injection, there will soon be a new breed of "petrol" engines that uses compression ignition(diesel), just to confuse people, ie it has no sparkplugs & runs on petrol!
just a cleaner fuel to handle thats all.
FollowupID:
12076
Reply By: Grant- Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 11:58
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 11:58
Giday, We use modifyed diesels where I work to provide power. The problems I see with them is they lack grunt when pushed, we have 19 Vee16 gas sets and 4 diesels, the diesels produce around 1400 kilowatts
and the same size converted gas engines 900 kilowatts. They have detonation problems also. If the engine was made as a gas engine I would be happy but converted engines I believe could be suspect, it would be up to who modified the engine and changed the computor program. Cheers PS. the gas engines are cheap to run.
AnswerID:
19247
Reply By: nissan4x4 - Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 21:19
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 at 21:19
A local vic company that deals with research and developement bought back the rights to the technology after initially developing it for ELGAS in QLD (someone in QLD, I'll confirm that tomorrow and supply a web site for them). It was actually the gas injection system that they developed for diesels and was used on quite a few long haul prime movers done the east coast. The theory was to run a 15-20% gas to 85-80% diesel mix. Power output was near equal and sometimes greater than deisel alone and there was the issue. The greater the gas mix, the more power, the hotter the engine, the shorter the life span. The QLD connection decided to get out due to long haul operators knocking on their door requesting some sort of compensation for blown engines. It was a little hard to prove the operator was running above reconmended mix ratios.
I'll post a link tomorrow for this research/dev company web site, there 're in an office below my work.
Cheers.
AnswerID:
19298
Reply By: tex1972 - Sunday, May 11, 2003 at 11:23
Sunday, May 11, 2003 at 11:23
while we are on the subject of alternate fuels the yanks are pretty big on a diesel and alchol mixture as well
AnswerID:
19672
Reply By: djm67 - Sunday, May 11, 2003 at 22:14
Sunday, May 11, 2003 at 22:14
Brisbane City Council runs some of their buses on Natural Gas (LPG) as well. They ordered them especially to do so, perhaps the factory has set them up accordingly?
AnswerID:
19702