Fuel

Sorry I assumed you were talking LPG :-)

On our recent trip to recover a boat from Marree LPG was over $111 with petrol at $158 around Lyndhurst so it really wasn't worth it.

On another trip last week Opal fuel was being sold in Alice and I couldn't tell it was any different from Unleaded.

i will never put opal fuel into my car again, we live in the outback and bp took away regular unleaded and opal fuel was only available apart from premium, my partner filled her tank with it and our commodore would barely run, it was running rough as guts, its automatic and was stalling etc. every chance we got we mixed it with premium and it got better, now we have to put straight premium in it.. I dont understand why BP would take away regular unleaded but leave premium? doesnt that defeat the purpose? we dont have any aboriginal people in our town, occasionally they pass through

"it really wasn't worth it"
Why wouldn't it worth using LPG Robin? At those prices it's sill 47 cents a litre cheaper & seeing my gas buggy only uses 2L per 100 more on gas than petrol (with exactly the same power) it's acually the same cost to run as a diesel using 14L per 100.
I be looking to add octane boost to Opal to minimise the negative effects it has on some cars.
Cheers Craig...............

yeah that might help! manufacturer bp state that its the same as using regular but the car says otherwise!

Things must have improved a lot then. I've had 5 LPG cars from the late 70's to around 2004 and they all used at least 4 l/100km more than petrol. I first drove the nullabor in 1986 in a dual fuel and found it cost the same per km to use either fuel once you got out there. None of them were injected so that may be the difference and happy to be wrong :-) If it's an old system then the experience should match mine though.

Hi Crackles

The boat we were towing at around 110 had very high wind resistance and with LPGs lack of power we really had to keep the pedal down and this made it uneconomical at the those prices.

Sort of like trying to heat water on a windy day , you get to a point where it just can't deliver the energy to do the job, you could slow down but that wasn't on the owners agenda.
.

"Things must have improved a lot then."
Yes I'm running the new vapour injection system which on my engine produces the same power on LPG. The old system Robin must be pretty inefficiant under load if it uses 1/3 more fuel. Glad I spent the extra dollars.
Cheers Craig.................

Gas simply has less energy than petrol which is why it uses more fuel and puts out less power in the general order of 20% for dual fuel cars.

The commodore I drove was the vapour injection system , but there are actually 3 system types -

The original gas vapour into the carby/throttle body - typically 30% loss
Then came Gas vapour injection (most common now) typically 15-20% loss and in the last couple of years liquid phase injection .

This last gets around the problem of low gas vapour energy by not injecting gas but actually pumps the liquid gas up to the engine to be directly injected.

The liquid vapourises in the cylinder had hence cools the air down a lot making it denser and hence you get more into a cylinder and hence you can get around the same power as petrol with it although range is still down.