My LS430 - Converted to LPG - Review

daRobot

With all the threads on LPG appearing here recently, I though i'd go into a bit of detail about my experience in getting my 2004 4.3 V8 LS430 converted.

I wasn't the typical high miles user, who would get their car converted, but paying 1.60 at the pump each time stung (130+ refills), and half price fuel was beginning to sound more appealing. I worked out that once I had used the LPG equivalent of 16 tanks of petrol, the conversion would have already paid for itself.

So who to choose was the first question, as there's quite a few installers now, and thankfully for the consumer the prices are really competitive. I was quoted between 950e and 1700e, but knowing that a bad installation would be a total nightmare (as a few guys on the lexus uk forum had highlighted), the most important thing to me was the experience of the fitters and crucially, the components used.

I got stuck into the various Lpg forums for a few days, finding out what was decent, and what wasn't, so i'd know what I was talking about when ringing around.

In the end, I decided to go for LPGAIN in Tallaght(www.lpgain.com), with my reasons being: Their main installer (Marcin) has done hundreds of installations in Poland and came over specifically to work with this business when it was created, so it wasn't just some newly trained guy.

Secondly, one of the most important parts of the installation is the Injectors that are used. LPGAIN use Korean made HANA injectors, which are basically the top brand along with the Japanese made Keihin. This was a big factor in choosing them.

Also the ECU system used, which is a multipoint STAG -300 Premium (Polish brand) is a really well regarded system, and suitable for a lot of fine tuning & adjustments. Again, to probably bore you with the technical details, but STAG also are one of the first companies to make a system for direct petrol injection engines, which is reassuring in relation to their R&D perspective and quality.

I left the car with them about a week before Christmas, and got the car back 3 days later. I've got to say i'm absoltely delighted with the standard of the work. Here's a few pics.

The premises in Tallaght:



Where you fill up (Takes a bit longer than petrol, about 4 mins to fill the tank):



78 Litre tank in the spare wheel well (fills to about 64 litres, as tanks have 20% expansion room for safety):



Installation with engine cover removed (pic lifted from their site):



Engine cover back on:




Filler placed by petrol cap:




Guage placed by steering wheel:




So basically, there's nothing really to do, the system is automated. The car starts on petrol, and the little light on the guage blinks, and in about 2 minutes (when cold) it switches over to LPG. It's seamless, and you wouldn't notice the change. Once the car is warm, it starts on LPG. Once it's run out, it switches back to petrol seamlessly (albeit with a beep from the gauge)

I read that lots of LPG users get about 20% less MPG. I can't say that's been my experience so far. I've probably get about 5% less, going from 17mpg in town, to 16mpg (total stop start driving). Motorway has gone from 29mpg to 28mpg, so it's not a noticable difference. Power feels just the same, and i've certainly not noticed any loss of power.

I've done a few hundred miles since the conversion, and i'm feeling like a proper smug b*llox, getting a petrol equivalent of 55mpg on the motorway and 30+ in town, in a 4.3 liter V8

If you live anwhere near a filling station, it's a no brainer. My conversion cost was 1100 euro with a full tank of fuel, and first years service for free (they had a promotion at the time which I think is still running), and while driving 10-15 minutes out of the way to fill up, isn't ideal, as I said to my mate the other day: If you heard a petrol station 15 minutes away was doing half price fuel, you'd go, wouldn't you?

www.lpgain.com are the company I used, and i'd highly recommend them.

Hope this helps anyone who is on the fence about a conversion.

Zascar

Great review, thanks for that, really interesting read. Can I ask one question, what happens if someone rear ends you at speed? I assume there is little to no chance of the tank exploding but what have they done to prevent this?

MuppetCheck

Excellent post!

These guys really seem like the biz, some good feedback from members on bmw-driver too. Defiantly considering it, i'm not sure if i should get it done in my 4 pot or go the whole hog and get a 540i/840ci and covert it

Indricotherium

That's really neat work, especially the indicator on the dash!

daRobot

Zascar wrote: »

Great review, thanks for that, really interesting read. Can I ask one question, what happens if someone rear ends you at speed? I assume there is little to no chance of the tank exploding but what have they done to prevent this?

Yep, this was a concern of mine aswell. The tanks are extremely strong, and the piping is designed with breakaway couplings which automatically seal in case the line is severed.

Here's a youtube video of the type of impact they can withstand:

http://youtu.be/RPe1W0xWyAU

daRobot

cisk wrote: »

These guys really seem like the biz, some good feedback from members on bmw-driver too. Defiantly considering it, i'm not sure if i should get it done in my 4 pot or go the whole hog and get a 540i/840ci and covert it

It's gotta be a V8. It's a very unique smug feeling

pajo1981

What's the story with motor tax and lpg?

Matt Simis

pajo1981 wrote: »

What's the story with motor tax and lpg?

Unlike the UK where its promoted, no difference here.

PS: The LS430 engine bay looks quite pimp.

arleitiss

How much does gas cost?

pajo1981

Matt Simis wrote: »

Unlike the UK where its promoted, no difference here.

PS: The LS430 engine bay looks quite pimp.

Is it still emissions based on '08+ plus car? What are lpg's emissions like?

daRobot

Matt Simis wrote: »

Unlike the UK where its promoted, no difference here.

PS: The LS430 engine bay looks quite pimp.

Cheers, I know they're supposed to be whisper quiet and all, but I couldn't resist adding an intake and an exhaust. Sounds more thuggish now :pac:

KT10

Great thread, has me sitting here doing the sums, can I ask a few questions though?

Are you happy you went with the tank you chose? Would you now prefer a bigger one even if it meant sacrificing some boot space?
Can you tell me how many miles (average) you were getting out of a full tank of petrol before the conversion?
How many miles are you getting post-conversion?
Lets talk cold hard cash here, how much do you reckon this will save you over the next year?

beazee

Matt Simis wrote: »

Unlike the UK where its promoted, no difference here.

What's the story with car insurance? Sure a modification.

mitosis

OP, where do you carry your spare, and were your insurance company interested in the conversion?

goochy

Yes heard some insurance companies won't cover yet lpg very popular overseas

pcardin

Great post, thanks!

Do they also issue the certificate and did you notify your insurance company and if yes did you had any problems with them?

Will do conversion myself within weeks just want to know all above.

daRobot

KT10 wrote: »

Great thread, has me sitting here doing the sums, can I ask a few questions though?

Are you happy you went with the tank you chose? Would you now prefer a bigger one even if it meant sacrificing some boot space?
Can you tell me how many miles (average) you were getting out of a full tank of petrol before the conversion?
How many miles are you getting post-conversion?
Lets talk cold hard cash here, how much do you reckon this will save you over the next year?

Tank size, at 78L (with an effective fill of 64l), considering the cars consumption was a little too small for me. I actually spoke to the lads in LPGAIN about this, and they're going to swap it out for me with a 95l (fills to 77L), with me just paying the difference in tank costs (50 euro). I though that was very decent of them.

The petrol tank in the LS430 is 84 litres, and with total stop start driving (barely even using m50), I was getting about 330 miles to a tank. With the 64L lpg tank it's about 230 miles.

Motorway use would increase both of these numbers significantly.

Over the next year, due to a few long trips to Europe, i'll do about 15,000 miles. Take an average of 24 mpg (as a lot of that will be motorway), that's 2100 euro a year saved, with the conversion having paid for itself within 6 months,

daRobot

pcardin wrote: »

Great post, thanks!

Do they also issue the certificate and did you notify your insurance company and if yes did you had any problems with them?

Will do conversion myself within weeks just want to know all above.

I'm with Allianz, and the installers provided a cert for me in a pdf file. Allianz just asked me to email it over, and that was it.

Obviously check with your insurance company that they cover it, as i've seen on a thread or two that some folk had issues.

74merc

Don't forget that in Europe many of the LPG pumps use a different connection. You can buy adaptors though, but offhand I don't know the ones you will need.
I've been running LPG for nearly 3 years now. You can run a great big petrol engined barge for turbo diesel hatchback money. It's a no brainer for me and no worries about turbos, DPFs, DMFs etc.

Mr Benevolent

arleitiss wrote: »

How much does gas cost?

Between €0.80 and €1 per litre.

Thanks for the review, getting the Corsa done shortly!

mullingar

daRobot wrote: »

Over the next year, due to a few long trips to Europe, i'll do about 15,000 miles.

If you are going via the UK to the continent, bear in mind the channel tunnel excludes LPG cars, but the slow channel ferry is still available

colm_mcm

Would love to hear that engine with the breathing mods done

pcardin

74merc wrote: »

Don't forget that in Europe many of the LPG pumps use a different connection. You can buy adaptors though, but offhand I don't know the ones you will need.
I've been running LPG for nearly 3 years now. You can run a great big petrol engined barge for turbo diesel hatchback money. It's a no brainer for me and no worries about turbos, DPFs, DMFs etc.

I had a couple of LPG converted cars myself before I moved to Ireland and due to nature of my previous jobs had to travel a lot and sometimes used my car to get from one country to another so basically criss-crossed most of continental Europe. Alltought as you say different countries use different connections for LPG I never had any issues of filling up. All petrol stations seemed to have various connectors available. The only difference I spotted was that in some countries only operator was allowed to fill it up but in some I had to do myself.
In Germany there is another type of gas available but can't remember what it was.

daRobot

colm_mcm wrote: »

Would love to hear that engine with the breathing mods done

I'll try and sort out a video next week and throw it up on youtube

beazee

pcardin wrote: »

In Germany there is another type of gas available but can't remember what it was.

Erdgas = Ground gas = Methan

LPG in France is called GPL

r1_2010

Does your car drive any noticeably different in terms of acceleration/torque? I can't seen to find a definitive answer online as to whether there is an impact on BHP.....

Also do you now need to get two services done to the car every year.. one with your lexus/back street mechanic to do the annual oil, filters etc.. service and then another with the LPG service man ?

Also what are their service rates and how often do you need to get the everything serviced?

This is a very interesting thread....

daRobot

r1_2010 wrote: »

Does your car drive any noticeably different in terms of acceleration/torque? I can't seen to find a definitive answer online as to whether there is an impact on BHP.....

Also do you now need to get two services done to the car every year.. one with your lexus/back street mechanic to do the annual oil, filters etc.. service and then another with the LPG service man ?

Also what are their service rates and how often do you need to get the everything serviced?

This is a very interesting thread....

I suppose to get an exact figure you could do a rolling road on gas and petrol.

Personally, i've not noticed any difference at all. Supposedly, top end power is slightly reduced and torque is increased. Again, I genuinely can't say i've noticed either.

The fuel itself has an octane rating of 110, but a lower energy content. I don't fully understand what that means in the grand scheme of things.

Yep, it'll have to have two services a year. Normal and LPG filters. I didn't ask them (should have) but from what I can gather a service is in the 50-80 euro range from looking online, but the fuel savings really negate the cost of that.

It also seemingly (no first hand experience of this), helps keep the engine oil cleaner.

It didn't seem to do this dutch Lpg'ed LS430 any harm, having covered 700,000km on LPG

http://www.lexusforum.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=1427

You'd need google chrome to translate that.

Matt Simis

daRobot wrote: »

The fuel itself has an octane rating of 110, but a lower energy content. I don't fully understand what that means in the grand scheme of things.

In nut shell it means like for like (same tuning with no adaptation from the ECU) you need to inject more LPG per volume than petrol.

However what happens is multiple effects, some with benefit and some with negatives all at once, making the raw energy content comparison meaningless as you have found with your realworld MPG and performance experience (which are much better than theory suggests).

- Much higher octane means the timing can be advanced (moden cars do this to a degree automatically, though their are LPG specific tunes), which boosts performance and increases efficiency (and torque).
- Hotter and dryer combustion however limits gain vs true 110octane race fuel as does lower energy content.
- Injection as a gas has its own generally positive effects on efficiency.
- LPG combusts much cleaner than petrol which stops coking and gunk which left to their own devices hurt performance and emissions further.


So its a load of "things" all at once, making the theory of MPG loss distant from the realworld tests which vary per car.

daRobot

Matt Simis wrote: »

- LPG combusts much cleaner than petrol which stops coking and gunk which left to their own devices hurt performance and emissions further.

This is especially interesting on the some of the Audi 'S' and 'RS' engines which suffer from coking.

I may be moving to the UK later this year, and should all of that happen, my aim for sometime the year after is a 2006 V10 S8 (which are hovering around 15k stg and dropping) on LPG. It can be done with the new systems, and how awesome would that be to have a primarily Lambo engine running on gas.

Matt Simis

daRobot wrote: »

This is especially interesting on the some of the Audi 'S' and 'RS' engines which suffer from coking.

I may be moving to the UK later this year, and should all of that happen, my aim for sometime the year after is a 2006 V10 S8 (which are hovering around 15k stg and dropping) on LPG. It can be done with the new systems, and how awesome would that be to have a primarily Lambo engine running on gas.

Id be all on for such things, but you will face stiff resistance from die hards if you "butcher" a V10 with LPG.

daRobot

Matt Simis wrote: »

Id be all on for such things, but you will face stiff resistance from die hards if you "butcher" a V10 with LPG.

It'll be a fun thread on pistonheads, and a lot of "just wrong" will be spouted :pac: But at the end of the day, it's just an alternative fuel, doesn't harm the car, so why not capitalise on it.

RandomAccess

Matt Simis wrote: »

Id be all on for such things, but you will face stiff resistance from die hards if you "butcher" a V10 with LPG.

As long as it didn't affect the V10 bawl, I'd be willing to live with the trade off of starting the car like a super-ser.

Stallingrad

Hmm, not convinced by the whole LPG thing, more like RPG...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfM0s6lvjko

So you really think a knackered pickup in Iran with whatever unknown LPG system is in anyway comparable to the LPG systems we are discussing.

beazee

Stallingrad wrote: »

Hmm, not convinced...

Only in Iran

Stallingrad

cisk wrote: »

So you really think a knackered pickup in Iran with whatever unknown LPG system is in anyway comparable to the LPG systems we are discussing.

Relax, it was meant in jest.

Matt Simis

Lol, funny though.
Wonder what happened, it didnt "explode" (BLEVE style).. more overpressured to the extreme and designed without a pressure release valve?

mullingar

All LPG filling pumps have an exact maximum pumping pressure, and when this is reached during the filling, the receiving tank is full.

I would say that either
a) the tank was not an approved LPG tank, could well be an empty metal oil barrel or
b) trying to fill CNG (>500's bars) into a LPG tank (~8bars)

I remember reading a German article somewhere where they crash tested many LPG tanks and they found that LPG was actually marginally safer than petrol.

conzy

I have been thinking about this for a while.. I'm now 95% certain I'm getting the 325 done in the summer. Straight 6 noise and linear power with < 320d running costs

Matt Simis

conzy wrote: »

I have been thinking about this for a while.. I'm now 95% certain I'm getting the 325 done in the summer. Straight 6 noise and linear power with < 320d running costs

I was thinking of a 325/330/530i as well for same reasons! I think 32mpg is a possiblility (on petrol) on the 530i manual as my old auto 530i Touring got 28mpg (motorway mixed), makes for a cheap and reasonably high performance car with no turbo or DPF to die.

galwaytt

..........Breaking News...........well, after much prevarication, my brother has sent his 3.0t Petrol Saab into Cork for conversion today, so we'll all have another channel of good info on it by tomorrow.

His car is a 3 litre V6 petrol Turbo, so the Lexus answers the normally aspirated queries, and we'll have a LPT turbo application to review shortly as well.

More, as they say, as it comes to hand.....




Oh, and conzy/Matt - if it works out, he might convert his SO's 323Ci as well.

Photoshop

Does it have to be big 3.0l - 4.3l N/A engines ?

Smile would come off my face when I see the motor tax bill of 1.5k+ per year.

Can you convert smaller engines with big power, turbo/n/a, like Focus ST, Mazda MPS, Type R, OPC, GTI etc?

250bhp OPC on lpg would best of both worlds ( power and motor tax )

Matt Simis

Historically it was associated with large, high power/torque engines as:

- Motor tax based on CC is a local problem so not really a concern elsewhere. Even hear, yearly fuel costs have now (usually vastly) exceeded yearly tax.
- Earlier LPG tech had a notable power hit, which was largely absorbed in big engines.
- NA V8s are comparatively simpler in design, greater in reliability and cheaper to produce than small CC high boost engines, making them better donor candidates.
- Financially the most gain is had when applied to vehicle with the lowest economy, cost to repay installation is much faster on low MPG vehicles.
- V8s sound nicer...


But yes, you could put it on anything and its high octane matches turbo applications well, I suspect an Audi 1.8T with a big turbo installed but otherwise fairly stock is good for 300bhp on LPG while retaining most of its naturally good MPG and low tax.

sorel

best thing to do, is catch really good conversion prices. Same conversion in Germany, Holland, France etc will cost double. Wait a year and see "normal" prices...

galwaytt

Update on brothers Saab: I got the date wrong, it's next Friday it's being done............

Idbatterim

Tank size, at 78L (with an effective fill of 64l), considering the cars consumption was a little too small for me. I actually spoke to the lads in LPGAIN about this, and they're going to swap it out for me with a 95l (fills to 77L), with me just paying the difference in tank costs (50 euro). I though that was very decent of them.

good point about how people would travel extra 15 minutes if half price petrol was on sale, makes sense to me to get biggest tank possible unless you live very close to them and then just completely fill it each time, saving trips. Most people would get 2-3 weeks on a fill in that case I reckon. I put E30 a week into my 325ci, I dont think with this low spend, Id consider it unless I was spending minimum E50 per week on petrol or had a big v8 etc...

rocky

If I do the conversion, 950 euro for 3l I6, it'll take me 1.9 years to recoup the cost at 20l/100km (petrol is 17/100, all city driving)...

mullingar

rocky wrote: »

If I do the conversion, 950 euro for 3l I6, it'll take me 1.9 years to recoup the cost at 20l/100km (petrol is 17/100, all city driving)...

What mileage are you doing? 5-6k miles/yr?

rocky

Estimated less than 6k km

galwaytt

galwaytt wrote: »

Update on brothers Saab: I got the date wrong, it's next Friday it's being done............

...sorry it's been so long, but The Brother :rolleyes: is not exactly boards.ie-literate..... :P

So, he's been driving it for a week now, and first thoughts are..:

1. No performance deficit at all. He actually said it was better, but I'm going to put that down to some sort of psychological inverted buyer's remorse....
2. In v.cold temps, it def prefers starting on petrol, and switches over once temps are up
3. He's also twigged that running on petrol for a minute before you shut it off (say last spin of the day), makes starting more instantaneous in the following (cold) a.m.....
4. ....no difference at all in throttle response
5. And here's the science bit: on petrol, the car was returning 27mpg. Gas consumption on a fill-fill basis has come in at....23.5mpg. That's a 13% drop. As a reminder: this a 3.0 V6 petrol turbo (LPT). That, imho, is the economy most people get from their 2.0 cars...
6. Here's the wallet-friendly bit: LPG cost him 89c/litre in Cork vs 1.56 for petrol. That's a 43% reduction in the cost of fuel
   

Ergo, the conversion so far has proven more-than-worthwhile. At his mileage use, the conversion will be paid for in 6 months.

He has to bring it back at 1000kms for a check-over and trimming of settings etc, so I hope to have an update a bit further along. I also want to get to drive the thing.

Seems to me that for anyone where the tax-trap is a killer (aka, luxobarges), LPG is a no-brainer.