LPG- V8 Conversion

[lansdownplace]

I was reflecting on the rising cost of petrol and it looks like there is a compelling case for installing LPG to feed the black hole up front

Has anyone had any experience of doing this on a carburettored engine?

P

[dammer s]

I had my car (a 411s3) converted to LPG years ago and drove it for 3 years ( 30.000 km/year) without any problems due to this conversion.

[GREG]

I know a good place with experience in V8's -- maybe you could see if a doughnut tank will go in the spare wheel bay to keep all the boot for the 412 roof bits.

I couldn't believe it when I went to get a gallon fuel tank filled with Diesel on Saturday £9.72 !!! - all the prices in litres makes us old farts unaware of how much a gallon prices have gone up ! It was 50p / gallon when I worked at the local petrol station as a teenager , and I filled your car for you and washed your screen !!

It made me laugh the last time I was in Florida listening to a couple of American guys moaning about the high cost of fuel. They wouldn't complain after paying UK prices for a while.

Bristol did a fantastic job on the Blenheim 4 with the LPG. When we did the maths after travelling from London to Leeds , it worked out at just short of 40 mpg petrol equivalent cost. So more economical than my Merc diesel and no noticeable difference in performance from petrol.

I guess it depends on how much mileage you intend to do and how long you intend to keep the car - a lot of sums to do :-)

[lansdownplace]

Originally Posted by GREG

I guess it depends on how much mileage you intend to do and how long you intend to keep the car - a lot of sums to do :-)

It seems that you get 20% less MPG from Gas and 10% less BHP (don't know about low end torque) which whittles away the saving a little. On 12,000 miles a year it has to save at least £1,500 quid. What would it cost to install?

The tanks are a bit of an issue for the 412 as taking the roof off is a key benefit. Is there enough space left to slip the roof on top of the tanks?

P

[GREG]

About £800 to £2500 depending on the kit and who fits it.

You can always find all the bits and bobs on ebay very cheap to do it but most professional installers will send you away with a flea in your ear so you would need to find a competent mechanic to fit it all together and then get it tested. It would be the cheapest route and maybe the new Bristol company could help ?

I believe that the engine compression needs to be ramped up a bit and the cooling needs improving, along with going up to 10mm HT leads

Get some proper advise :-) The installer I talked to is near Tadcaster so a long way from you ! He reckoned around £800 for my 408 a couple of years ago.

[alistair]

If you have a carburettor car I would live with the fuel costs. My experience was that the car ran badly on gas and worse on petrol. The surge of power which is such a feature of the V8s disappeared altogether. Talking with Toby last year confirmed that their recent policy was to fit gas only to FI cars.
Alistair

[GREG]

I probably overall agree with Alistair because with a carburettor it will always be a compromise for the best set up for gas or petrol, whereas on the Blenheim 4 the ECU does the necessary fuel air mixture adjustments through the injection system.

I know that some people are happy with the set up on a carb but it always ends up as running better on one fuel than the other and usually starting on petrol and finishing on petrol -- needs to be monitored.

Saying that, Pauls car is such a special example, that it probably justifies the expense of converting to fuel injection and the box of tricks to make it all work properly.

Maybe it would be worth finding out if the wing bays could both take doughnut LPG tanks and the weight of the fuel safely, then doing away with the the spare wheel and moving the battery and electrics to the boot.

That would still leave ample room in the boot for the convertible roof components.

Hell of a lot of work and expense though and if you are going to go that far away from standard, maybe a nice modern common rail diesel would be the thing to give lots of power and torque with great economy !

Best leave it alone :-)

[Thor]

If you really want to run a Bristol with Chrysler V8 on LPG I would recommend the following :

1) Rebuild the engine with a high compression ratio, this gets back some of the torque and fuel economy otherwise lost. LPG is a very 'high octane' fuel, so it stands a lot more compression, and high compression improves thermodynamic effeciency.

2) Run the gas as a stand-alone injection system, using a wide-band lambda sensor in the exhaust, investing a reasonable time on calibration. The gas injector pipe design can improve combustion considerably (but this is proprietory knowledge, sorry).

3) Use two gas regulators (gas evaporation/pressure regulation) to achieve enough fuel flow capacity.

4) Either learn how to do the switch over to and from petrol manually, or remove the petrol system altogether, keeping the carburettor only as a throttling device (Alternatively buy a 4-barrel replacement throttle body of the fuel injection type.). Don't worry about cold start except in the deepest depths of winter, I can tell you how to deal with this down to about -15°C.

5) Plan long journeys to allow for the need to re-fuel at known LPG outlets.

6) Carefully think through the tank options, such as under-wing tanks, etc. to optimise the car for your personal requirements. If the petrrol system is removed, a good size LPG tank can go where the petrol tank used to be.

"Simples."

Total cost including the engine re-build : about £9,000 + VAT. SO probably not actually worth it in pure economic terms, but delightful when you get that feeling of enjoying all that performance without thinking of all the £s being ejected from your exhaust pipe.

As a complete alternative, I know somwhere which could fit a Land-Rover/Jaguar V6 turbo-charged diesel engine with about 400 lbf.ft and over 200 bhp.

[Kevin H]

As another complete alternative, you could move to Saudi Arabia where petrol costs less than 10p per litre

Seriously, if petrol prices bother you, maybe you shouldn't drive a V8 Bristol ...

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by Thor

.. but delightful when you get that feeling of enjoying all that performance without thinking of all the £s being ejected from your exhaust pipe.

Until of course the government realises that more people are converting to LPG and so increase the tax on LPG to make up for any revenue they might be losing out on, due to reduction in petrol and diesel consumption.

They're already onto it.

From Deloitte's 2010 budget report;
"From 2011 to 2014, the duty differential for road fuel natural gas will be maintained and that for LPG will be reduced by the equivalent of 1p on a litre of petrol each year."

[lansdownplace]

Thank you to all the contributors. I think that comprehensively covers everything. The range of technical issues which get brought into play are quite mind blowing and I can see why an engine management system is near enough mandatory.

It is always worrying when the only reason for doing something is to take advantage of a tax differential rather than for a good underlying reason.

I was working on the basis that as few Bristols seem to have this conversion it probably meant it wasn't the best idea in the box. It does make sense that the best way to do this would be to start at the setup for the Bleinheim 4, which I know caused much hair pulling and teeth nashing at Bristol Cars whilst they perfected it. As Greg says it works very well in that car.

It seems a classic case of 'If you want to go there, I wouldn't start from here' Perhaps if I were starting from scratch with a car it might work, but as I already have an uprated engine, courtesy of Geoff Marsh which works very well, I will live with the fuel cost.

Perhaps I will get a letter from the PM congratulating me on my outstanding contribution to the exchequer!

Perhaps not.

Paul

[GREG]

Originally Posted by Thor

As a complete alternative, I know somwhere which could fit a Land-Rover/Jaguar V6 turbo-charged diesel engine with about 400 lbf.ft and over 200 bhp.

Tell me more ! cost etc ?

[lansdownplace]

Originally Posted by GREG

Tell me more ! cost etc ?

Could you shoehorn the VW 5l V10 diesel in? That would give you stupendous torque, relative economy and displacement.

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by lansdownplace

Could you shoehorn the VW 5l V10 diesel in?

You would probably need a bit more room lenghtwise, but you could move the radiator forward like in the attached picture, (and do away with the stupid fan cowling up front).

[Philip]

Originally Posted by lansdownplace

Could you shoehorn the VW 5l V10 diesel in? That would give you stupendous torque, relative economy and displacement.

The VAG V10 and V12 diesels are very heavy, I doubt there's much aftermarket knowledge to sort the engine and gearbox electronics for swaps, and I suspect he'd prefer to stick a Land Rover/Ford 4.4 TDV8/ZF8HP in there.

In terms of cost vs performance vs economy, I think there's a strong argument for just putting an LS into one.

[GREG]

I have been running a Merc 320 CDI Estate for quite a few years as my work horse - Turned out to be the best all round car I have ever owned and nowhere near the most expensive - never broke down or missed a beat. ( touch wood )

I would love the 320 CDI engine and box in a 411 if someone could suss out how to keep the electronics happy ! I guess you would have to move the whole loom over and then get a boffin to turn a pile of stuff off on the dreaded ECU. Anything can be done with time and money :-)

Some of the Taxi customers at my Merc dealer are over a million miles on the original engine and it's plenty powerful for me. I have even heard a few have thrown some cheap rape seed oil in over Summer

But then the purist in me is fighting to keep everything standard. I guess it would need a 411 to come up with a dead engine at a very cheap price to make it all happen -- little chance :-(

[Thor]

Well, this is where I have to be careful because it is my own compmnay which can do this thing. So the following is by way of engineering explanation, not promotion.

Firstly, talking generally about using diesels inplace of petrols. At present we have a range of conversions for Land Rover Defenders, including 4.2 Supercharged Petrol V8 (460 bhp, 570 Nm), 4.4 Normal Petrol V8 (320 bhp, 422 Nm), and 2.7 Twin-Trubo Diesel (240 bhp, 530 Nm). It is torque which breaks transmissions (together with very bumpy roads/paths), so for the 4.2 SC and the 2.7 TD, we uprate the propshafts, diffs and halfshafts. We have often been asked to fit the 4.4 litre Land Rover TDV8 engine but there is no way it can be worth it becasue the transmission and chassis just can't deal with 800 Nm. Similarly, the 460bhp of the 4.2 SC is rather challenging, but at least it doesn't break anything, by itself.

The point I'd like to make is that when retro fitting an engine to an older car, it is the torque figures one must look out for, so in turbo-diesel terms one tends to end up with a smaller capacity engine, for obvious reasons. As I understand it the 411 engines made about 450 Nm (335 lbf.ft), and we can easily exceed 500 Nm from the 2.7 V6 diesel, so it is more than enough. The 240 bhp is also plenty to get a Bristol to cruise at well over 100 mph, if not as fast as with the 6.3 litre Chrysler engine. The main difficulty is persuading a hydraulically controlled gearbox to changeup before the diesel rev-limiter comes in.

As has been implied, these modern diesel engines tend to be tied in with loads of electronics and the electronics of the auto gearbox. We buy in an aftermarket, stand-alone ECU to run then engine and we similarly have our own controller for a 4-speed ZF gearbox. Trying to modify the original ECUs for these engines and gearboxes is virtually impossible unless you have full cooperation from the manufacturer, and Bosch, and ZF, which aint gonna happen.

For the Bristol, the most practical solution would probably be the V6 diesel with the 4-speed ZF (it has a lock-up TC), and keep or sell the old engine and box together.

Also, because of all the electronic and wiring loom costs, these conversions are no longer cheap and cheerful. We use new engines, but even with second-hand units I doubt you would get much change from £10,000.

[lansdownplace]

I saw a reasonably new defender 90 in Trafalgar Sq yesterday with a pretty rorty V8 and ventilated disks. If it hadn't been for the wider wheels and alloys you wouldn't have know it wasn't standard. Awesomely quick pickup, great in traffic. I wanted one! (I was trying to work out if the mud was hand painted on though)

As the V8 engines are reasonably cheap to replace there isn't such a good case for switching engines. Unlike the 401/403 cars...... there are quite a few which have lost their engines and would make great sleepers

[GREG]

Speak soon Thor :-)

It would be good to make the whole thing as reversible as possible.

But balls out ! lets do it and make a superb every day driver..

S2 411 ready !

I do like it on some of the American TV car shows that show a car is appreciated and valued when these sort of mod's are done well. It does seem to devalue a classic car a lot in the U.K. when it is modified from standard, although Eagle and Beacham Jaguar modified cars seem to be changing values and opinions for this way of thinking.

Is it so far away from the thinking of an S6 that so many of us admire ?

Or maybe even better !! shock , horror ......

[Philip]

Greg,

I don't think I'd be looking at rattly diesels if I was going to so much effort.

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