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well, after 10 moths of ownership, i took the plunge and fitted an LPG system to my second gen SW.

 

and quite plunge it was as the system cost was a quite a bit more than the purchase cost of the car, 1600 euro, around 2000 $.

 

Sounds steep, but if i had fitted it when i bought the car 13K miles ago, it would have payed for itself already with the current petrol prices round here.

 

gas bottle takes the place of the spare wheel and the system is digitally controlled with a separate ECU that interfaces the stock ECU. Essentially the car is now bi-fuel, will switch to petrol when the LPG runs out automatically.

 

The filling port was put under the normal fuel door, at the station i need to screw the silver adapter to fill.

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as filling stations across countries in europe have different fittings to hook to the car, i was given some adapters, the bayonet one should work in Holland according to what one of our members says.

 

doing a "full" and just paying one third of what i paid with petrol sure feels nice already, will report on the actual figures mpg figures, even if its hard to relate LPG gallons to petrol gallons, so it will be more mpd (miles per dollar) or kpe (kilometers per euro) sort of thing :)

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Edited by turboguzzi
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Good to hear you got the conversion.

 

It took me about 37k km to surpass my investment. Now it drive for 17 eurocent per KM all inclusive (LPG, insurance, maintenance, gasoline, road-tax and 1000 euro yearly depreciation). Without the depreciation it is 13 cent/km.

 

What tank size you have? and where do you leave the spare?

In holland they unfortunately drill a large hole in the side of the rear wing (which starts rusting again now within a year since I took it apart and cleaned it, and repainted it grrrrrrr).

 

I use MyCarMon to register all expenses, last time I filled gasoline it was in Livigno for 1.07 /L :D

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That's pretty cool. It'll be interesting to see what mileage you get out of that. LPG has a lower specific energy than gas, so it'll be less than gas. I've always wondered if it would break even. LPG is cheaper here, too. But with the lower specific energy I don't think you can win.

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today i am driving with girlfriend + mother in law ::) to Venezia, including some touring in the Colli Euganei area near Padova, it will be a a 500 mile round trip from milano, so will be the first chance to do some fill to fill runs.

 

there is an italian forum where people report they milleage with petrol vs. LPG and the figures differ by very little, less than 10% but will now better after this weekend.

 

my car has been very consistent delivering 28-29 mpg since i bought it, kist like my previos Gen 1 for the 7 years i owned it

 

have a good WE

 

TG

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Venice is nice, did trip last year from Arco (near Riva-del-garda) was quite surprised it was hard to get LPG on the autostrada from Padova to Verona.

 

Curious about the MPG you get. On LPG I get 11 km/L or ~26 MPG (on gasoline it is about 33 MPG) with the 1.6 impreza awd

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well, back from the weekend trip and honestly, car goes just as well with the LPG in terms of pull, even if i was definitely not trying too hard with GF and her mother aboard, just doing highway droning at 120kmh/75 mph most of the time

 

well, it took exactly two refills of the LPG tank to get the exact 720 km range of one gasoline tankful, so quite easy to do the math of the savings:

 

one tankful / 60L of petrol is circa 100-105 euro in italy

two tankfulls of LPG have cost 60 euro so in terms of km/L or mpg, the LPG gives 40% savings. at 40 euro savings per tank, it will take the equivalent of 40 tanks to get my investment back, that is exactly 28,000 km, that would be less than a year and a half at the rate i pack on my miles with more savings due to reduced road tax here for "clean cars".

 

With much cheaper gas prices of the USA guess it will take quite a bit longer to amortize the investment in the system.

 

But in Europe at least, sounds like a win-win situation to me :)

 

just sorry i didnt do it sooner!

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the only control/dial added is this little box next to the hand brake

 

line with 5 leds on the top tells me tank fill level,

G led means system is on LPG

pump icon means its on petrol

little square white button in center lets me switch between LPG and petrol, but car runs on LPG as default, switches to gas automatically if LPG runs out,

 

so far so good... :)

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Interesting system. Looks very similar of what I have, only my injectors are mounted differently but also inject directly above the port. Did they take the inlet manifold off the engine? I got a 52L tank and manage to drive about 500 to 600 km depending on temp ect ect.

 

Curious where did they mount the tube from the tank to the evaporator? With mine the ran it aside of the transmission tunnel and comes in in the wheel-arch on the front right (facing driving direction). I am a bit afraid of stones hitting the tube driving many stoned gravel roads in Scandinavia and Baltics.

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havent checked where the tube passes

 

not doing too much dirt roads as much as i did with my 1st gen, so not that worried, but sure its worth checking

 

i can already see that milleage is very related to outside temp just like the system manual said,

 

this weekend was 4-5 celsius colder than last and milleage improved quite a bit

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