Lpg problem

[A8 Owner]

Half a mile if that from home the car died on me Steve thought it was the geeeeaaarrrbox prob as car just came to a stop. Steve quickly tryed a few things out at side of Rd. He found problem just doesnt know what to do about it yet, its the LPG it wont run on it. flick to petrol got us home. Steve has checked some sites that say check your water level and so on but there all fine, cant be the injectors as there r none working we think as it doesnt run. What we both dont understand is tho the system is set on auto. When the engine gets warn it goes onto LPG, we got told if it ran out of LPG it will auto turn to petrol. So if it does this why is it when it wont run on LPG it doesnt just auto swop to petrol. Going to leave it over night and see if it runs when cold and changes to LPG.

ANY IDEAS ANYONE

the auto switch to petrol is more due to fuel level alerting rather than 'if its not running on LPG' so thats why it won't switch when you have teh LPG issue.

I assume its not running on any cylinders at all from your comment re injectors?

Check the filters aren't blocked ( LPG has whats called 'heavy ends' which collect over time and can block teh filters).

You don't say what make of LPG system it has installed but my first point of call would be an installer who specialises in that make of kit and get them to run a diag on teh LPG ECU. It could be something simple like a fuse on teh LPG system thats failing. IIRC LPG systems are set to fail-safe so any issues means it will shut down rather than run and potentially cause engine damage.

LPG does need a good spark more so than petrol but if its running fine on petrol then that should be enough that it would run somewhat if not optimally.

Water level is only really critical on cold days. teh vapourisors have a warm water feed to assist in teh conversion of teh liqued gas under pressure to gaseous state for the injectors. in reality above 10 C it will happen without any water feed anyway. You could check that gas is being generated by popping off the output hose for a second or two ( Make sure you do this outside with plenty of ventialtion and obvioulsy no SMOKING!!!! . I watched my installer once swap a fuel level sender in a car that teh owner brought in with a full tank despite being told to deliver it empty. basically he popped the opening and teh gas just sat there 'boiling' whilst he swapped it over. IIRC he lost ~ 1/4 of teh tank )

[A8 Owner]

Hi its a BRC system, ive rang the main uk suppliyer and the garage it was fitted at. Both r saying take the pipe off to check. Poss probs r
1/ Solinoids. front or back
2/ LPG ecu

Steve cant find the front one as yet to c if he can hear it click.

[A8 Owner]

all sorted. steve found no power going to solinoid (spelling wrong) but couldnt see why. We rang a LPG fitter who said theres no fuses inline, and said bring it the 60mile round trip and he will do it.
So steve gave up looking for a fuse as he said there wasnt one. Well we got there, took the wiring off tank put meter on just as steve did. He said the same as steve no power to tank, he then went under bonnet pulled cover off ecu to uncover 3 fuses, (that he told us there isnt any on phone) changed fuse and it worked. Well as u can guess Steve had a fit on him. He could of done this himself, if he had said there were fuses and where to look.
So cost for a fuse was £40 fuel 50p fuse 5min labour £10

Im just happy shes all working

[Oli18]

Brilliant! Glad it's all working again

yep, happy for you but as you say, doesn't bode well as a dealer/servicing business when you will rip off a client for teh sake of a tenner to change a fuse you won't tell the owner about.....


If I was you I'd be finding out if anyone else near can service BRC kit and when you find one I'd ring bloke up and tell him why he has lost all your future business including potentially a fitting to your next motor.