Lpg?
 

With the S8 being such a heavy drinker, I'm starting to think about an LPG convo.

Is it DIY able? What about the cost? Who's had a good experience?+++

I noticed that A8 parts have 3 different kits for sale on their website the other day Simon if thats any use - will be much cheaper than new +++

Check this LPG calculator. http://www.drivelpg.co.uk/savings_calculator.php

It's not really that economical on LPG either, it's about acceptable for a petrol V8 when running on gas. The petrol consumption on an S8 is just silly. If your doing mega mileage then pay the extra and get a D3 TDI IMO. Others think LPG is fantastic and rave about it, my experience put me off.

1. You won't find LPG in every station
2. You still have to fill up petrol
3. It farts and stinks after a fill up
4. Some garages won't work on it
5. If it does go wrong it will be pricey (LPG injectors, separate ECUs)*
6. It needs servicing
7. LPG gauges not accurate, you need to reset your mileage counter and go on that.

Honestly, not a fan of the stuff.

Also, I wouldn't fit it myself as some insurance companies want to see a certificate of installation which you will only get from an authorised fitter. Hopefully Mike/Nathan will be along soon to speak about their positive experience with the stuff.

Archi

Thanks. Never even crossed my mind to go seconhand.

Singh. Thanks for posting. I'd not thought about it from that point of view at all. The petrols dear these days tho and I really like my D2. Always been an old car guy, always will be.
Might get a D3 when they get old enough tho!

As Amar says I really rate LPG. I could not have run my PF S8 without it. I got a fully sequential Prins kit professionally fitted for 2.5k. It paid for itself in 11 months and 26K miles. I averaged the financial equivalent of 30.5 mpg over the 4 years I kept records. Plenty of garages have it. A poi add-on to TomTom made sure I found them easily. I'm tough enough not to be bothered by smelly farts! :ROFL:

However, I won't be doing it to my FL S8 as the fuel consumption is better and with a Revo map is better still. +++

I'm thinking seriously about LPG. I love the D2 and the S8 especially - so a D3 TDi isn't an option for me just now. I've been through the 'sensible' cars with diesel estates for the family 'cos we needed space and economy. Now I'm of an age where my car is a hobby and a real pleasure and, like Simon, older cars really ring my bell. But a 65mile round trip commute on crappy roads and a £500 a month fuel bill are begining to hurt.

Is there somewhere good north of thr border that you guys would recommend?

A8 LPG +++


1. You won't find LPG in every station
(AGREE Need to plan route) country wide u get a account card and can use pump 24/7 even if there shut +++ for us in the country)

2. You still have to fill up petrol
( put £20 of Shell petrol in and i get a good month or so on it, with no problems)

3. It farts and stinks after a fill up
(Never had this problem of farts. Only stink i get is when u take filler off pump)

4. Some garages won't work on it
(Never had this prob but i know it happens)

5. If it does go wrong it will be pricey (LPG injectors, separate ECUs)*
(Only had odd thing go wrong and that was not fault of lpg more the install.)

6. It needs servicing
( i get mine serviced every 18months at the cost of £145. Thats from main importer for the UK, for my system. so they have everything in stock, as they supply the UK agents. Plus there fitter's train there UK agents.
Not far either, just outside Bath. They have it for a morning while i go around town.)

7. LPG gauges not accurate, you need to reset your mileage counter and go on that.
(Never had this prob either, i just got 4 green lights showing full. When it gets to 2 or 1 if you know where the staion is. After 1 the bar flashes to say its about to run out then it flicks over auto to petrol. No dramas)

Think Singh was just unlucky with his. Sure if he gave it another go, in the future, he might change his mind.

As for mpg in my 3.7 sport, i get 22.5. Daily running around @70p a ltr. Works out same if not better than i was spending on my passat tdi. Now tho i have smile as i drive.

I def did miss the LPG, when i hadto wait 2 weeks, to get car booked into fix fault. My fuel bill did go up alot.Fault was when the installer installed it, he didnt protect the cable from exhaust. So it melted and earthed out on it, tripping LPG out :-( (installed before i got it)

http://www.greenfuel.org.uk/company
"Greenfuel the official UK importer of BRC LPG equipment."

1. See I couldn't be arsed to plan a route, the LPG locator app took me to three stations. One was shut, the other had been converted to a car showroom and the third '24 hour' one closed at 8.
2. £20.00 is barley enough to turn the petrol light off.
3. I need to man up on the fart smell :ROFL:
4. Believe me it happens, and I couldn't work out how to take the damn thing off to enable me to change a coil.
5. Still it's another thing to go wrong.
6. True, not really much of an issue just something to be made aware of.
7. Being slightly colour blind probably didn't help!

Part of the reason I was so disappointed was a local taxi driver has an A8 4.2 on LPG and reckoned it was more economical then his 1.9 TDI A6. So I was disappointed when I as Mike has said only got about 30 mpg finical equivalent. Which is what you get on a petrol D2 or D3 A8 4.2.

Also Ben told me he hated the stuff so there must be a reason...

Conan.

What's a 'Revo map'?

Also. What's it cost, what's the best kit? Why is it a no-go on your FL S8 (cos that's what I'm smoking!):)

The Revo map is a software update to your ECU that changes (improves) the power and fuel economy mapping in your ECU.

Cost at the moment I'm not sure. They had a special offer last month; ask Revo_Ben.

LPG can be fitted to the FL S8, I'm just not going to do it as I recently retired and stopped my high mileage job; therefore it's going to take me a lot longer to recoup my outlay. My PF S8 only averaged 19mpg, but my FL S8 is just short of 23mpg atm. With the Revo Map I can expect 26-27mpg so it's just a matter of economics. If I were still doing my 25-30k per annum it would have gone straight on. :)

LPG is good for high mileage motorway cruising where cruise can press the pedal a little harder on your behalf to make up for the slight loss in power on LPG. On lots of long runs, it does save money, and on long runs you get to know where the stations are and it becomes second nature.

LPG is not good for pootling about, or trying to get high performance out of your motor. Its not good for random adhoc journeys as that will make it harder for the novice to get to grips with the LPG stations and different fitments.

I can see why amar has a tarnished view of LPG, but if he had to do 30K + a year on the roads, he'd quickly see the benefits rack up like some of others have...

It has more subtle benefits too like being able to get your car through an MOT emmisions test no matter what you've done to your cats etc... :D

Not strictly A8 related but bear with me. I've got lpg on my 2000 S6 and I'm very pleased with it so far. Due to the mileage I do I was after an lpg car and was looking at and S8 or and S6 that was already converted, I did consider Singhs S8 at the time but was having some issues with insurance due to it being modified so in the end I got an S6 Avant.

I do 70 miles a day travelling to work and then another 300 every weekend going from the Midlands to North Wales where I live at the weekend so probably 650+ miles a week. My only minor gripes are the tank is 70 litre but will actually only hold around 52 litres (80% capacity max to allow for gas expansion), I can do about 200 miles normally or up to 220 if I take it really easy before I need to fill up again. As others have said, the gauge is pretty useless but at least if the gas runs out it switches over to petrol automatically so it's not a major issue. The DIS shows just over 24mpg average overall and I can get up to 27mpg if I drive with a feather foot on my commute to work (mostly motorway).

The other issue is the location of fuel stations - I've got some of the sat nav downloads but they temd not to be that up to date so I don't rely on them. As most of my driving is the same journeys, I tend to use about 4 regular places depending on where I am. I plan ahead to make sure I have fuel before a long trip up to Wales, filling up before I start and then I fill it again up there before returning to the Midlands which will also get me to work and back on a Monday. This is now a regular routine, with me putting gas in pretty well every 2-3 days but I'm used to it now.

I tend not to thing about the equivalent petrol mileage but when I was doing the same journeys in a 1.9 td VW T4 van (that was doing 38mpg), my fuel bill was about the same.

For me the benefits more than outweigh any extra inconvenience - my fuel bill is still pretty colossal but I'm doing over 30k miles a year and this is my only car so there's no way I could afford to do this if I was putting in super unleaded.

The system on my car is Bigas, made in Italy like most of them seem to be. The system could probably do with a service which I'll get done soon - everything else on the car I'll do myself - until it needs a cambelt lol. It's got an ITG filter (the original airbox had to go to make way for the lpg vapouriser) and it's got a go faster stainless exhaust just to make it sound a bit better - no point in having a V8 if you can't hear it.

Great forum btw - some very useful information on here that still applicable to me. Would a Revo remap be worth me considering?

Thanks for input, which given you're running the same block and electronics as most of us, is quite valid.

I had exactly the same with LPG, a regular route and knew where to get the fuel so all was well. Filled up at the top of the M1 to get there, and filled up at the bottom of the M1 to get home. Easy.

One slight difference between the D2 A8 and the C5 A6 is that you could have chosen a diesel, these guys cannot. Audi UK in their wisdom only brought petrol varients into the UK, so if you want to drive an A8 pre 2004, you get petrol. Hence why LPG is so prominent amongst A8 owners.

The fact that you had a choice to get diesel, and went for an S6 anyway makes you probably an even bigger petrolhead... +++

I cant comment professionally on the remaps, but I think with LPG its more complicated as you can only have 1 map, but you have 2 fuels, requiring 2 'optimal' settings. If you optimise it say for economy on LPG, then it might be pants on petrol.... Maybe Ben or Mike will comment.

Yes, I suppose a remap would only apply to the petrol ECU, but I suppose this would be like having cake and eating it. I could keep the current map for lpg and have more performance orientated map for the occasional "play" on petrol.

I think the Bigas system is actually mapable and at the moment it's set in a more economy mode but can be mapped for more performance so there may be scope there but to be honest it's probably already quick enough, it's not like I'm doing trackdays in it and even on lpg the performance is pretty impressive.

The only other thing I forgot to mention is the smug factor when you're filling up at £0.72 a litre and see someone alongside paying £1.40

bumpski

Wahey an LPG thread :)

Background - Running the stuff for 6 years now on around 12 different cars. So feel I have a good comment on it.

Biggest downside for me is the range of the tank.... 260miles really give or take. But it gets you down the country one way!

The biggest problem in LPG is the variety of systems out there. Most these days are sequential. So they take the output from the petrol injector, apply a conversion figure and inject the equivilent of gas into the car. If the ECU requests more from the petrol injector, the gas injector also allows more gas into the engine. And vice versa.

I firmly believe there are only 2 contenders in the LPG field. BRC and Prins. I've had most of the others including Stag, Bigas, Romano, Zavoli, Landi-Renzo and (Spit) Stargas.

The cars I have these fitted to are A8 (D2), A8 (D3), Range Rover 4.6, BMW 745i, Range Rover L322 4.4 V8, Jaguar XJR, Mercedes CL600...

The A8's wise, I had a D2 running a Romano kit. In all honesty if worked and ran. Fine for high miles, but could not supply gas at higher RPM and switched over harshly. At over £2k installed, it was poor in my opinion.

My first A8 2003 had a 2006 BRC kit on it. It was fantastic. That car covered 40k+ miles on the kit and didn't have one fault. There was no loss of power, the switchover to LPG was undetectable and the system was reliable. I loved this car....

My 2nd A8 2003 model had a Prins system. Equally as good as the one above! Sadly written off.... No issues with the gas system when heavily rear ended. Everything did as it should.

My 3rd A8 2003 model had the Landi Renzo system on it. Fitting was ok, but the kit was no where near the quality of the above 2 contenders. It ran fine, I had a good few miles under the old girl but it was just not as good.

My current car is a late Range Rover L322 4.4 Vogue SE with the BRC kit (Newer version) and it is just as good as the first kit. Very very impressed.

LPG, it's cheap in refuelling. It can be seamless between petrol and gas and you cannot tell, but the installer needs to understand the best places to tap into the coolant systems as well the wiring.

Only go with one who is LPGA certified. They meet certain standards (And you can tell). Nathan's one above is clearly certified as is the ones who have done my RR and A8. Everything looks OEM and is tidy. All holes drilled are smoothed and have rubber linings to avoid chaffing of wires. All wires are soldered and heatshrunk to avoid moisture getting in.... Etc. etc...

Anyway, it isn't cheap. But the thirstier the car, the quicker the payback. I'm still running LPG now and had the Rangie converted, worth every penny :)