...(I won $1,500 on craps too btw ) but i was wondering, one of the taxi drivers and I were having a conversation on gas prices and etc, and he informed me that his whole taxi company has converted all of it's cars to Propane...mind you this is Nevada, and I'm in CA so im sure the restrictions may possibly be endless, however, I'm wondering:

Have many people converted their Evo's to Propane?

Are there any benefits of doing so?

Cost?

I havent really seen this done, and I myself jumped on E85, but with gas prices reflecting even Ethanol prices now a days, I'm curious

Thanks,
Jack

 

congrats on your winnings bro! i dont think any evos here in vegas are using propane.. i mean the prices of propane are not the cheapest either, i do know just about every evo in vegas is on e85. next time your in town hit us up bro..

 

thanks for the input, are you guys a shop? this time we flew, maybe next time ill take baby girl on a road trip lolol...but yea i want to hear more about it because is the price of propane comparable to gas? or more expensive?

 

Its cheaper or they wouldn't be doing it. However, propane comes with problems; range, cost of conversion, and where to put the fuel tank.

 

a lot of guys in europe do it where gas is like 8 bucks a gallon. its supposed to be cheaper, but it puts a lot more heat and stress in your motor and is an f-load more dangerous. basically from what a couple buddies that are stationed in europe tell me is if a typical car lasts 150k, one on propane will last 40k.

 

-_____- damn 40 k?!

 

Actually propane is a good fuel for engines; less carbon buildup, longer oil change intervals and high octane.

I used to work where they had propane fueled trucks and stationary engines. We didn't have engine problems. The only problem with the trucks was, and they had saddle tanks, if you had to sent them out of town the drivers pretty soon were looking for fuel. If they sayed home we had our own fueling station on site.

 

A lot of cars in new york are running on E85 too. E85 equals more boost and more power!!

 

My dad always told me if propane was the way to go it would have come factory that way. I dont know if I fully agree but i Dont think switching to propane will solve any problems. I always wanted to switch my jeep over.

 

does this mean we can use the grills on the hood to cook meat now?

 

Whoa whoa whoa whoa

whoa.

whoa.

whoa.



You mean we weren't supposed to be doing that to begin with?

 

Besides propane or other fuel, I also ponder playful but pointless engine designs.

Back when I had my Cobra, I thought how interesting it would be to de-stroke it, increase the bore, lower the duration and lift on the cams, and spin it to 15K rpm assuming it wouldn't explode.

Or for instance thinking of a way to have a single turbo car that can switch between two different turbos by just using a butterfly cutout and intricate plumbing.

Or making a vehicle with a separate gas motor for each wheel. Like 4 different sub-1-liter 3 cylinder motors. Instead of brakes you would just engine brake 4 different motors.

What about a dual fuel motor? Something that uses a different fuel to accelerate than to cruise on the highway? Maybe having a piston or two dedicated to the other fuel that would be balanced when shut off. Accelerate with gas or E85 and then cruise on diesel for instance.....

What if you had a motor where the goal was having an intake that was *always* the perfect size. Runners would elongate and shrink as needed. The intake circumference would widen or collapse to maintain perfect air velocity. Something would detect the subsonic "pulses" of air and adjust so that it always had a ram-air effect at any flow. You could probably have a naturally aspirated 1.0 liter with a crazy powerband of at least 200hp.

What about a motor that changes stroke dynamically? From a stop stroke is increased to generate high torque and as you rev it's shortened allowing very high rpm and horsepower. This could even be the first Motor to not require a transmission. It's always 1:1 and the motor just changes stroke and revs to the desired vehicle speed. Of course it would be a brand new design since we can't change stroke yet.

I have all kinds of wacky ideas like this... I doubt anything is really practical. Just fun to think about.

 

Roush sells a propane conversion kit for the F150, so if you're very curious, I would give them a call and see what's involved in a conversion.

http://www.roushcleantech.com/

From what I've seen, it's more about the "green" movement than actual cost savings. Propane is pretty good for off road cars (in comparison to carburetors) since off camber climbs can be done without messing with your fuel input, but honestly, it may not be worth it for a normal car. Still, I don't know too much about it so look into it if you're very curious.

 

very interesting, thank you much for the info

 

In Mexico allot of the trucks used at construction sites use propane...but that's all i know..not to sure on its benefits..