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on a diesel tends to have a similar effect as nitrous oxide on a gasser.
 Obviously not the same in that there's no O2 in propane, but it tends to
accelerate the progress of the slow-burning diesel flame front, increasing
efficiency in the process.

I had the opportunity to drive an LPG-powered Opel wagon while in Poland
recently, and was suitably impressed with its performance.  Supposedly it
had a small power and mileage penalty (10%?) vs gas, but over there the LPG
is nearly half the cost per liter of petrol gas so it worked out as a net
advantage.

The car was retrofitted with a LPG tank in the boot and a dual-fuel switch
under the dash, allowing you to switch fuels on-the-fly.  I wanted to peek
at the gear under the hood but never got a chance.

One added bonus- perhaps due to being under pressure from the source,
filling the car with LPG went extremely quickly.

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Roger Brown <r.c.brown at ieee.org> wrote:

> On 10/12/2010 1:06 PM, Doyt W. Echelberger wrote:
> > Getting it to burn is the name of the game.
> >
> > Hoover used forklift hardware to turn the liquid propane into gaseous
> fuel.
> > Large problem was icing up of the carburetor. Then he had to find places
> > for the propane tanks. The propane burned so cleanly that the oil never
> got
> > dirty. He figured that using propane would roughly double the engine's
> > service life and greatly decrease maintenance costs.
> > "Gasoline is a solvent. It washes the lubricant off your valve stems and
> > cylinder walls. When it burns it generates a number of by-products that
> > reduce the life of your engine by altering the chemical composition of
> your
> > lubricating oil. Gasoline atomizes into a vapor, not a gas, and even then
> > imperfectly. In manifolding of any length there is some degree of
> > stratification in the fuel/air mixture and the combustion process itself
> is
> > imperfect, prone to destructive detonation when any one of a host of
> > variables is changed. Gaseous fuels do none of these things. Running on
> > propane, your oil looks green and new after ten thousand miles (assuming
> > you've got shaft seals). Valve-guide and cylinder-wall wear is markedly
> > reduced on engines burning gaseous fuels and with an octane rating of
> over
> > 100 detonation is seldom a problem. The bottom line is that when you get
> > rid of the gasoline you extend the life of your engine."  Bob Hoover,
> 1997.
> >
> > He was about 15 years ahead of his time.
> >
> > Doyt
>
> My dad has been running his '70 Chevy pickup on LPG since '73 and it is
> still going
> strong, original gasoline engine and all.  I recall about 10 years ago, the
> engine finally
> broke the OEM timing chain.  When they tore down the engine to replace
> that, they
> inspected the pistons, rings and bores and all were in such good shape,
> they just put a
> new chain on it and called it good.  I think it is well over 750K miles by
> now.
>
> I remember when I was still living at home while going to college, I often
> thought to
> putting the drained oil out of the Chevy into my gas VW Rabbit that I owned
> at the time.
> It was so clean that you could not tell it from new oil.  I also used to
> run an old Toyota
> Landcruiser on propane about 20 years ago and on that engine, I never
> changed the oil.  It
> leaked enough that in about a year, I figured the oil changed itself and it
> never showed
> any change in color, in fact it was hard to see on the dipstick.
>
> For diesel, LPG injection used to be called "fumigation".  Might try
> searching for that.
> Typically only of benefit on turbo engines, you use the LPG to burn with
> the excess oxygen
> in the cylinders.
>
> --
>
>   Roger
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