[Vwdiesel] Diesel working on liquid propane

[Bryan Belman]

Great reads, all of these.  The man that towed my Vanagon body from the junkyard 
in Arkansas to NJ had a 93 Dodge truck with 5th wheel setup, it had the strait 6 
engine and he had propane for this to add power on hills.  He knew his stuff 
when it came to trucks, big rigs as well.
He said many of the big rigs will use propane, but just for boost.

 Bryan Belman, Pt. Pleasant, NJ
04 Jetta Wagon TDI PD, 100hp, 5sp -- running :<)
92 Jetta 1.6 Eco-Turbo Diesel, 5sp -- running :<)
82 Diesel Westy 1.9NA -- running :<)
70 Type 1 stock Beetle -- Running :-) 




________________________________
From: Tad <tadc at europa.com>
To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
Sent: Tue, October 12, 2010 5:09:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] Diesel working on liquid propane

From what I recall reading on the TDIClub forums several years back, propane
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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