There is a member on here, BigBlockMopar in the Netherlands. He got his car that way but I did some investigating through the European links from Impco. I emailed them in the NL and they referred me to France which sells to Greece. He didn't say anything of substance to me. I did find out that there is an American HQ in Santa Ana, Ca.

Before I go on an endless hunt with propane parts...Would it work adequately for our engines? What do I need to buy? I can probably mount a tank in place over the rear axle hump in my trunk and run a filler line somewhere for easy fillups.

Why do I want to do this....simple...Gasoline is $8.50/gallon here. It breaks my heart to see this beauty sitting in my garage after I used to drive her around on a daily basis back in California. When I moved here gas wasn't that bad..Like $5 a gallon which sat fine with me because VP Red 100 was $5 a gallon where I lived. I get 95 Octane from the pump here. Locally, the price of LPG is 0.80€ (thats about $4.06). I assume my carb's would have to get changed. Special high pressure LPG line from the trunk, along the undercarriage to the engine bay, and into a thingamajig...you can see I haven't really focused on anything here as far as research. If I do end up going this route, my performance will be altered, but is there a way to have a dual fuel...Keep my Edelbrocks and run LPG?

The only other system I can see for myself is running my own ethanol distillery. But that's a purchase of $7000. I believe I can net myself 40 liters a week off of that system...put 20 liters (5 Gallons) in my Charger's gas tank, 10 liters in my daily driver's tank, and another 10 in my wife's tank. Some weeks I may not even use the Ethanol for the Charger...like the winter months. I know using ethanol will help the engine run a little cooler but I will have to compensate with larger jets, my fuel economy may go down the tubes but its better than nothing...

What direction could I go? LPG with a single car conversion.....or mild tune ups and ethanol without any big component game changers in other cars?

My buddy works for the gas Company here.They use CNG in all their vehicles.I believe the cost is appx 5K.They run them every day and put on tons of miles.Rocky

I have done the conversion on several vehicles over the years. Been running diesel now since 1990 since my last LP truck.
Been seriously considering going back to LP gas on a new F-450 I'm getting ready to order.
I still have most of the peices to convert and all mine have been dual fuel and you keep the original carb and should switch to gasoline at least once a week to keep the carb in good shape.
You send liquid to the engine and a vaporizer converts it to gas to be burned in the engine.

Oh wait, I do have a 4 cly forktruck now that runs on LP gas that I converted from gasoline about 10 years ago. I have had chev trucks, ford trucks and a caprice car that have run on it.
It is gonna become more popular again if gas prices stay high.

I thought about compressing natural gas out of the line at my house for use in my Cummins.

I nixxed that idea.

When I worked for Sun oil in the 70's we ran a natural gas/diesel mix on our stationary pump station diesels. Lots more HP.

I remember a Charger back in the 70's in a magazine that had a tunnel ram, LPG, and a mail box for a scoop!

Propane conversions are done everyday basically in Oz, and I've driven plenty of cars on either dedicated gas or dual fuel. If you go straight gas (LP that is) you can tune just for it and being the octane rating is a decent amount higher with propane you could setup just for it. Or go dual fuel if you still want to be able to run petrol as well. Just run the LP tank in the trunk (just behind the back seat would be a common spot) an go from there.

These guys http://www.lpgas1.com.au/ are around the corner from my buddy's shop and maybe you can read a little abit about the stuff on thier site, but will be tons of info and places that do it in Oz in general.

By the way, wait until you see how clean the engine stays on the inside running on LP too

You can buy complete propane conversion kits here in the Netherlands, or just buy all the parts seperatly.

Basicly you need the following;
- Propane tank with electric shutoff-valve. A 60 Liter tank will usually fit right below the packagetray, all be it with some persuation sometimes.
- Tank filler hose and end-fitting.
- (Nylon covered) copperline and fittings
- Impco convertor (converts liquid propane to gaseous fuel)
- Impco mixer;
- 300/A for dual fuel setup, or a '425' for single LPG-fuel setup. (You need the throttle base from a reg. carb with the 425)
- electric gasoline fuel shutoff valve
- electric fuel pump (to prevent the original mechanical fuelpump from needless pumping while driving on LPG)


For best performance, it's better to go with single fuel setup and a 425-mixer. An altered advance curve in the distributor will help performance aswell.


My daily 318-powered '73 Dart is running on LPG and it's getting 16-17mpg on the highways.
If I were to increase the CR in the motor from the ridiculous 8.6:1 to a more manly 10.5:1 I'm sure milage could be improved.

Next to the 60 liter tank I already had in the car I've recently added a 53 liter tank which pretty much doubles the distance I can drive with it.

I remember seeing a member that had an underhood shot of his pickup converted to LP , can't remember who it was though.

I remember seeing a hemi challenger on LP gas at the Farm Science Review up near Columbus Ohio a few years ago. Tab I think was his name? The storage tank makes it pretty hard to build a lightweight racer, imo.

I am lookin around now...read a few DIY sites. Found a place in the UK that sells parts, shot off a few emails. I think I would have to relocate the battery to the trunk and install the vaporizer and other larger components in its place. Apparently you can install a mixer over the venturi's of the carb. Unfortunately I will need two of those for my setup.

I'd like to find someone who makes a rectangular LPG tank. Apparently the problem with cylindrical tanks on their sides are that the LPG gauge will show the fuel is being sucked down fast since its at the top of the bottle....then slow because its wider in the middle...then fast again as it nears the bottom of the cylinder. If they even make rectangular tanks...who knows..

From what I understand...its better for the engine to startup with gasoline and drive a few miles and when you are ready for the LPG to burn, you flip the switch, have it choke a little bit as the second system brings the fuel and continue on your way.

I too have dabbled with a propane motor

Okay here goes I built a chevy 461ish motor to run on just propane (This was quite a few years ago so there is way better equipment on the market now)

To build an engine to run strong on propane you want to pay attention to cylinder pressure. Keeping it high will net you the best results. You can run 11:1 compression with a crappy cam that lets out all the cylinder pressure and end up with an engine that performs worse than a 9:1 engine with a proper cam to keep those pressures up. On your cam choice your exhaust duration should be a little longer than the intake duration,it likes much more advanced timing than gas so dual fuel set ups usually run poor.

Anyways my set up was

A balanced and blue printed 454 30 over 11.5-1 forged pistons,Lunati cam, Duration @ .050 (Int/Exh): 214/224(I think it was a lot bigger ),ported oval port heads, stainless valves,bronze guides, a lot more stuff but hey I know its a chivy

I had a machinist friend make me an aluminum adapter to run twin OHG X-450 mixers on a Holley base plate and 2 X-1 vaporizers.The OHG 450 are about 550 CFM each so with a big block two worked well,I gave the Dyno run info to the new owner but it put out near 600 HP and he was very happy with the performance.


A supposed propane guru sums up much here:

"Propane has a bad rap because of some bad conversions and some knee-jerk conclusions drawn from textbook physics.

First, the dry & boring physics of it all: The exact numbers seem to depend on which authoritative textbook you reference, but on average propane has about 25% less BTUs of energy per gallon than gasoline. So it stands to reason that you'd get 25% less horsepower on propane, all other things being equal. But there's the catch—all other things aren't equal. Liquid gasoline has to be atomized and mixed with air before it can be burned effectively in your engine. Engine builders know that in a carbureted engine a portion of that gasoline doesn't fully atomize and falls out of suspension, ending up in a puddle somewhere in the intake manifold. This is why the cylinders downhill from the carburetor tend to run richer than the others. (It's also one of the reasons why fuel-injected engines are more efficient than carbureted engines.)

Propane, on the other hand, is a gas, gas, gas. It doesn't need to atomize, and it doesn't puddle. Propane is only 1.5 times heavier than air, so it can literally hang out all day. And because it stays mixed with the air coming in the intake, all the cylinders get an equal air/fuel mixture. In short, propane makes up for fewer BTUs by burning more efficiently and completely. So the real-world horsepower loss for a propane conversion on an unmodified engine is more like 5%-15%.

Which brings us to the issue of naughty conversions. Propane engines require a different ignition advance curve compared to gasoline, typically advanced 5-15 degrees under 3,000 RPM. Additionally, propane has a higher octane rating than premium gasoline (about 105 compared to 91 or so), so you can build an engine with a higher compression ratio, making the engine even more efficient. The bottom line? An engine built with propane in mind can achieve roughly the same amount of horsepower—in some cases more—than a comparable gasoline carbureted engine."

THere's still quite a few 70s and 80s rigs running propane ,have parted out a few and have some more kits to add to the fleet! Can still afford to drive the 440 dodge around at 2.25 a gal for propane!
Impco rebuilt kits are cheap and can pretty much do the whole thing with a regular screwdriver!

-Jim

30 years ago I had a dodge van running it, as a dual fuel system.
I loved it.
At 5000 miles I drained the oil and you could still see thru it!!!
Mileage wasn't that different. 14 gasoline to 13 LP.
400 2 bbl carb, 3.21 gears.

Gotta setup a smaller tank, 80 gal is big! Propane kits/rebuilt kits can pretty much be picked up at any bulk propane fill dealer, quite a few of their staff run propane on their personal rigs too. CNG has a slight disadvantage due to no too many fill stations, and cannot carry as much NG either.


-J

I had a one ton truck(car hauler)thatI had converted to dual fuel during the first oil embargo here in the U.S.in the mid 1970s,the motor was a 318 truck motor, not a passenger motor. It burn the exhaust valves up in a very short time after the change over I had to put special exhaust valves and exhaust seats in those heads to make it work from then on The truck got around 8.25 to 8.75 MPG on pump gas and around 7.0 on propane, it was really low geared so that had a lot to do with the fuel mileage I later bought IHC class A motor home on a 1.5 ton chassis that had been converted to propane only, it was a dog every where I drove it, it gor horrible fuel mileage, around 3 MPG I converted it back to gasoline and loved that motorhome after that Propane has around 55000 BTU per gallon, if I'm rmembering correctly and gasoline has close to or above 100,000 BTU per gallon depending on the octane Diesel has the most energy per gallon of any of conventional (non racing) transportation fuels like gasoline, propane, alcholol, LPG and deisel I worked for a phone company that changed part of thier light duty truck fleeet over to LPG, the guys got to where they didn't want to drive them in the city due to poor power and terrible fuel consumption, they would run out of fuel in the afternoon and have to return to the yard for more fuel, that really screwed up there production I'm a little bias as I like power and milage so I don't recommend the changeover unless you absolutely must

I have been running all my cars here in OZ for 25 years plus on LPG and the money I have saved has been enormous. The government here will pay $1500 (used to be $2000) towards the cost of converting any car to run on LPG with the average cost to convert being $2500 or $4000 for the new direct injection LPG along with the necessary computer upgrades. Ford and GM here now offer factory fitted LPG systems and they actually have more power than conventional petrol (gas to you people). Around 15 percent of vehicle here in OZ run on LPG and with the cost per litre being less than half of petrol it makes it worth while. You do lose a little power if running the carby feed system or the earlier throttle body feed system. 80% of the service staions here now have LPG on tap so you will never run out but most people still run a dual fuel setup so if you run out of LPG you can make it to the next supplier on petrol. An added bonus is the life of the engine increased as it runs cleaner, LPG has a much higher octane rating and if you are a greeny you dramatically reduce emissions.

I speed read through this post, sorry if duplicate... I did some brief research on this a few years ago, and the deal killer (if you must keep your car legal (and laws may vary)) was that the high pressure tanks have a limited lifespan. The vehicle itself may have years of life left in it, but when the tank certification expired, the vehicle was basically scrap. Replacement tank costs exceeded the value of the vehicle.