Drawthrough propane turbo?

[Bass Man]

Just throwing it out there, but a buddy of mine stimulated my brain with a suggestion; Propane Drawthrough. 110 octane, the propane keeps the spool cooler than gas, and it seems like it will last a lot longer than gas turbo, plus, it's $2.29 a gallon and I guess you get about the same milage. Anyone done it?

Another plus is that I still have the A1 manifold, so all I gotta do is seal my plugged vacuum lines and build a plate? I can get a turbo off a 2.0l something (don't remember what from) with a wastegate and oil lines ready to hook up for $50, then I could probably find everything else to make it run for under $5-600.

Anyone doing the same setup?

[lostforawhile]

Just throwing it out there, but a buddy of mine stimulated my brain with a suggestion; Propane Drawthrough. 110 octane, the propane keeps the spool cooler than gas, and it seems like it will last a lot longer than gas turbo, plus, it's $2.29 a gallon and I guess you get about the same milage. Anyone done it?

Another plus is that I still have the A1 manifold, so all I gotta do is seal my plugged vacuum lines and build a plate? I can get a turbo off a 2.0l something (don't remember what from) with a wastegate and oil lines ready to hook up for $50, then I could probably find everything else to make it run for under $5-600.

Anyone doing the same setup?
if you run propane it takes a lot more then gas, and it has other problems too.

[2oodoor]

cool thread! I will look into this a little bit, propane is ok, mileage is not so much worse. Your going to need timing controls which should be par for the course anyway if you wanted to do a balls out carb build. Megajolt with EDIS, tanks and hardware from junked cabs or fleet vehicles.

This reminds me too, I saw an isuzu truck altnerator that had a small "blower" mounted on the back driven off the shaft.(diesel oem) I never looked it up as to capacity...

[cygnus x-1]

LPG works out to be nearly equivalent to gasoline in terms of volume to mileage ratio. It also burns similarly to gasoline so very little is needed in terms of engine modification. Methane is the one that's not as good. You lose some power because the larger amount of fuel required takes up lots of space and displaces the air that would normally be there. It's works fine otherwise, you just lose about 15% of the engines available power.

Interesting idea. It's probably been done before some where out there.


C|

[Bass Man]

I hear you get up to a $750 tax credit for "alternative fuel", but I don't know about that.

If you can make 200hp out of this and it take 30hp away, it's still a pretty quick 3g that won't take much money to fuel it. Right now, premium is like $3.20 per gallon and Propane is $2.29 last I checked.

[-DWM-]

Back from the dead... As a forklift guy, I know a little bit about LPG. Making it run isn't hard, just remember all the safety equipment a propane setup needs. After buying the proper lines, lockouts, convertor, and carb, it may get expensive. If you're going dual-fuel, you'll also need to wire in a switch to turn off the fuel pump/turn on the propane flow. www.altfuel.com has everything you need, I think.

[AccordEpicenter]

exactly what is the point of this? Performance?

[Ichiban]

How many pickups out there have LPG conversions? In my opinion, the dual fuel systems are crap. Not enough compression to make the propane run well, and the half tank of gasoline is always stale.

Though a high compression/boosted motor built to take propane would be sweet..

[Hauntd ca3]

in theory this is a good idea.
propane/lpg has a nice high octane rating so more boost could be run without fear of detonation.
it comes out of the converter nice and cold so you could get away with out an intercooler .
since its a gas, it wont wash any oil of the bores so the motor should last longer in theory. you could run a higher comp ratio because f the 110 octane.
its cheap.
and if you can get a tax credit for alternative fuel system , all the better.
the biggest problem is, that since lpg/propane is still mainly looked at as a money saver fuel in most countries, there are not many people that have looked at it from the performance point of view and because of that there arnt many people that know about tuning such set ups.

[Bass Man]

A lot of guys don't want to turbo their cars because they are carb'd and/or can't (or don't want to) afford the higher octane gas "in the long run". Propane is 110 octane for 3/4 the price of supreme, it keeps the turbo cooler(drawthrough), but you may only get 7/8's the performance. I've heard of them running down to 250rpm on a toyota without turbo, too.

[Bass Man]

since its a gas, it wont wash any oil of the bores so the motor should last longer in theory.
I've heard of people running on 7500 miles on a clear brown oil change because it doesn't have any hydrocarbons(Right word??).

[Hauntd ca3]

since it is already a gas, and by the time it gets to the cylinder nicely mixed with the air, there is a far better chance that it will burn more completely than petrol.
because petrol gets to the cylinder as fuel vapor, as well as various sized droplets, you get the vapor and the smaller droplets of fuel burning completely and the large droplets of fuel burning partially or not at all, which is where you get the CO and HC on your smog test.
its the bits of soot from the partially burnt fuel aswell as the small amount of oil on the cylinder walls getting burnt that gets past the rings and turns the oil black.
if you dont have the partially burnt fuel sooty shit getting past the rings, the oil will stay cleaner longer.

[AccordEpicenter]

its a good idea in theory but i dont think it would be worth the trouble for cost, complexity and performance reasons. If you have a good intercooler you dont need to worry about iats as much, plus an efi system youll get alot of control with the engine managemant without the complexity of using gas and propane, if your concerned with detonation, try somthing like alcohol injection, which is easier to implement and costs less to install and use. I like the radical ideas though

[Hauntd ca3]

thats the problem with the lpg/propane in performance use.
it is complex, and tuning is going to be a bitch.
i did see it done well once , years ago on a mitsi.
the guy made up some DCOE style throttle bodies and found some mixers that were the right size and it seemed t work.
but it did take him alot of trial and error to get it right.

[Bass Man]

They do it a lot on offroad rigs. I'll have to find some posts.

[cygnus x-1]

You guys know there are propane injectors right? They look and work just like gasoline injectors.

http://www.rceng.com/Peak-Hold-Injector-PQ2-3200-Gaseous-Injector-P19C0.aspx

I'm not sure how they compare flow rate wise to gasoline injectors though. But the point is that they are out there and you could use these with any ECU that can use regular injectors. So tuning is really not much different from gasoline, just different numbers.

Volumetrically it's not as efficient as gasoline but it's pretty close. The hot new fuel for performance applications though is E85.



C|

[A20A1]

Remember that for a draw thru setup you need a:

CARBON SEAL TURBO not a DYNAMIC SEAL TURBO or you can buy a kit to replace the dynamic seal with a carbon seal.


As for Propane setups look here
http://www.gotpropane.com/

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