New Civic on LPG ??

[falco]

O.K. I have my flame suit on.
Has anybody heard of a 8th Gen Civic being converted to LPG. ???
I drive a 1000k a week and even with a conversion cost of $4400 and a govt rebate of $2000, the lpg conversion would be paid for in about 45 weeks. :p
Thats allowing for a 15% hit in fuel economy on LPG.
I was looking at doing this on a 2 litre Sport model.

[Omie]

lol
umm if you havent bought the car yet.. then i'd probably recommend you dont do this (if its possible) why not go for a hybrid?

[falco]

A hybrid is only really effective in around town driving. At highway speeds (90% of my driving) a hybrid uses its petrol engine. No real benefit here for me.
What is your reasoning for your recommendation to not convert the civic to lpg.
$130 a week for petrol or $53 a week for lpg. Am I missing something here.

[aaronng]

Have you bought the car yet?

[UNLS1]

just remember you will VOID YOUR NEW CAR WARRANTY!

[falco]

No I havent bought the car yet. I am looking at a second hand 2007 Civic.
And as far as the warrantee goes, surely you would only lose your warrantee on the MOTOR, not the whole car. :p

[aaronng]

No I havent bought the car yet. I am looking at a second hand 2007 Civic.
And as far as the warrantee goes, surely you would only lose your warrantee on the MOTOR, not the whole car. :p

I wouldn't buy a Civic with the intention of changing it to LPG. You're better off buying an LPG ex-taxi Falcon for $5000.

[panda[cRx]]

yes it will void your warranty and yes it will fux0r your engine and you will be $2xxxx down. honda strongly recommends against fitting lpg to ANY of it's vehicles

[dc2dc2dc2]

i know a guy with a 98 Accord V6
has gas conversion when he got it
cars done i think 220xxx
still going strong

[panda[cRx]]

lol 98 accord v6 with 220k+, how many auto's has he been thru?

[applio]

$130 a week for petrol or $53 a week for lpg. Am I missing something here.

LPG won't save that much.....

as my dad own a LPG falcon, full tank of gas only gave around 230-250 mark

as full tank of petrol might get around 450 mark


is not a huge half price saving, but do save money in the long run.

[falco]

Thanks for all the constructive replies.
Everybody seems to think, its not a good idea but so far I havent seen any reasoning behind it.
I will lose new car warrantee is one reason. My dealer servicing on my Euro is HIGHLY overrpriced and totally unsatisfactory. So losing dealer warrantee for me would be a HUGE plus.
Another reason given is, Honda don't recommend it.
The Police recommend we don't exceed the speed limit in our cars, but we still do that.
Honda also don't recommend using after market parts on Honda cars.
I think car manufacturers don't want the hassle of anything going wrong on a lpg system, which is fair enough, they dont know anything about lpg, so don't get involved.
So far nobody has given me any sound, logical reasoning for not doing this.

[JaCe]

I'm not an expert on LPG but just wondering what it actually does to the engine. AFAIK Civic engines are quite "advanced" in the FD models, so was curious as to how an LPG conversion would impact those.

[smithy_1]

Valve seat recession is probably your biggest potential issue.
People say unleaded vehicles have hardened seats so what's the problem, but when I researched putting gas on my EF Falcon, several cylinder head places had more info. They said there are different grades of hardness, and some cars come stock with "really hard" seats, like my EF did, and others had "sort of hard" seats. They said they have seen valve seat recession in unleaded cars running LPG.
So I'd probably be prepared to face a cylinder head upgrade now when you're considering converting, so if in fact you do need it down the track, at least you can say to yourself "I told you so".
Upper valve lubricating drip feed things can help slow it down.
As for manufacturers not recommending lpg, that's all over the place. FOrd don't recommend lpg on their falcon line-up, but guys are doing it all the time & laughing to the bank with the savings.
I suggest talking with cylinder head places first on prices to re-do the head on your car for LPG.