TonyKruz

Hi All I bought my 1998 Mk 2 GS300 2yrs ago with 60k on the clock. I converted it immediately to LPG at Panache Autogas in Manchester for approx £1700. This is the third car I have had running on LPG. I have done over 60,000 miles since that time with the bulk of the mileage on motorways or dual carriageways. I travel from West coast of North Wales to Manchester and North England daily. The car has never had any autolube system installed. To date I have only had one problem with misfiring, which was cured with a new set of sparkplugs (even though they looked in good condition). The misfiring issue has occured on all my gas cars and in all cases a change of spark plugs was all that was needed. I now replace them as a matter of course every 20k miles. I always have the gas system serviced every 10kmiles (approx £60). to date the car has always performed well, it will change to petrol (automatically) on very hard accelleration, but only when the gas tank has less than a third of gas left. Performance wise there is virtually no difference. The gas tank fits in the spare wheel well and I carry the puncture foam tin as I do not carrry a spare. Doing 30,000 miles a year the payback was within the first year at approx 24,000 miles. I save well over £2500 a year. Probably more now with the petrol prices so high. I get between 240 and 270 miles from each fill up of around 48-52 litres (cost around £25 to £28 to fill up), and do about 23mpg. Based on curent gas and petrol prices it cost around 10pence a mile on LPG and 17.5pence a mile on unleaded. A significant saving per mile!! This is a financial equivelent to over 40 mpg. My car always starts on petrol and will change over as soon as the engine has reached a set temperature and/or 2000 revs. In winter it takes longer (for obvious reasons). The system that I have installed can be programme to run full time on gas, but I have always avoided this and was advised against it anyway. If you are environmently friendly then you may be interested to know that LPG burns much cleaner than petrol or diesel and I save approx. 3 tonnes of co2 emmissions per year against using petrol. To my mind I have never doubted the benefits of using LPG and cannot understand why it is not used more as it is a waste product and is generally what you see burning away at refineries. Converting to LPG as enbled me to have a large engined luxury car for the running costs of a Mondeo/vectra diesel. The fuel gauge issue is annoying, but livable (continues to fall even though no petrol is used). On up market cars the fuel gauge is driven by the 'actual tank level' and a calculated anticipated level (from the engine management control system). this is to avoid those standard fuel gauge systems where by, the first half of a tank covers hundreds of miles and then suddenly the last half of a tank seems to cover tens of miles (mainly caused by the simple fact that petrol tanks tend to be odd shapes, to fit where they can). With the Lexus, as soon as the difference between the actual level and the anticipated level is approx 2 tenths of a tank, the gauge will reset to the actual tank level. This is most noticeable on a long journey where I have had the gauge reset a couple of times. I am not aware of any solution to this and just put up with it. Neither of my previous gassed cars had this problem, a Daewoo Leganza (2 litre 4cyl) and a Shogun (3 litre V6). In all the cars that I have had gassed, the fuel pump continues to run and it is essential that at least a quarter of a tank of petrol is maintained to avoid any problems. Above all, go to a reputable fitting company that has the LPGA approval and can provide a certificate. the certificate is important for insurance purposes who always ask if a LPGA certificate is with the installation. Also some of the ferry companies ask to see a copy of the certificate. LPG cars are not allowed on the channel tunnel. I recommend that you visit www.go-autogas.com which lists all the approved installers around the country and can also provide an upto date map book, listing all the gas stations in Britain. They also provide a 'points of interest' file for downloading into 'TomTom' satnavs. I hope this helps, I seemed to have gone on a bit. If you need any other info I will do my best to answer them. Regards Tony