Bri, just to clarify, which city(s) reckon they will or may allow monofuel LPG vehicles to avoid emissions zone charges?

On range, there are not a lot of vehicles on which removal of the petrol tank would make space for much extra LPG capacity but there are some..

Lpgc wrote:

Bri, just to clarify, which city(s) reckon they will or may allow monofuel LPG vehicles to avoid emissions zone charges?

On range, there are not a lot of vehicles on which removal of the petrol tank would make space for much extra LPG capacity but there are some..

You have their response word for word as from the email in the post above, the only bit I removed was the case ref. Sadly doesn't give any info on that. I'm not even sure its 100% correct as it seems a bit vague.

It was raised as a query for the CAZ checker - which currently covers Bath and Birmingham, I believe Bristol and Leeds will be added as their schemes get to the point where the required standards are clear. As far as I knew, Leeds wasn't yet active? (your closer to the place than me, so maybe you know better on this point?) Bristol still seems to be deciding which scheme they are going to use.

Good point on range about removing the petrol tank, but it still leaves you stuck if you turn up at a filling station with little left in the tank and find its out of order. Round here the closest station to me doesn't have another one working within 15 miles. And its not like you could turn up with a jerry can if its on gas only!

On this topic, which is really informative, does anyone know what the situation is for foreign-registered vehicles, for example Irish registered cars ?

Also, what is the intention for Scotland ? I have to take the P38 to Edinburgh in July.

Pierre3.

Glasgow is the only city in Scotland that has anything operating at the moment but there are others planned, including in Edinburgh, see https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/uk-low-emissions-zones.

I would suspect the situation with foreign registered cars is the same as it is with speeding and parking tickets. If they can get the registered keepers details from the foreign equivalent to DVLA, then you'll get a bill in the post. ROI may now have stopped talking to any UK authorities since Brexit though.

BrianH wrote:

It was raised as a query for the CAZ checker - which currently covers Bath and Birmingham, I believe Bristol and Leeds will be added as their schemes get to the point where the required standards are clear. As far as I knew, Leeds wasn't yet active? (your closer to the place than me, so maybe you know better on this point?) Bristol still seems to be deciding which scheme they are going to use.

Good point on range about removing the petrol tank, but it still leaves you stuck if you turn up at a filling station with little left in the tank and find its out of order. Round here the closest station to me doesn't have another one working within 15 miles. And its not like you could turn up with a jerry can if its on gas only!

Cheers 😁

Since we're on an electric vehicle related thread - Probably still a better situation than running out of electric charge with an EV, could use a Calor bottle as a Jerry can (would help to put plumbing in place as a pre-emptive measure to be ready for this situation). With an extra tank of gas range is likely to be far better than an EV, when you do find gas can refill/recharge quicker. The 'extra tank' won't weigh a ton or cost £50k to buy and fit.

The other day when I was converting the Volvo the tank I ordered for it hadn't arrived by the time I'd completed the engine conversion, so I just put this on-site refillable forklift tank in the boot and connected it up to the gas feed running to the engine bay so I could calibrate the system before the tank I'd ordered arrived. Easy enough to pick this full tank up and put it in the boot on my own and the tank holds about 60 litres of gas. Proper refillable 4 hole job with built in 80% fill limiter etc, with the acme to bayonet adapter directly attached it fills quite a bit quicker than filling a petrol tank. I could easily add facility to (say) my own car to be able to just put this tank in the boot whenever I want for the extra capacity and range.

Thanks, Richard, I will look at the plans for Edinburgh.

I'm not sure of the situation vis-a-vis, [do you like that - "vis-a-vis", very educated, amn't I ], the Irish police passing on fines from the DVLA. i must ask a couple of people that I know who are connected to the Irish police.

There was a huge bone of contention, some years ago, because drivers from N.I. were being caught on radar checks speeding but the fines couldn't be enforced outside the State. I think, though, that after years of consultations the laws were changed in the two jurisdictions to allow fines and penalty points to be charged.

However, as you mention, after Brexit that could have changed.

Pierre3.

Lpgc, there were a few stories about people in Donegal, who tend to live a little "off-grid" shall we call it, refilling their converted cars from their Calorgas home heating tanks. I had heard it said that owners were getting Calorgas at a fairly low price, because it was for central heating and gas cookers, so it made a lot of sense to also use it in the car.

As I say, just hearsay, but I wouldn't put it past people living in Donegal !!!

Pierre3.

Last year I can confirm that the French, Germans, Polish and Latvians could request keeper details from DVLA and be given it. At least they could with speeding tickets but at only €20 and no points each, who cares? One thing that has been flagged since January is that the UK no longer has access to many of the EU criminal databases as the data protection laws are different, so it is quite possible it is the same the other way round.

It is perfectly OK in the UK to fill an LPG car from a domestic tank although you are supposed to keep a log and notify HMRC and pay the road fuel duty on what you use in the car. Very few people do it though as the cost of bulk gas for heating, without the road fuel duty paid on it, is often more expensive than buying from a filling station at the road fuel duty inclusive price. It's easy to spot though as the tank needs to have a liquid take off on the bottom rather than the vapour take off at the top that would be used for heating and cooking.

Ah-ha, I thought that there might be some reason why people don't all drive around on cheap LPG !! Lots of people in Ireland used to use "red" diesel in their cars, if they were farmers or road hauliers, but it always caught up with them because diesel cars aren't really designed to run on red diesel, it makes them rather smoky, if I remember.

There was a big problem in the 80's with the IRA washing diesel and selling that through dodgy garages. Again, people got well shafted after using a couple of tanks because the engine in the car would blow up !

Pierre3.

Pierre3 wrote:

Ah-ha, I thought that there might be some reason why people don't all drive around on cheap LPG !! Lots of people in Ireland used to use "red" diesel in their cars, if they were farmers or road hauliers, but it always caught up with them because diesel cars aren't really designed to run on red diesel, it makes them rather smoky, if I remember.
Pierre3.

the only reason red diesel smokes more is cause the dye in it but they put the red dye in so you couldn't run on red and the police could dip your tank as it was a lot cheaper than white to buy and the HMRC missed out on vat

Next step up from red, which is easily spotted, is heating oil. Apparently, it's much the same as diesel but without a lubricant so wears out the fuel injection pump. According to a Customs diesel dipper I was talking to one day, the only way they can spot it is with a spectrometer and if mixed 50/50 with pump diesel there's enough lubricant so it doesn't do any damage. As there's no duty on heating oil (and only 5% VAT) at between 30 and 40p a litre it's commonly used in urban areas instead of red diesel.

I have never heard about heating oil being used, but then most houses where I live always used kerosene.

In the late 70's using red diesel was very common among Irish hauliers. There were a couple of big guys caught doing it, companies with around 20 trucks. The most frequent offenders were the refrigerated haulage guys because they could legally buy several thousand litres to fuel the fridge trailor motors, usually 2 litre Toyota diesels in Thermo-King fridges.

The amount fiddled would have been huge. A common ruse was for the fridge trailor to have two 40 gallon tanks, and if it was queried the answer was that the truck might be away for several weeks and the company didn't want to have to buy expensive European normal diesel. In fact, a lot of the guys had an electric pump and fuel line plumbed in, and it was just a case of sticking one end into the truck fuel tank, turn on the electric pump and wait !

There never seemed to be any fuel checks done in the UK or the continent from what I remember, maybe only in Dover Port when the trucks were parked up, waiting for customs clearance. The biggest threat was back in Ireland because Customs and Excise were well aware of the scam. If you had a farm, or a commercial yard of any sort you were allowed to buy as much red diesel as you wanted, once you had a couple of old tractors or forklifts.

Pierre3.

Heating oil is kerosene. I found out about it a few years ago when on a multi-Agency vehicle stop. The C&E diesel dippers turned up and I said to one of them that I didn't think they would be there as we were in the centre of a city so I wouldn't expect there to be any red in use there. That was when he told me they would be checking for kerosene. I told him I thought kerosene was paraffin and that is when he said heating oil is kerosene and explained how it could be used in a diesel engine and couldn't be seen just by looking at it like red could. Apparently, the only difference is gas oil (aka red diesel) has a viscosity of 35 compared with kerosene which has a viscosity of 28. Probably why it doesn't lubricate as well.

I didn't know there was a difference between normal diesel and red diesel besides obviously dye being in red. Seen loads of engines run on red and not noticed more smoke compared to normal diesel.

At one time if you got done for using red diesel you got a fine and the vehicle confiscated. So if you ran an old low value diesel car and could prove you hadn't done much mileage, or if you changed old cars regularly (so could say you hadn't owned it long enough to have used much fuel), you could be better off running on red even if you had to pay a fine and got a car confiscated every few years.

23 Years ago I bought a cheap none-turbo diesel Astra from a mate for my commute as a 'put me on', my mate reckoned it would easily do 60mpg. Then he said you might as well take my spare fuel for it and put 3 x 20 litre cooking oil vats filled with some sort of fuel in the boot. I ended up doing a 1000 mile round trip in that car, took the 3 tubs with me, didn't have to buy any fuel during the entire trip. He paid 16p a litre for that stuff - which did seem to look a bit red lol. Arrived home with quarter of a tank of fuel left in the car and nearly a full tub in the boot. 1000 Miles for less than £15. I then bought a much larger diesel car.