70 degrees isn't that hot, I've restarted without any problems after 200 odd miles, towing a trailer in ambient temperatures approaching 40 degrees so I suspect the fuel rail temperature would have been much higher. There's a connection on the back of the fuel pressure regulator to the inlet manifold so that fuel pressure is always kept at a fixed pressure relative to manifold depression. Is it possible that there's a bit of muck floating around in the fuel return line blocking it every so often? Fuel pressure will be higher when hot due to thermal expansion anyway but if it can't bleed the pressure off through the return it will be rich on a restart..

Weight isn't so much of a concern on a self charge hybrid. Taking the Kia Niro as an example, the only vehicle currently available in full electric, plug-in and self charge hybrid versions. The full electric has a 64 kWh battery but weighs 2.23 tonnes, almost the same as a P38! The plug in has a 1.6 litre petrol engine and an electric motor powered from a 8.9kWh battery, while the self charge has the same 1.6 litre petrol engine and the electric motor is powered from a puny little 1.5 kWh battery and only weighs 1.93 tonnes. No version comes with a spare wheel as standard either

Microsloth can say what they like but I've been in a datacentre and seen the size of both the refrigeration plant needed to keep it cool and the pair of huge diesel generators using engines originally intended to power a cargo ship needed to power it if the mains fails.. As for the second report, I've never seen a 'report' containing so many ifs and buts, although I am pleased to see that they regard nuclear power as green.....

The advantage of a self charge hybrid is a way of reducing CO2 emissions. Under the current and real world emissions tests, part of it is urban emissions (the bit that VW et al fiddled with their cheat software). So it simulates driving in a city in stop start traffic. During this phase of the test the car runs solely on electric power so zero emissions, then when traffic speeds up, the ICE kicks in. But that has the effect of reducing the overall emissions over that phase of the test. This allows a manufacturer to quote lower CO2 emissions, better fuel consumption figures and gives the owner a nice warm feeling inside. But it's no different to a plug in once the batteries have gone flat. Before the Government did away with the grant scheme, one company leased a fleet of Mitsubishi PHEVs only to find that their running costs went through the roof. When the vehicles came back at the end of their lease they found that the charging cables had never been taken out of their plastic bags so the drivers had been running around in relatively heavy vehicles powered by a 2.4 litre 4 cylinder petrol engine all the time.

If you see a Prius in London, it IS a minicab. Nobody else will spend the extra in buying them just to drive around in probably one of the ugliest cars ever designed. However, even that has backfired a little as the Prius is a self charge hybrid so incapable of the 20 miles at zero emissions required for Congestion Charge exemption. It used to be exempt but not any more. To put it into perspective, a PHEV will do anywhere between 25 and 40 miles on battery power alone while a self charge will be pushed to manage much over a mile. OK if you are sitting in a traffic queue just creeping forward every couple of minutes but not really any other time. The only reason a Prius owning mincab driver will convert to LPG is purely financial, the lower he can get his running costs, the higher his profit, it has naff all to do with emissions.

For dave3d, the other 'mild-hybrids' as they call the diesel/electric combinations, are the Kia Sportage and the Honda CR-V. Other than that they all seem to use a petrol engine as the ICE whether PHEV or self charge.

The way I read it is that all diesels, including private cars, are excluded from the central area, while diesel vans (assuming they class a CDV as a commercial vehicle) will have to pay a charge at certain times of the day and be excluded at others. At the moment it is costing £23 a day to go into central London and this is a cost that we need to avoid. Hopefully, in my view, other councils WILL try to out green each other, the more places diesels are excluded from the better. Even though I will have retired by the time the new fleet is rolled out, I'd like to think I can leave a legacy for the others that is better than the poxy diesel Kangoo vans we have now. I'm pushing towards self-charge hybrid estate cars although as they are taken home every night, but with no private use, there is still a question mark over the BIK status.

Re the Leaf, a woman that works in one of our offices bought one for herself but lives 35 miles from the office. She found that when she first got it, in the summer, she could get to work and back on a full charge. In winter, with lights, heater, wipers, etc on (not to mention the reduced battery performance due to the cold), it ran out of charge before she managed to get home. She started charging it at the office during the day until others started asking for a contribution towards their petrol costs for going to work. She ended up swapping it for the uprated model that could actually do a 70 miles journey whatever the conditions......

Thanks for that one Dave, you've just given me the ammunition to delete diesels totally from our new work fleet.

+1 on Nanocom

Daily, in the region of 22,000 miles a year for the last 9 years. Get the LPG system sorted and you won't even worry about the cost of fuel.

But the most important question is, could I water ski behind it?

According to Microcat, they all use STC numbers so not sure what you are finding.

If it were mine, I'd helicoil it. It's not something you want to work loose and dump all your coolant without you realising it.

Going back a step or two, I've had a decent run today. Mix of 70-80 mph motorway, country roads and M25 traffic. 205 miles on 55.9 litres of LPG. Ok so it only works out at 16.6 mpg on LPG but at 63p a litre that 205 miles cost me less that £36. Just to prove that what you are getting is pretty dire......

If you are using it on longer runs, you should be looking at over 20 but obviously if just using it for short, low speed runs, then it might be correct. As for the LPG system, it will be far cheaper to correct the existing installation than replace it. BRC had a reputation, much like Prins, if installed correctly but it isn't really user friendly and would probably give no better results that what you have now. If your existing system is installed correctly and calibrated then it should be fine. As Brian mentioned, the intake tracts on a Thor cross over so if the nozzles have been put in the upper manifold it is almost certain that the wiring is crossed.

BRC?? Trying to make matters worse?

Petrol tank holds 100 litres so 380 miles is only 17 mpg. Unless you were clogging it up to the red line all the time that's pretty pants too. Sort the runing on petrol and the running on LPG will improve as it is slaved off the petrol system.

Probably because it was converted in the days of the paper certificate rather than the register. If you have the certificate you can scan that and your V5 and it will be added to the register, if you haven't, tough.

I bet the injector nozzles are in the upper inlet manifold and not down near the petrol injectors like they should be. That'll give you poor throttle response.

Yup, that's all they ever fitted, whether it was suitable for the car or not. They were what became known as one of the done in a day merchants. Fit a system in a day, don't bother to set it up and when the customer complains that it is down on power/MIL keeps coming on/doesn't give the economy expected, he gets told that it is perfectly normal for an LPG conversion (which it isn't).

StrangeRover wrote:

it was installed by a place called Profess Autogas

Now there's a name that used to be slagged off regularly on the LPGForum. Not surprised it doesn't run right, probably never has.

Probably a good idea, it could cause you a bit of a problem when it tries to find it's way past the throttle butterfly......

A Thor will do when running a singlepoint, there's a hell of a lot of gas to explode. Much like when people tried to put a singlepoint on the Ford Explorer. 3 litre V6 engine with a plastic inlet manifold. One little misfire and the entire manifold became little bits of plastic spread around the engine bay, it would literally blow it to pieces.

If your MAF needs replacing, the mixture on petrol will be wrong, probably going into a fail safe rich mixture, which will make the mixture on LPG rich too.