**[BrianH]

Its also worth being aware that some of Admiral's call centre staff do not know what they are talking about with LPG - they will ask for any assortment of random bits of paperwork to be sent in or just say we don't cover lpg cars. I'd recommend hanging up in this case and calling back, hopefully to speak to someone with more of a clue!

That's good advice that would be equally applicable with a lot of insurance companies regards LPG converted vehicles. Customers regularly tell me that someone at their insurers told them they didn't cover LPG vehicles / their car needs to be on UKLPG's database / they need to provide a copy of 'The green safety cert' (LPGA cert which LPGA now UKLPG stopped issuing years ago). Quite often in these cases the same or a different member of staff at the same insurers will eventually settle for a receipt from whomever converted the vehicle / the vehicle has passed an MOT since it was converted / the V5 shows LPG as a fuel type. But some such as Saga, Admiral, Hastings do very specifically want the vehicle to be on UKLPG's database. Never heard of Adrian Flux asking for anything.

As Tinley implied, lots of long established LPG bits / brands seem to have recently been rebranded as Tomasetto, I wasn't aware of this with the Zavoli reducers though, last time I bought one was probably early this year and was branded Zavoli.

For the temp sensor you might as well follow TT' and Gilbert's advice. I expect the brass bit is just a thread adaptor, if it's just in the location of a water temp sensor it won't cause any harm to the reducer to remove it anyway.

If your previous reducer solenoid was attached directly can you use that one's male/male adaptor?

The solenoid in your pic looks like the type that has 8mm inlet and outlet? Shiny chrome outlet and shiny nut at the opposite side of the solenoid? If so you can slacken the nut from the outlet and the solenoid will rotate around the shiny bits to allow orientation of the solenoid and it's inlet. 8mm Pipe fittings use 12mm thread.
Your reducer is listed as having 6mm pipe inlet, 6mm pipe fittings use 10mm thread.

Obviously if the solenoid has 12mm thread and reducer 10mm thread, to connect your solenoid directly to the reducer you'd need an M12/M10 male/male fitting. Male/male fittings come in a couple of lengths, you should really use the longer length with the shiny bits type solenoid because that type of solenoid valve has deep threads. I generally use a bit of gas paste when using a male male adaptor with this type of solenoid too.

Of course, if you have to go from 8mm pipe fitting on the solenoid to 6mm pipe fitting on the reducer, some type of adaptor would be necessary anyway even if you mounted the solenoid remote of the reducer. Easy enough if you had a few bits around, e.g. could just use a short length of 8mm equivalent Faro pipe with 6mm copper equivalent fitting on one end and 8mm copper equivalent fitting on the other but this probably won't help you! However, won't your existing solenoid and male/male adaptor work with the new reducer, or if you want to use the new solenoid won't the existing male/male adaptor work with the new solenoid?

I'll have a look George thanks.

The reducer in your pic (Zavoli Zeta S or Zeta N) is a decent unit but a bad point about these models is that they do come with pressure preset and are not very adjustable away from preset pressure which is 1.4 bar on the S and 1.2 bar on the N. You'd want the 1.4 bar Zeta S for the flow requirement of a P38 but if your injector nozzles are 3mm you'd really want less than 1.4 bar pressure maybe around 1.1 bar..If you do manage to adjust this model reducer from 1.4 to 1.1 bar it's flow ability may go down dramatically (much more than the difference between 1.4 and 1.1 bar would suggest). Lack of pressure adjustment is less of an issue for an installer fitting a new install than it is when replacing an existing reducer because the installer can choose injectors and injector nozzle size to work with the engine for the given pressure. We might assume that the original installer did that, so replacing a reducer that comes with preset pressure like for like should make for good results but the thing is a lot of installers who fitted a reducer with preset pressure won't have fully addressed nozzles / pressure so better results might be had fitting a reducer that isn't so limited in pressure adjustment.Before I could advise fitting a reducer with very limited pressure adjustment I'd need to know spec of your injectors and nozzle size, or at least know how ginj compared to pinj when the old reducer was good and calibration was correct.

Yeh Marty, yours will be truly sequential so your slider should be set fully right. The only real exception for modern AEB ECU's is on a tiny minority of vehicles that do a hell of a lot of petrol enrichment during acceleration (where acceleration is defined the same as in the slider context, i.e. increasing throttle position)... usually dodgily remapped turbo stuff that shouldn't have so much acceleration enrichment if the petrol remap was good. Too lean usually decreases power more than too rich, for much decreased power from too rich you'd probably have to be so rich that if you wound the window down a bit you'd pick up on that eggy smell.

I calibrate and drive at the same time but I'm well used to it and can just glance across... Still I prefer calibrating slow stuff rather than really fast stuff. If someone else drives you need to drill it into them that constant throttle position doesn't mean constant speed / a touch more or touch less throttle means maybe a 1% shift in throttle position not a 30% shift in throttle position / stamping down and then holding full throttle means just that / etc. You'll probably see what I mean if someone else drives! If the driver is uncomfortable holding full throttle etc it's probably safer if you drive. Full throttle doesn't mean full speed, you can slow to a stop and accelerate hard at full throttle without hitting unsafe speed at least for a short while and on some cars you can extend that time by riding the brakes at the same time as acclerating though not to the extent of cooking the brakes..

Sometimes on repair jobs the customer drives but mostly a re-calibration gets done quicker if I drive while the customer sits with the laptop sideways on his knee so I can glance at the screen. I often regret letting someone else drive, many struggle with the concept of constant throttle (not unsafe but makes calibration more of a pain), some seem incapable of steering smoothly round a bend while holding throttle steady.

Well, there's the obvious answer of his negligence possibly leading to somebody else's accident but I expect you're right. If I did tyres and was aware of something like that I'd have held hand up and fitted a different tyre, maybe offered that tyre to someone cheap for 'off road use only' on the back axle... not that off-roaders who trailer their cars to tracks etc would likely want to buy a damaged road tyre. Wouldn't want to be doing a ton on the road with that, especially if it were on the front... Reminds me of a mate who back in the day had a Cosworth with big wheels and really low profile tyres, pulled up after doing over 140 to find one of his back tyres was completely flat and breaking up, reckoned he could hardly tell while driving it but after stopping was sickened to see it imagining what could have happened.

Same issue only maybe worse on the Jag engine'd L322s.

Jeez, if the damage was caused by the original fitter wonder how well he slept at night...

In the case of Orangebean's install (where adjusting the top end mixture throws off calibration at other points) I'm not sure what ECU he's got. Some ECU's have map screens with only a few denominations for engine load, so the top end fuelling box also effects near top end calibration / some have a lot more denominations (up to about 12 as memory serves) for Pinj's between 2.5 and 18ms as standard, and furthermore the denominations can be adjustable (i.e. the 18ms column could be made a 25ms column). If you don't have enough denominations the only way to get things absolutely correct is by playing with injector spec, pressure and nozzle size... but the get around is to set top end fuelling correctly at the expense of correct trims at near top end fuelling.

Also worth bearing in mind that depending on ECU type, year of ECU and firmware the system may or may not automatically switch back to petrol temporarily (accompanied by flashing yellow light on the switch but without beeping) when it senses Ginj exceeding available Ginj window (rpm versus gas injector pulse time). If rpm's are 6000 there is only a 20ms window for Ginj, if Ginj is above 20ms the injector won't have time to close before opening again to meter fuel and the engine will run lean regardless of Ginj being 20ms or even 50ms because the gas injector has already reached the point where it is open constantly... In which case you'd need to increase pressure, and/or or fit bigger nozzles, and/or fit faster opening or bigger flow capable injectors.

Enrichment in acceleration works in different ways depending on age of ECU.

It makes sense to explain how the newer ECUs work first, then it's easier to see why the enrichment in acceleration facility is there at all and why it is more important on older ECUs... Most of you will have the older type ECUs.

On newer ECU's the slider doesn't allow for enrichment at all, full right on the slider gives just the mixture that the map/pressure compensation/temp compensation provides, left of full right leans the mixture during acceleration. On the newer ECUs the only real correct position is full right, anything left of full right points to calibration/setup issues. That's because the newer systems are truly sequential - they take Pinj readings from every petrol injector and (supposedly) each cylinder's gas injector pulse length (Gnj) is calculated individually based on each individual cylinder Pinj's, furthermore the gas pulse should start at almost the same moment that the petrol injector pulse starts (where almost means at the same time or within about 2ms based on other settings such as 'extra injection filtering' where extra injector filtering in theory allows very short Pinj's to be ignored altogether).

The older type AEB based ECU's are not really truly sequential, they take the Pinj reading only from the front cylinder on each bank (blue wires), then each cylinder on the same bank gets the same Ginj as the front cylinder Ginj. Now suppose that between the front cylinder injection pulse and another cylinder's injection pulse on the same bank the driver stamps his foot down... At high rpm the manifold pressure won't have time to increase much before the other cylinders on the same bank inject fuel, at low rpm the manifold pressure will have more time to increase between injection pulses on that bank.. In cases of both high rpm and low rpm the mixture for the rear 3 cylinders (particularly the last cylinder in the firing order) will be leaner than the front cylinder mixture because it didn't read the rear 3 petrol injectors pulse times it just assumed they would be the same as the front cylinder's pulse time. To address this the system has the enrichment in acceleration slider.. The default setting of the slider (usually somewhere near the middle) gives a bit of enrichment to the rear 3 cylinders when the ECU notices manifold pressure and/or Pinj on the front cylinder rising quickly... The enrichment is a fudge, but no more of a fudge than the acceleration enrichment that a petrol ECU provides. Since the newer type ECUs read individual petrol injector pulses to calculate individual gas injector pulses the newer ECUs don't need to add in the fudge themselves because they are reading Pinjs that have already had any necessary acceleration enrichment fudge added by the petrol ECU.

The gas ECU applying an acceleration fudge (instead of the petrol ECU's fudge) isn't really a drawback. The only real drawback of the old type ECU over the new type is that it doesn't necessarily pulse gas injectors at the same time as petrol injectors are pulsed - the new type uses start of petrol injector pulse as trigger for start of gas injector pulse whereas new old type does this for the front cylinder but then spaces the rear 3 cylinder gas injector pulses according to only rpm. Not a problem on older engines but can be a problem on newer engines with features such as VVT/Atkinson cycle.

The acceleration slider won't make any difference to mixture with your foot in a constant position on the throttle, even if you're holding foot flat out, because with constant throttle manifold pressure and Pinj's stay about the same. The slider is used on older ECUs to dial out drive-ability problems when you're changing throttle position (hesitation from lean running with too lean mixture / misfires from too rich), can even be used to compensate a bit for long pipe lengths (needs to be richer during acceleration so more gas reaches the cylinder's intake port in time to make mixture correct with rising manifold pressure). Usually set while the engine is idling then stamping on the throttle (idle to flat out /idle to near flat out / idle to partial throttle) looking for crisp throttle response, and adjusted again while driving.

If you want to change top end mixture while throttle is held constant,you use the other mapping tools (map itself etc). Going too rich on LPG will result in less power than a stoch mixture on LPG because the greater amount of gas displaces what could otherwise be airflow into the engine (hence negatively effecting volumetric efficiency) to a greater extent that going too rich on petrol... You still want a rich mixture at high loads but not always as rich as would make more power on petrol. If you have a 0-1v lambda probe, where on petrol max power might arrive at richer than the narrow band lambda is capable of reading, on LPG max power might arrive at as low as 0,7v but we might still go a bit richer than 0.7v to protect the valves. Set the map first, then adjust the acceleration slider.

Wouldn't bother with a rolling road, they never give same under bonnet temps as driving on a real road. Under bonnet temps effect the LPG vapour temp (and reducer temp) readings which effect the mixture. If you've been sat idling in an LPG car for a while and under bonnet temps get high, if you suddenly set off and boot it the vapour temp reading will for a while be high, causing the mixture to be richer than it will be after a while of driving on the road when vapour temp readings have settled down to normal. Greater volume / faster throughput of gas through the reducer mean that gas temp readings fall when booting it but there is lag between booting it and the temp sensor reflecting the correct temp of gas reaching the injectors - If you have hot under bonnet temps to start with and then set off booting it for a while the mix will start rich and get leaner until temp correction has fully caught up, should be setting mixture when compensation has at least nearly caught up. A rolling road won't keep the rad/engine as cool as real road speeds, AEB systems also compensate mixture for reducer temp. Seat of the pants while reading trims/mixture is probably better than a rolling road.

Forgot to mention..

Got back from holiday in Malta the other day. 'Miss European' contenders were staying at the same hotel as us. several from each country. We saw them mostly on an evening all dolled up and posing for country group shots and single shots outside the front door. All week my girlfriend was suggesting we relax around the pool rather than go sightseeing but the one day I agreed to sit beside the pool she suggested we go out and do something else. When we got back that evening we'd missed all the poolside bikini shots...

gordonjcp wrote:

Billy Connolly used to go climbing with my dad, who taught him how to play a bunch of folk songs on the guitar in the Clachaig in Glencoe ;-)

Whisky 'on the rocks'? ;-)

There is a successful musician who regularly contributes on this forum but it's up to him if he wants to ID himself. Dare say he's been in Abbey Road studio considering the type of music he's into.

Had another guy here with a P38 the other week who''s a bodybuilder and part time actor, currently features in a TV ad, will be in next season's Game Of Thrones and has been in a TV series but I forget which ones he said lol.

My dad was a club turn for 40 years and a theatrical agent later on. In his late teens or early 20s he was lead guitarist in a semi famous band called Tony Sheridan and the Sundowners. When I was a kid Billiy Connoly, Tony Christie, Marty Caine and no doubt some others I've forgotten about visited, Billy Connoly wasn't as famous back then but the others were. Dad used to book Tony Christie and Gary Barlow into clubs, Gary Barlow once slept in my dad's uncle's Hymer Mobil motorhome in the yard where I now convert vehicles to LPG. I recently converted a Nissan Elgrand to LPG for a guy from the South East who was once a roady for Tony Christie - small world.

My grandad played darts with President Rosevelt and Churchill onboard HMS Price Of Wales.

Met loads of famous people when I was DJing but I'm not very good at recognising famous people. Once I was DJing at some type of bash for Channel4 in Liverpool Town Hall and tried to cop off with a bird I didn't recognise as Sonia the 90s singer... turned out she just wanted me to play some of her records lol.

My Scouser mate's dad used to work the clubs like my dad, so when they were working in each other's areas they used to stay at each others houses (same crack as Billy Connolly stopping here). My mate now sells motorhomes, his sister runs another firm hiring out big motorhomes to famous people to stay in when they're touring. Some of those people have squeaky clean images but he reckons it takes ages to get rid of the smell of weed when some of those people have stayed in them.

My daughter is a scout leader and has met Bear Gryls loads of times, I think she mentioned he turned up once 'in a rangerover' but I dunno if it actually was a rangerover and even if it was dunno if it'd be a P38.

Didn't Nigel Mansel used to own a P38 and rolled it on a motorway?

White paint - Tipex might as well shift from stationery suppliers to car parts stockists, I always keep some around lol.

I didn't realise it was a common problem.. doesn't say much for the specialist who called me in lol.

Maybe a bit off topic - I was once called out to a Rangerover specialist who had an LPG converted P38 that wouldn't run on petrol but would run on gas. Problem was the petrol pump wasn't running but the petrol pump was good and the pump relay was good. I found the problem to be that the petrol ECU wasn't sending power (or earth - I seem to remember the petrol ECU supplies the earth, constant live) to the petrol pump relay. Fixed it by running a fused line from petrol injector positive to the petrol pump relay and an earth to the relay, the alternative might have been to fit a different petrol ECU.

Off subject story - Years ago me and my dad drove a lot of miles to collect a Jeep I'd bought on Ebay. When we got there the owner said 'Sorry but you've had a wasted journey, it won't run now'. Seems he must have been offered a higher price because I quickly found he'd removed the petrol pump relay and on swapping another relay into the pump position it fired straight up, the guy had to sell it to us, told him what we thought of him and we came away with the Jeep.

Email of my oily bits sent Gordon, sorry for the delay, busy busy...

Edit - But you know what... I may have overlooked the fact my results at the top of the list are stickies!

P.s. I'm not in the habit of sending pics of my oily bits and the only pics of others oily bits I'd appreciate in return will be from ladies lol.

I'll try another browser. Currently using Chrome in W10.

Title says it all...

It seems to work that way in opening time but not in oily bits or electrikery.

What would happen if he presented the car for the France/Portugal/Spain equivalent of the MOT with LPG parts fitted but disabled by pulling the fuse, perhaps removing the LPG tank?

Or, not too difficult to remove a reducer (and connect coolant pipes together), remove injectors (and plug pipes), remove the LPG ECU (and reconnect petrol injector wiring using a couple of plugs that just join striped wire to none striped).

Just looking for a get-around for Super4.