Re: The story about propane.


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Posted by Garth Quapp From Alberta on Sunday, October 26, 2003 at 12:56PM :

In Reply to: Re: 1979 Dodge Powerwagon W-30 Propane ? posted by Joe Cimoch on Saturday, October 25, 2003 at 8:09PM :

Propane powered vehicles were very common in Canada and parts of the U.S. during the late 70's and up to the early nineties. I even owned a propane powered car. One of the advantages and the main reason was that the fuel was cheap. In the early eighties, propane was 7 to 12 cents a liter compared to gas which was 40 to 50 cents a liter. The advantages were that propane cars were cheap to operate, clean burning, and had none of the nasty emissions that a gasoline car has. For the most part after combusion in a propane car, you had Carbon Dioxide, Water, and very low Carbon Monoxide (up to 90% less). Also propane has more energy in it the gasoline, but it burns slower like diesel fuel, so you have to retune the engine to get the most out of it. Alot of people built their engines to run strickly on propane because of it's high octane rating. You were able to run high compression pistons, and run higher lift and duration cams (mostly RV cams were used to take advantage of the slower burn of the fuel).The engines ran so clean, after 4000 miles and you checked the engine oil on the dipstick and the engine oil was still clean. Drawbacks to using propane on a stock engine is that the engine produced less power and required more fuel to get the same job done. That is why the need for big storage tanks. And if it got really cold (which it does in Canada, kinda makes you want to visit Winnipeg in the winter), the propane will not vapourize at -43F or -42C, so when the temperture gets close to that, the engines starve for fuel.
Also trying to fill up your empty tank/s got challenging if you didn't know where the nearest refueling station was, which is why there wasn't many propane powered vehicles in the rural areas.
I hope this answered some of your questions.
Cheers! Garth Q



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