I've bought a Rangie..... a little diary

[hackett]

Well i was out and about last weekend and found a Range Rover 4.0 V8 LPG converted. After haggling i managed to get £500 off because the Cruise control and LPG wasn't working. Bit of a risk but everything else on the car was mint.

I fixed the Cruise in about 10 minutes as the vacuum pipe waS perished so replaced it with some silicone tubing from my tropical fish setup.

I got a quote from my local LPG fitter to sort and he said it would be £250 just for an in depth investigation.I managed to trace the guy who installed it (Knights of Aberdeen) Its a tartarini multipoint system. He even remembered the car! I told him what was happening and he said he was adament it was to do with the vapourisor. Its a 140 mile trip to his workshop and running on only petrol i thought i'd take it on myself as i like to think i'm quite a competent mechanic (i've rebuilt enough engines in my time lol)

I stripped the vapourisor cleaned it and put back together but still no joy. Then i used the workshops at work to delve a little deeper and finally finished at 4 am Friday morning.....it still didn't work.

I was moping round like a bear with a sore head so the wife gave me the nod and said just go out and sort it lol.

Well i started at 11am Friday and i finished at about 9pm. I basically removed every part of the system and stripped them back to individual components. Hey presto there was a bent pin right in the bowels of the vapourisor. Using a tiny hammer i got it as straight as i could and set about rebuilding the whole system with everything cleaned up looking new.

Took the RR out and with much anticipation pressed the LPG button expecting it to cut out and to my suprise it clicked over nicely.

Its not running 100%, idle is slightly lumpy, performance is about half of petrol and its relatively lumpy through the rev range but it cruises nicely at 60mph on gas. I reckon its got to be plugs????

Hopefully someone will second my theory its the plugs.

Anyway as a celebreation i thought i'd take the opertunity to post some pics after i cleaned it this morning.

Comments welcome......

[BLUETHUNDER]

I have LPG fitted on this......



It has lumpy idle,but is ok under load.You can notice the slight drop in power as the system switches over.

[hackett]

Cool thanks for that, your truck looks ace, the thing is mine is sooo slow on LPG i'm almost tempted to knock it back to petrol just to roar upto normal speed then switch over to cruise. I think the system need servicing and plugging into a computer.

[BLUETHUNDER]

hackett said:

Cool thanks for that, your truck looks ace, the thing is mine is sooo slow on LPG i'm almost tempted to knock it back to petrol just to roar upto normal speed then switch over to cruise. I think the system need servicing and plugging into a computer.

I would say your gas system does need looking at then.When switched over to gas the Ram above does suffer a light loss of power.But nothing at all to worry about.It probably helps that its 5.9Ltrs anyway.Your one might need the filters changing which would be done as part of a service.

[Steve_D]

I think the first move is to buy a replacement for that bent pin. If it was bent then you also need to understand how so that it does not happen again or perhaps it already has but not as much yet.

Steve

[hackett]

yeah i agree i have thought about how the pin got bent but at the min its still doing its job fine. I'm going to book it in for an LPG service the week after next so it will be replaced then anyway.

Thanks

[DucatiGary]

a propper LPG install will not show you any difference to petrol.

apart from drinking a little more fuel (im getting 17.7 on lpg and 18.5 on petrol) a propper lpg set up will be unnoticable.

[Skier]

hacket, are those photos taken by Randolph's Leap? If so you must know Badger. I lived in that area from 90 - 97 and then in Culloden from 02 - 04. No prizes for guessing where I worked ;o)

Regards

Skier

[hackett]

Jesus mate you're good!! Yeah thats randolphs leap (which is impressive by the way) I live in Elgin. I've heard of this Badger guy i was given his number by a mechanic who i'm mates with but everytime ive rang theres no answer.

Do you know him then?? I wonder if he would be able to diagnose my ste running problem on gas. I'm going to change the plugs tomorrow then i'll do the leads after that.