Before I make good on my promise in the blog I wrote yesterday on What is Internal Combustion, I realized I forgot to mention Propane (LPG) as an excellent “green” fuel.

LPG is abundant, fairly priced and burns very efficiently and clean. I have a small amount of experience with vehicles that have been converted to LPG and am very impressed. LPG provides at least two great things that other ICE fuels can’t. It burns super clean, barely any exhaust gas is noticeable when you run an engine on propane. That is very “green”. The other thing about LPG is that it will give you more miles per gallon (MPG) because it burns so clean and therefore runs more efficiently. Cost less per gallon and more efficient fuel usage = good fuel.

Brief Story: I live in Florida, home of the hurricane. The town I live in was literally leveled 4 and one half years ago by Jeannie and Francais. I was still self employed then, it did $80,000.00 dollars worth of damage to my shop building. Devastating to say the least. We also have a giant portable (is a 600 lb generator portable?) it is called portable because it has wheels. It was last year in 2007 we had a blackout and needed a generator to keep the freezer cold and allow me to hook up my electric guitar, you know the most important things have to work! Well low and behold, the carburetor leaked like a submarine with screen doors. Needless to say, we had no power that night. Fortunately it was out only about 4 hours.

Note: Make sure you run your generator off season to make sure it runs right when you need it.

A new carburetor for my generator cost about $350.00. I Googled “alternative fuels” and found a company I liked. They answered my questions in terms I understood. The other extra cool thing was that I could buy the change over kit for less than 200 bucks. I needed a regulator too, which I bought locally for $50.00 ish. So for less money I bought this excellently made and easy to install kit. It took about an hour to install, I bet I can install a kit in 30 minutes now. To make this short, the generator runs stronger, it produces hardly any exhaust fumes so you don’t smell like a lawn mower and best of all is that when I need to add fuel. I don’t end up spilling gasoline all over the place (on the generator and myself) at 2AM when it runs out of fuel. The second best thing is that I get an hour and a half of run time out of a gallon of LPG as opposed to an hour of run time using gasoline.

Did I mention your engine will last longer too, because LPG runs so clean? As easy as that was to convert, and the fact that there are some viable well made kits for car engines available, it makes me wonder if the oil czar’s are not holding back on us, for their profit. The company I used makes superb auto/truck kits including a wonderful kit for my 1988 GMC one ton 4×4, 4 wheels only pickup truck. The truck kit cost about 1400.00 bucks with everything, including a computer and is a direct bolt on. I do recommend a qualified repair shop do it.

It is something to consider for sure. The best time to consider this change-over would be if you needed a replacement used engine.Obviously there are more options than just a used engine. GotEngines.com has other engine choices to offer you and most of them can be converted to LPG.

It would really be a piece of cake to install a kit at this time and with all the related systems brought up to date you have a long life, long term solution for several engine issues. Gas mileage and engine longevity. FYI, there are a lot more vehicles that have been converted to LPG than you may guess. It is easy to find LPG and fill up at any LPG dispensing station or any truck-stop.

You may not need an engine now, or ever. That should not stop you from educating yourself in advance on just about any auto and or engine issue you can think of at GotEngines.com Blog. If you don’t see what you are looking for, ask us. It will be our pleasure to find the right answer.

PS Let me know if you are interested in the Alternative fuels company I bought my kit from.