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Propane

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Bill_Ritter

Plays with Fire
Joined
Aug 3, 2002
Messages
215
Is anyone still running propane inj. on their cars? I havent seen any threads about it lately and was wondering if the guys that bought the kits took them off, or are still having good results with it. I've had the propain kit on my car for about 4-5 years now i guess (since OGS first started selling them). I really have never been able to get it to run right all the time, with the bottle temps/pressure changes etc. I finally just got tired of it and disconnected it this year and am considering going back to alky :frown:
 
we were running 22#s .. no knock but not that much power .. same car with alky is night and day :cool:
 
There's a thread around here somewhere where the guy that did a lot of testing for me posted his results, I cant find it using the search. For all I know, it could have been deleted before we took over the site.

The tester (Kenny Brown) picked up about 30-40 horsepower on pump gas at the rear wheels. I forget the exact numbers. Most everyone that ran the system really liked it and found it to be mostly trouble free.

Dan, I must have been sick when you guys were testing propane. I remember Dan telling me that you were supposed to be coming down to test, Melissa's car blew up, you never came and no testing was done. Dan never mentioned to me you guys had a kit, I never heard any test results and would like to have had some input in tuning when you were testing.

Bruce (RIP) also had a propane kit which to my knowledge, was never installed or tested. He sent me tons of emails touting the benefits of propane over alcohol from a bunch of EFI gurus and was salivating at getting a kit. We ended up selling him a kit at bare cost in exchange for his promise that he would test the hell out of the kit and post results. To my knowledge, he never even took the kit out of the box. This was years before he passed away so I know it wasnt his health that kept him from doing the testing.

Last but not least, the reason the kit sort of faded away was mainly due to lack of a quality controller. We started working with another TR vendor who will remain nameless about building us a controller for the kit because Dan did not want to build the control boxes any more. This guy drug us along for over a year with promises of a controller "forthcoming" that never saw the light of day. Meanwhile, same vendor continued development of his own alcohol stuff while pushing our stuff off to the side and after wasting over a year waiting on a new controller, told us "too bad." At that point, Dan had lost interest and I had lost interest because we hadn't had kits to sell in over a year while we waited on this new controller that was "forthcoming."

Given the advances of alcohol, at this point Id have to say that alcohol probably have more advantages. Back then, not so much so. Either way, propane is a nice mod for a street car. It does increase power, the tank lasts a while between refills and it's relatively easy to tune.

Im actually contemplating doing a new alcohol controller for existing kits. I have some ideas on doing some things that havent been done before in a controller but Ive got too many projects going as it is and not enough time to oversee them all. Maybe next year once we get this header project squared away.
 
No clue.. he called me a few years ago and said he and another guy wanted to start selling and installing propane kits locally and did I mind. That was the last I heard from him.
 
. Either way, propane is a nice mod for a street car. It does increase power, the tank lasts a while between refills and it's relatively easy to tune.

I couldnt agree with you more on the fact that the tank lasts a long time and it does increase power. But, I just could never get the tank to keep a consistent psi with the climate here in Cincinnati. I tried bottle warmers, blankets, etc. but never really had any long term success. I actually converted the kit to hold a 20lb tank in the trunk to see if that would help with the pressure changes and it did, but I just never quite got it right.
 

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How much pressure are you trying to run?
 
I was the string along "other TR vendor".. I tried making something work with what was there, the problem that was run into was basically the solenoid. It was not designed to go tap tap tap tap tap repeatadly becuase the pintle would beat the seat out of it. I had spent hours on the phone with the tech guys that MFG'd the solenoid and was told the seat would eventually fail on the solenoid. Essentially telling me it should be on or off. More so was the problem of bottle pressure on the pintle meaning there was a delay in closing vs opening.. think of trying to shut a door closed when wind is coming into the house analogy... so this led to looking for a progressive solenoid.. which led to more problems as the applications that used progressive solenoids would be industrial automation.. the word industrial automation and cheap are not to be confused.. it was prohibitive. Even companies like NOS that market progressive nitrous systems have over time issues with their solenoids.. so after buying a progressive solenoid.. and then realizing two more problems.. the orfice/flow capability was not going to be sufficient.. and then the solenoid itself required electronics that needed to be curved to match to the response of the solenoid.. this started spiraling downhill in quick fashion...

It was in my best interest to get this type of product going.. hell why not.. after all its money.. but the more I dug into it.. the worse my own mental scenarios kept getting.

How did I get into this business I have, simple.. I worked with SMC to try and get one of his controllers to be "simply" made progressive.. attempts failed with the circuit design in place.. the idea was scraped.. 6 months latter.. frustrated I wanted a progressive controller for my own personal DIY alky kit.. I stepped up.. started from scratch.. and made a progressive controller to my liking.. I offered it to SMC through an email and never got a response.. and that started what I do today.

So how much money did I make spending countless hours trying to make a propain controller.. let alone resources, chips, wiring, etc... who knows.. it was done trying to come up with a simple solution within my capabilities.. how much did I charge.. nothing.

The last idea I had and can be implemented would have been to use 160lb propane injectors and make a controller to drive them. Similar to the ATR 7th injector. But my increase in business and the loss of an employee at the time led me no time to develop it. Let alone no $$ resources.. and no promise "IT" would sell.

MSD looks like they developed their own controller and valve assembly..

There you go Jay.. electronic circuits that dont exist are easy to come up with.. beta test.. and hope you did proper engineering. The circuit included with the OGS system left a lot to be desired... and the other issue would have been cost.. the OGS system was already toooo expensive in a market where "alky" could be done cheaply.. so this kept the prospect of making an expensive controller from happening as well.
 
How much pressure are you trying to run?

well initially i was trying to run around 75-85psi, but that didnt seem to be working too well. so i up'd the pressure to 115-120 and seemed to get a much better result, but the pressure was not maintainable on cool evenings in the late fall (when I usually like thrashing on the car). This led me to look into making a pressure operated bottle warmer powered by a key on only relay. long story short, i couldnt find a "good" quality pressure switch that i felt comfortable using at an affordable price. So, i ended up just powering the warmer with a on/off rocker switch for the time being. However, it takes about 15 min for the bottle to warm up from 80psi to 130ish psi with the warmer i have and this really worried me. I was constantly forgetting to shut the warmer off and losing track of how long it had been on for. I actually caused the OPD valve to purge pressure on the tank due to my forgetting :eek: So since then i havent been using the warmer anymore and thus havent been using the kit unless its warm out (warm enough for the tank to be up to pressure).
 
I was the string along "other TR vendor"..

Whatever, dude.. you see it the way you want and Ill see it the way I want. Water under the bridge at this point.
 
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