This is the third year that I've had my LPG system, fitted by Warrington Autogas and Autogas99. Every year, from October onwards the LPG system is of no use, I've had to switch back to running on Petrol in the winter. This is despite repeated visits to the installer every winter (and more in between)
The system runs lumpy, fells like it's continually about to stall and often cuts out at junctions.
In short, whilst the LPG system is out of it's formal 2 year retailers warranty, (however, not out of the Supply of Goods and Services act implied "reasonable" period), it is now of little use for half of the year.
See here for the video of the car repeatedly stalling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRV0ds4ijkU
Thursday 2 December 2010
Thursday 6 May 2010
MORE Problems! Part 2
The replaced seal from the last post did not solve the problem and a new gas exchange unit had to be fitted. This solved the problem of the disapearing coolant, but soon after I discovered a crack in the cylinder head (this was not present when we changed the head gasket, which we originally thought was the cause of the water loss, but it turned out to be the lpg system).
In short, the LPG system has:
1) Not been usable every winter, despite repeated attempts to resolve
2) Prematurely sent a battery to it's early grave (although I appreciate that car batteries are consumable items and this may have needed to be changed eventually anyway)
3) Caused a cylinder head to crack due to overheating as a result of the water loss. Whilst Z22SE engines have been known to crack cylinder heads, they do this around the spark plug aperture due to overtightening. This crack is on the flat metal of the rear of the cylinder head. This is an expensive problem even for an experienced mechanic such as me. For a non mechanic this may very well mean an uneconomical repair i.e. over £1000 parts and labour.
In short, the LPG system has:
1) Not been usable every winter, despite repeated attempts to resolve
2) Prematurely sent a battery to it's early grave (although I appreciate that car batteries are consumable items and this may have needed to be changed eventually anyway)
3) Caused a cylinder head to crack due to overheating as a result of the water loss. Whilst Z22SE engines have been known to crack cylinder heads, they do this around the spark plug aperture due to overtightening. This crack is on the flat metal of the rear of the cylinder head. This is an expensive problem even for an experienced mechanic such as me. For a non mechanic this may very well mean an uneconomical repair i.e. over £1000 parts and labour.
MORE Problems!
The car had been losing water for a while.
When I took it in to a garage to diagnose the problem, it turned out there was gas getting in to the header tank system (this was diagnosed by putting a lighter to the header tank and seeing the air inside burn quite well!).
As a result of this I decided to get the head gasket changed to be on the safe side (as I thought a leak from the cylinder to the water jacket would cause LPG to blow through, and the car had done 98000 miles so thought it would be this).
Unfortunately this did not solve the problem, so I trotted on down to Autogas99 / Warrington Autogas's new premises, where they changed a seal inside the exchange unit and told me that the water I put in the system was too hard and had caused the seal to fail.
View the whole blog here http://lpgdreams.blogspot.com/
When I took it in to a garage to diagnose the problem, it turned out there was gas getting in to the header tank system (this was diagnosed by putting a lighter to the header tank and seeing the air inside burn quite well!).
As a result of this I decided to get the head gasket changed to be on the safe side (as I thought a leak from the cylinder to the water jacket would cause LPG to blow through, and the car had done 98000 miles so thought it would be this).
Unfortunately this did not solve the problem, so I trotted on down to Autogas99 / Warrington Autogas's new premises, where they changed a seal inside the exchange unit and told me that the water I put in the system was too hard and had caused the seal to fail.
View the whole blog here http://lpgdreams.blogspot.com/
Warrington Autogas now Autogas99
Warrington autogas have moved premises (quite a while ago now) to a garage in Widnes, and changed their name to Autogas99.
View the whole blog here http://lpgdreams.blogspot.com/
View the whole blog here http://lpgdreams.blogspot.com/
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