The best thing ever to happen to combustion engine powered weed whacker is running on Propane. Most small engines that are infrequently used will have old gummed up fuel in them, running from a 1# propane bottle eliminates that problem.
Still I think a new 300hp engine that loses 20% is still "fairly powerful" don't you? I'd take 260hp if it meant the fuel was cheaper. -Curt Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:25:05 -0600 From: Randy Bennell <rbenn...@bennell.ca> To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> Subject: Re: [MBZ] And here we were complaining about fuel prices ... Message-ID: <4f203af1.5060...@bennell.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 25/01/2012 11:16 AM, E M wrote: > I don't know much about it either, but I do know you don't get much range > with a tank of NG, hence why there were used mostly in the city. That's > one reason they were used for city vehicles and taxis. They say it burns > very clean though, and when they were overhauling engines, noticed a big > difference. > > For awhile, a large percentage of taxis here (usually the older Crown Vics, > and Caprices) were using natural gas, along with city trucks and some > buses. For whatever reason, NG seems to have fallen out of favour. There > are more Toyota cabs running on gas now, and while most buses still run > diesel, we see more hybrid buses than NG ones. Over the last 6 months, > they have also removed many of the NG filling stations around town, saying > they just weren't profitable. > > It would appear, NG has fallen out of favour, and in it's place, hybrid > electric. I don't understand most of it, but I'm sure government > incentives, image, etc., play into it as much as anything here. > > Ed > 300E > > I suspect you mean they ran on propane. We had that for a long while here to. Most of the cabs were running propane for a few years as it was a lot cheaper than gasoline and they were running big old GM and Ford products for the most part. Propane is essentially a liquid. NG has to be compressed so it tends to be a different thing to work with. The other thing is that there is a loss of power with such a conversion. I think they suggest a 15 to 20 % loss of power on a conversion from gasoline to propane. Go to NG and it is even lower. So, the big V8's were capable of losing some power and still running fine around town as cabs. Not so sure it would be as easy to do with a small engine. Not many of the big old engines still running around out there. I suspect that one of the reasons they fell from favour is that the conversions were for carbed cars and there have been few of those since about 1986. I don't think the fuel injection setups are as easy to convert. Randy _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
