To whom are you addressing?

 

cjsdad1. I thought it might be obvious because of the exclamation points in his post. Guess not.

 

Only one per sentence, I used them to end the sentence. I even capitalized the beginning of the next sentence too! That is a subject I feel very strongly about, don't like my writing style? Don't read it!

 

Sheesh, if that's really what gets your panties up in a wad, you should go find and talk to some of those families that lost their homes and are living in cardboard boxes!!

 

You ever pick a kids scalp off a tree while their parents are 100 feet down the road? How about pull a trooper out of a car after his feet and lower legs have been burned off and he is still alive? I have. I spent 25 years taking care of people's catastrophes at their houses and scraping their kids off of trees and roads, so I've been there and done that. It's hardly anything worthy of comparison to being annoyed by punctuation, but if that's how you see it then so be it. Dopey comment and suggestion.

 

What does any of this have to do with someone's punctuation of choice?

 

I commented on punctuation and you decided that if that were an issue for me I should go find people who have lost their houses and were living in boxes. I was merely pointing out that I have seen plenty of devastation without having to go find it, and that your comment was dopey. I suppose I could have also asked you what people living in boxes had to do with my not liking punctuation, but I'm sure you have some connection there that you will point out for me. You're very interested in a comment that wasn't even made to you. You should stick with the technical stuff which you are good at.

 

The point is you need to be qualified to run the fuel system pressure lines. Certified actually, but on occasion DIY happens. Just beware of the HP of compressed CNG. It can blow your skin off or burn your eyebrows off in an instant. Crackes will happen if the tubing/fuel lines aren't installed correctly. One can take the course and become an instant danger to himself and others around him. The hazards of these dry fuels shouldn't be taken lightly, just like open gasoline isn't taken lightly. Pigtails in the Stainless lines is one way to alieviate cracking. The fuel will get quite cold as it mt's out the tank and the pigtails allow for expansion/contraction.

 

Hello. I can weigh in on using CNG as a fuel. My daily driver is a Honda civic (sorry), but I went on a search because I've been seeing F150's around with CNG systems. At the filling station the other night I met a guy in the business. He was driving a factory converted F150. That sparked my interest because I'm not really happy on Bay Area freeways in a small car, but I like the carpool lane stickers and the low cost of operation.

I buy fuel at local filling stations because I live out in the country & I don't have natural gas at home (we heat with wood and LPG). This site will map out local stations nationwide: CNG stations and Prices for the US, Canada and Europe

The F150 that I saw had a 17 gallon equivalent tank (not bad). The equivalent means that CNG is never a liquid...it is a gas, so it is never in a form that can really be measured in gallons. Accordingly, a unit of measure has been developed...the GGE or gallon of gas equivalent. Around 5.6 pounds of natural gas has the same BTU value as a gallon of gas, hence the GGE.

There is a lot of disinformation out there, most published by oil companies, who claim that you'll see significant power losses if you run on CNG. That is really only a half truth. The issue is that CNG has an octane rating of 126. That means that it resists lighting off in the engine. Honda's answer to that is to run a much higher compression ratio in the little 1.8 liter engine (12.1:1). I'm guessing that the stock compression ratio in the F150 is around 8:1, so yes...it'll produce less power when running on the 126 octane fuel. The Honda 1.8 CNG engine puts out pretty much the same power as the gas version which has a lower compression ratio. All that being said, if you have a big V8, you'll probably be OK with the slightly reduced power unless you currently are running at full throttle all of the time.

Does anyone out there have an F150 with the factory installed system? I'm curious to find out what years they were made....the data is hard to find. I do know that the big 3 are coming out with 3/4 ton trucks this year, but they run around $50k. The CNG trucks are around $9k more than the gas equivalent truck. They are, by the way, dual fuel trucks with a small gas tank which they use for starting, and for if you run out of CNG in an area without a CNG station. I don't want to spend $50k, so I'm looking at the F150's.

Dan

 

It is the same way with using alky for a fuel. You get a lot more bang for the buck by raising the compression ratio. Flex fuel is a better answer as the compression ratio is higher from the OEM but not so high as not to run gasoline. It is tru we are at the mercy of big oil and they raise the price 20 + cents everytime the markets go up. Still gas and ethanol are plentiful and parts for them are also available much cheaper than CNG which has to have all new parts every time a repair is done. Since looking at buying a new fuel system every 75,000 mile is quite expensive?

 

Please elaborate on this. Why new parts every time, and why a new system every 75K miles?

 

Heard a little info on the radio from Clark Howard last night about the natural gas conversion and some new ideas coming from CarLab. The idea is to use a smaller tank in the vehicle saving money and weight being hauled and intermixing the fuel gasoline/natural gas to run each as needed. You get the performance from the gasoline for power when needed then the cruising speed of natural gas when not accelerating. Here is an article about their work...

Wheels - The Nuts and Bolts of Whatever Moves You
JULY 9, 2013, 6:00 AM
CarLab Mixes Natural Gas and Gasoline for More Efficient Vehicle

By MATTHEW L. WALD
When engineers convert gasoline cars to run on natural gas as well, they typically install a large pressurized tank and figure that the driver will go 100 miles or more, use up the gas and then switch back to gasoline. But for cars in the United States, the idea hasn’t caught on.

Now Eric Noble of the CarLab, a California consulting company, is trying a different approach. At a recent meeting in Washington, the Alternative Clean Transportation Expo, he showed off several vehicles with relatively tiny natural gas tanks – not much bigger than the propane tank in a backyard gas grill – with an all-gas range of 55 miles or so. Unlike most bi-fuel vehicles, there is no switch to change back and forth between natural gas and gasoline. And at any given moment, the car could be running on a mixture of the two.

The biggest shift was rethinking the size of the natural gas tank. Natural gas has never worked out for private vehicles in the United States because there are few public refueling stations and the cost of conversion is high. But Mr. Noble said his new approach could make it practical by drastically cutting the cost. Mr. Noble’s idea was that rather than installing as big a natural gas tank as possible, hogging most of a vehicle’s cargo capacity and forcing a sizable investment in the tank itself, he installed a tank just about big enough for a day’s driving. As a result, his 2012 Hyundai Sonata Limited, which has a natural gas range of just 56 miles, was converted for $2,600, he said. A 2012 Mustang GT, in a shade of red that would make a fire engine blush, has a 55-mile natural gas range and cost $2,900 to convert.

The problem with a big tank, he said, is that “you couldn’t get the payback to work.” But a large tank, he said, is not necessary, because 95 percent of private cars are used to travel 45 to 55 miles per day.

“If you drop the size of the tank, you lower the cost,” Mr. Noble said.

His vehicles were meant to be paired with a home refilling unit, which the driver would use every night. Sixty percent of households already have natural gas connections, he said. A compressor that could take all night to fill a car’s tank could be relatively inexpensive, and deployment of his cars will rely on invention of a cheap, low-capacity compressor, he said. Eaton and other companies are working on such a device, aiming for a price of $500.

In fact, development of a cheap natural gas compressor has been identified by the federal government as a crucial ingredient of low-cost, clean, secure energy for transportation. Through the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, known as Arpa-e, the government is giving $3.4 million to Eaton to design a radically different compressor. Engineers hope the compressor will be more durable and efficient, and cheaper to produce than those now available. In fact, at $500 the price would be one-tenth the price of conventional systems.

Part of the trick is figuring out how to remove the heat created by compression. Eaton’s innovation is to use a liquid piston – that is, a slug of liquid instead of a piece of steel. The liquid forms a good seal on the cylinder wall, and it also sucks heat out of the gas being compressed, which is important when compressing a gas at a ratio of 250:1. Cooler gas is easier to compress in the cylinder.

This is not Eaton’s first venture into a hydraulic approach. It also used a liquid piston to store energy lost in truck braking, keeping the energy as pressure and turning it back into torque when the truck accelerated. This created a hybrid that was hydraulic instead of electric. The idea caught the attention of Arpa-e.

Congress established Arpa-e as the energy version of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which gives money to high-risk, high-reward ideas that the private sector will not finance. In all, Arpa-e is sponsoring 13 natural gas storage experiments, many of which could help make natural gas vehicles more successful.

There is another twist, though. The CarLab vehicle runs on natural gas during periods when demand on the engine is low, such as during highway cruising. When the accelerator pedal is floored, the system automatically switches to gasoline, which provides more power. In intermediate conditions it burns a mixture of gasoline and natural gas. In test drives, the CarLab’s vehicles consumed 87 percent natural gas and 13 percent gasoline, and that was in very aggressive driving, Mr. Noble said.

The reason that gasoline is sometimes needed is that natural gas provides less power. That problem could be avoided by burning natural gas at a much higher compression ratio — it has an octane rating of 130 and gives more power if burned at higher pressure and temperature — but the engine remains optimized for gasoline, not natural gas.

Theoretically, the CarLab’s gas-gasoline hybrids are like the Toyota Prius or Chevrolet Volt, which use multiple energy sources to increase efficiency. But the CarLab vehicle’s small tank, which is tucked under the floor of the trunk, is a lot cheaper than the batteries the Prius and Volt carry.

 

That's a novel idea...perhaps they can call it a hybrid vehicle!

 

U can't take the regulators apart and get repair kits. U have to buy new regulators. Since the fuel is of such high pressures it is very hard on the pressure regulators. Usually the power drops significantly when U start to have problems. These parts have to be replaced as they fail with new parts. For safety reasons most mechanics that are certified to repair CNG systems replace the working parts with new. They won't peace meal it together. It can create very unsafe situations. The tanks are certified and need recertification. If U think in hours of operation 2500 is a predictable area of problems beginning. 2500 X 33 mph average is what? 75,000 to 100,000 mile area of extreme problems with the CNG fuel system. Then U got the problems in the Compressor area in UR home. The Compressor area has been a real snafu and even most costly when CNG was introduced into the Industrial usage for mobile fuel systems. An then U have an oil/lubricant in the fuel situation that happens. This problem can cause a severe gunk in the engine problem. The next owners of these vehicles will pay dearly. With for warned knowledge of these symptoms one can predict his happiness over 10 years of ownership. Fuel injection, pressure regulation, leaks, and fuel tank / fuel compressor failures plus contamination of the fuel itself / clogged filters and genuine filth there. It isn't the clean kitchen stove put in UR tank that U will soon realize after ownership of some years. In mho U are far ahead to purchase a flex fuel E85/gasoline powered vehicle than CNG in most areas. I understand there are states where CNG is taxed favorable but that will certainly change also.

Problem with a LPG fueled vehicle is a shortage of LPG increases the price significantly. Otherwise the motor will last a whole lot longer if the Oil is changed. This shortage of fuel is a common problem when it becomes popular. CNG and electricity production world wide will surely kill its affordability soon also thanks to NASA's building of huge liquefied CNG ships.