I would put this in the alternative fuel section but it's more about the truck than that. I am thinking of buying one of these 7700 trucks which is supposed to be a dedicated CNG vehicle. It has a tank in the bed of the truck, close to the cab, I assume this is connected to more tanks below, or maybe the gas tanks are still there or missing? I want to use the truck to haul pallets of merchandise around town, no more than 50-75 miles from home. There's plenty of CNG fueling stations around, two very close to me, and five more over in Dallas, all of those are public pumps that take credit cards.

What I want to know is, as I expand my business and might consider picking up merchandise from other locations, would it be possible to convert the dedicated CNG truck to Bi-Fuel so I can cover distances like from Fort Worth west, where the next nearest public pump is about 80 miles past the trucks maximum range? Or Austin, San Antonio, or Houston which have no public pumps? I won't have this issue if I go to Oklahoma City, there's CNG everywhere in that state. But I might want to haul things to and from Houston since we have family there, and I'd hate to get stuck and have to tow it 200-250 miles just to refuel.

Do the dedicated CNG trucks have gasoline tanks still under the truck? Would I be able to simply go to a junkyard, find a 1997-up F-150, grab the tanks and lines, and bolt it all in?

 

Nothing is ever simple with these trucks.

I'm gonna make an educated guess and say the conversion would be costly, but not impossible. Ford did build bi-fuel prep trucks (either LP or CNG and gas, iirc). Most of these were fleet sales. Government agencies have quite a few.

As a note, the 7700 did not readily come as a CNG or bi-fuel truck in 2000... that started in 2001. Having said that, a government agency may have purchased converted trucks from the late 90's.

As far as the gas tank goes - look underneath the driver's side for the tank, just inside the frame rail. It's black plastic.

-Kerry

 

TTT...Bump...It's that time of year again, folks. Big airport near me (take 3 guesses, and the first two don't count) is selling off a ton of used trucks, vans, cop cars, and Civics, all powered by CNG. And at the top of my list is the 7700/F250LD trucks with CNG tanks. Why? Because CNG is dirt cheap, I have a dozen pumps within 100 mile radius, and I need a truck to haul stuff. I don't care that it's safety school bus yellow. I don't care that my range is only 200 miles or so. CNG is CHEAP!

So I've got a choice here, I can either go CHEAP and get a truck for around $2000-$2500 that runs on CNG only, or I can spend $4000-$4500 and get a dual fuel model that would let me go out of town. My other out-of-town option for hauling would be to rent a trailer and pull it with my '84 Suburban which gets 9-10mpg. What kind of mpg's do these dual-fuel trucks get when running on just gasoline? I'd have to switch to gas once the CNG runs out, probably somewhere between here and there and I'll never know if "there" has CNG or not until I GET "there".