I am an owner of 2006 may model Indica Xeta. I am not a very frequent traveler and I have covered only 10000 kms within an year. Anyways with plans of going to and forth to office daily, I decided to convert my car to gas. After some initial problems which has been caused by some faulty installation, my car is running fine on gas and has covered 15,000 kms now.

I did a lot of research before going for it and finally got it installed. There are a lot of things to be considered before going for an LPG conversion. We may often see banners all around main roads saying "LPG conversion below Rs. 10000"and all. If we ask various installers, we can see a drastic variation in prices. The reason is just simple. We've got a lot of variants of gas conversion kits available in the market in which the full installation may vary from Rs 7,500 to Rs 75,000.

The first thing to decide while going for gas conversion is "Do you need a conversion?" If you're a frequent traveler or if your car has a bad cost per km figure, you can go for it. The most important things to remember are

1. Even if they claim almost same mileage from gas, you may get around 90% mileage of what you're getting on petrol

2. There will be a slight dip in power, which will be considerable if you use underpowered cars such as an alto.

3. There are rumors that A/C won't work with LPG or cooling is less, that is completely WRONG, A/C will work fine as long as your engine runs, there's nothing to do with LPG.

4. There may be some possibilities of complaints with valve after prolonged use of LPG, that is may be after 15-20 years, which is almost after the lifetime of a car.

5. If not fitted properly, or if a bad system installed you may risk the life of your ECU.

There are various types of gas conversion system

Open Loop or Closed Loop System :

This is the most conventional method of gas conversion. All the low cost systems ranging below 15,000 Rs may fall under this category. This system is an OPEN LOOP system, which means that it works just like old carburetor cars, while most of the new cars are MPFI with ECU, means they are CLOSED LOOP. The difference is that open loop system supplies a continuous amount of fuel despite of what the engine asks for. While closed loop system consists of systems which use feedbacks from the system like, throttle position, engine temperature and all to determine how much fuel to supply at any time. So simply saying a CLOSED LOOP system will be more fuel efficient and provides better life to your engines.

The decision is your's, whether to go for a cheap open loop one or closed loop system. If you use an open loop system, you may lack a lot of power and the power loss may be even more than 20% and drastic difference in mileage too. For powerful engines above 1.1 L, nobody will suggest an open loop system, unless his/her budget is under 15,000 Rs. So don't fall in the words of a dealer, just clarify all these things before getting the fitment.

LPG Tank :

Various types of LPG tanks available in the market, the one which fits in the stepiny part will be most suitable one for hatchback cars. It provides you with a practical capacity of 28-30 L of LPG. Tanks which has 100 L capacity are also available, but it will steal your dikky space.

Switching between Petrol and Gas :

Various kinds of switches are available in the market ranging from the convention toggle switch system to the most sophisticated temperature or RPM sensor switches. In old toggle switch model, you will have to manually switch between Gas and Petrol. The difficulty is that, for better life of your engine you must always start the engine on petrol, and onlyafter some time, you should switch to Gas. Automatic switches are there, for eg. RPM switch. They will automatically start the engine on petrol and only after engine reaching a particular rpm only, it will switch to gas and we can manually switch to petrol also if wanted. This is the most advisable mode of switching. The reasons are different

To avoid blocking of petrol injectors, you must run on petrol once in a while.

LPG system contains vaporizer which will effectively work only at a higher temperature than surroundings, which may so work only after engine coolant producing a small amount of heat.

Govt. Approval:

All the cars available in market till now, can be got approved by govt. for LPG conversion. To get govt. approval, the only thing you've to do is to make the conversion in some govt. approved retro fitment center. They will give you the installation details with Tank no and kit no. with which you can apply for govt. approval in your RTO office.

For any specific queries, feel free to contact me.