Compressed Natural Gas

06redf250 · Dec 27, 2012

my dad has now came up with a CNG theory that it boost's fuel milage, and power on diesel engines. has anyone dared tried to inject natural gas on your powerstroke?
I would think it would work like propane, but I have no idea

Fordguy100 · Dec 27, 2012

I heard its better than propane for fuel economy, costs, power, etc.

I also hear it is expensive as hell to set up a system. CNG tanks are $$$$

John@Outlaw_Diesel · Dec 27, 2012

Well I don't know if this is saying much, but a customer of ours just put one on his 6.0. I think it has gained around 7mpg to 10 mpg. Ill have to ask him for you. We priced kits out for him and they were around $3,500 I believe. They can't be to hard to install, because we installed egr delete, injectors, and exhaust for him. Then he did the CNG kit on his own.

dentexpowerstroke · Dec 27, 2012

We build a lot of trucks at work (peterbilt) that are cng and lng so it is viable.

Big monk · Dec 27, 2012

I know chesapeake energy has most of their fleet trucks running off natural gas, seems to hold perfectly fine.

Keith.........your petercars aren't hanging to well......

campbellflage · Dec 27, 2012

7-10mpg gain? I'd like to see some numbers on that.

Buffalo444 · Dec 27, 2012

campbellflage said:
7-10mpg gain? I'd like to see some numbers on that.

It does go up that much, or more. But thats in miles per gallon of diesel. You still have the cng consumption (which I believe is about 1/3-1/2 the rate of diesel consumtion, so 60-90 mpg cng, but I may be remembering the wrong statistics. Lol) but cng is like a buck fifty a gallon, so your overall cost per mile in fuel goes down significantly.

sent from the rust monster

Buffalo444 · Dec 27, 2012

06redf250 said:
my dad has now came up with a CNG theory that it boost's fuel milage, and power on diesel engines. has anyone dared tried to inject natural gas on your powerstroke?
I would think it would work like propane, but I have no idea

Ive seen evidence supporting boost in economy but not power. If anything it may lose a small amount of power.

sent from the rust monster

campbellflage · Dec 27, 2012

Buffalo444 said:
It does go up that much, or more. But thats in miles per gallon of diesel. You still have the cng consumption (which I believe is about 1/3-1/2 the rate of diesel consumtion, so 60-90 mpg cng, but I may be remembering the wrong statistics. Lol) but cng is like a buck fifty a gallon, so your overall cost per mile in fuel goes down significantly.

sent from the rust monster

I'll have to do some checkin in to this.. Interesting numbers. I just remember reading every saying that propane makes micro cracks or something along those lines in the block and cause major failure. Wonder if this is like that, and if the numbers are so good why are more people not running it? Not doubting, just curious. I have a jetta for my mpg car (42mpg tdi) but it would be nice to squeeze some more outta the truck.

powerSmokin · Dec 27, 2012

Has anyone looked into what the pistons look like after a while when running this setup and what it may do to glow plugs? I know City of Seattle is supposed to be converting all of their vehicles to straight natural gas. There is plenty of it so I don't see why not.

Buffalo444 · Dec 27, 2012

campbellflage said:
I'll have to do some checkin in to this.. Interesting numbers. I just remember reading every saying that propane makes micro cracks or something along those lines in the block and cause major failure. Wonder if this is like that, and if the numbers are so good why are more people not running it? Not doubting, just curious. I have a jetta for my mpg car (42mpg tdi) but it would be nice to squeeze some more outta the truck.

Cng is waaaay more stable than propane, and supposedly can't predetonate and csuse that kind of damage. I would venture to guess the reason more do not run it is because of the fact its exponentially more expensive (4-5k at least) so you wont see a return on your investment unless you run a TON of miles.

Rough math puts it as a 20% increase in economy. Say a kit is 4k. In order to break even you have to spend 16k in fuel. Thats not how much joe blow diesel owner spends in a year, or two, or 5.

sent from the rust monster