My Lpg Aygo

March 4, 2014

Well I've just posted a topic asking for help so in exchange this is one offering some advice re a LPG conversion on an Aygo.

It's a 56 plate Aygo Black and I bought it with 45,000 on the clock in May 2012. I had it converted to LPG in July 2012 by Leeds LPG at a cost of £850.

The Conversion

I chose Leeds LPG for two reasons. They were by far the cheapest around and a friend of a friend had used them twice and recommended them. A 35 litre tank was fitted in place of the spare wheel so I had to buy a can of tyre foam (£6) in case of a puncture. It cost £850 for the actual conversion and then I went to my local UKLPG approved garage and had the worked checked and the car added to the official UKLPG register which the insurance companies recognise. This was a further £65 for the inspection and then £35 for remedial work that Leeds LPG hadn't done to standard (they should have fitted a strengthening bracket as the fuelling poing is in the bumper which obviously isn't solid enough but for the sake of £35 I wasn't too fussed). The mechanic said that other than the supporting bracket issue he would go as far as to say it was a good conversion, which was him commenting on a competitor so it's a reliable review.

The Drive

The way LPG works is the car fires up on petrol and when it reaches 45 degrees Celsius it switches to LPG. The only time I have ever noticed it do this is while under heavy acceleration while joining a motorway. It hesitated for half a second (no more) and then carried on as normal. The other effect is that it can drop bhp by up to 10%. With the Aygo only starting at 64bhp if there was any difference I didn't notice it.

The Costs

The only noticeable extra cost is the LPG system needs servicing. I do mine once a year at a cost of around £100 a service. It is obviously something else to go wrong so there may be other issues later but nothing so far.

The Savings

My drive to work consists of two possible routes. One is 40 miles of single carriageway roads that are very hilly, overtaking is difficult and it's quite stop and start (the A68 in County Durham if anyone knows it). The other is 45 miles but is more motorway. Either way it's not good for fuel consumption especially in a little 1 litre. In the two months prior to the conversion I averaged 45mpg. The LPG conversion reduces mpg and I have achieved an average of around 40mpg ever since. I pay 64p a litre for LPG at 40mpg against £1.30 a litre for petrol at 45mpg. My mileage is approx 20k a year so on petrol it would be roughly £2573. On LPG it's roughly £1400. So in Year 1 I saved £223. Year 2 and each year after I'll save £1173.

Overall I've saved a good deal of cash so far. In hindsight given the journey I do I might have achieved similar savings in something bigger like a Yaris (or even a Corolla/Auris) which would cope better with the miles I do and probably get not too dissimilar mpg figures. But for someone who does similarly high mileage to me in an Aygo I would definitely recommend getting your car converted. At the end of the day if you had £1000 in a high interest account it would not return the £223 I saw in the first year never mind the £1173 in the subsequent years. I'd get it done again in a heartbeat.

Hope that was of some use to someone anyway and if you've got any questions I'll do my best to answer them. Cheers all.

March 4, 2014

I've seen this done on an aygo, a specialist dealer buys them and converts them to LPG, then sells them on converted. I saw how it worked on a youtube video