propane motors (inline 6's)

[292farmer]

who on here has or has had a propane 292 or any other 6? im curious as to how you guys feel about them how cost efficient they were, power and any other comments you guys have thanks!

[pritch]

I've never owned a propane-powered truck with any type motor, but I've rode in many. It always seems to boil down to how cheap propane is where you live. It seems like usually LPG is cheaper, but you have to use more of it to get as far as gasoline. It's my belief that it don't matter whether it's a v8 or I6 or Chevy or Ford or whatever, the motor will run fine, just not quite as strong.

Now-where I live there was an oil and gas boom in the mid 70's. At that time, LPG was an unwanted by-product and it was simply flared off. Then they built a terminal and trucks started to haul it off, but if you had a propane burner, you could wait until the middle of the night and drive up to the terminal and fill up for free. That ended when a guy pulled up in the middle of the day right in front of all the bosses and filled up his truck.

[Lippyp]

My 01 Blazer runs on both gas and well gas (LPG) that is, its not the greatest setup in the world being a single point system with the gas nozzle in the intake hose and tbh I think it needs a good service but I don't really notice that much of a difference on it power-wise and it runs very cleanly, oil doesn't get black really. The latest multi point injection systems are supposed to be another thing entirely and I may upgrade my setup to one in the future, these have one injector in each inlet tract in the manifold and are supposed to run just as well as on gas. its a 4.3V6 btw. Over here LPG is about half the price of regular gas.

[bigdog57]

I have ran propane on coulpe of trucks with a v8 with no problem. I just set my truck up with it but havent filled the tank yet to see howwell it runs.

[soxplayer]

Propane is nice but you do lose some power. It also was known to be hard on valves but I suspect it is no worse than unleaded. My father ran a 283 c-10 for over a decade on dual fuel and mostly ran propane unless he couldn't fill his tank. You should should move your vacuum advance to straight manifold vacuum on propane and maybe slip some lighter springs in the distributor. Propane wont ping and the bottom end torque till be much better with some extra advance. YOu can bump the base timing but this usually just makes the truck run tight at high rpm and lose power and mileage.

[Shaky]

Sealed Power (or Federal, or somebody) still makes LP pistons for the 292. I was thinking of using them in my 292 build just to up the compression ratio a little:

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=356071

[Shaky]

Here they are:

http://rockauto.com/dbphp/x,carcode,..._S_Piston.html

[292farmer]

thanks guys its been helpful wish i could got back to u all sooner but we just moved and service providers like to take their time. seems no one has had real bad experience with it
i read that propane is similiar to 110 octane fuel hence why they generally run higher comp but never seen them higher then 9:1 for stock so im wondering if i brought compression up to like 10-10.5 maybe it would make comparable power to gas? and maybe it would be more effecient too?.. does anyone know who besides i believe impco makes propane kits or has good in formation to research this?
the reason im, intersted in is is because my cousin has a 4.0 in his offroad jeep on propane i cant remember it had a cam and like 11.1 comp and it flies like a bat outa hell! however it is a light jeep for the most part with deep gearing.. thanks again everyone