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Very few cars & trucks still on the road have carburetors. They went out in the mid to late 1970s.
And I believe propane requires a new carburetor and not just adjustments to an existing one.
Propane through a modern, computer controlled car or truck, with not work without MAJOR factory level re-engineering.
Alan
I know that there are people that reprogram their automobile ROMs. I think that altering timing, pressure, and amount of fuel injection is not going to be a problem.
It's the fuel system plumbing that's going to be a problem for home rebuilders.
Why not just swap out the engine and fuel tank when your old system breaks down at 200K miles? Use a new system from GM or Chrysler or Toyota that is already designed for their model for that year? Just have them make a million cars and two million engines and fuel tanks.
Generally, by the time a vehicle's engine has worn out in normal use, so has much of the rest of the vehicle. It makes more sense to recycle it and build a whole new one, with all the improvements of the intervening time.
"And I believe propane requires a new carburetor and not just adjustments to an existing one."
That's correct. It's usually referred to as a "dry gas" carburetor. Popular with 4X4 off-roaders as it allows for the truck to operate at all sorts of extreme angles without starving it of gas like a normal carb/float system would. Also doesn't spew gas all over the place if you accidently flip it.
"Propane through a modern, computer controlled car or truck, with not work without MAJOR factory level re-engineering."
Ehhh. Well the original (gasoline) fuel injection assembly would most likely be useless. I can't say for sure though as I'm not sure of their flow capability, or whether they'd freeze from the pressure release, and the pressure regulation system would surely be useless. However, beyond that, a place like ZDyne can take a car's computer and re-write the coding to change the fuel injection duration (the fuel injector is just an on-off solenoid that raises and lowers a pintle either allowing fuel to flow, or disallowing fuel to flow...so on any cycle the length of time the pintle stays open is what matters). By changing the fuel injection mapping you can control the mixture. Or, (likely easier) you could disable the original fuel injection system (perhaps just using switches to turn off the injectors themselves, meaning you could turn them back on) and put a dry gas carburetor in behind the throttle body - the rest of the system should act the same (delivering spark at the correct time, etc).
So while likely technically feasible...in practice, a bit rediculous and I doubt some poor farmer is going to want to pony up $2,000 bucks or something for some kit to switch to propane on a whim.
That is what companies like Impco do for their dual-fuel systems. The gasoline injector systems do not have the pressure-handling capability to work with liquid propane, the thermal issues of the boiling liquid plus the reduced lubricating capacity would make injector compatibility an issue, and the system as a whole would be subject to vapor lock. The dual-fuel system Impco made some years back just hijacked the ECU inputs from the oxygen sensor to make it think everything was hunky dory, while using the signals from the mass-air sensor to control mixture in the optimum (lean of stoichiometric) range for propane (I'm not sure what they do to meet today's emissions regs).
Lean-burning a gaseous fuel like Hythane with a reasonably compatible flame speed might be fairly easy to do, but it would still require a second fuel system and a highly modified or secondary ECU to meet emissions. In other words, not a job for casual tinkerers working with off-the-shelf parts.