LPG in a Bay
This page shows my DIY LPG conversion on my 1972 type 2 westfalia. I will show some pictures, plus point out certain problems that you might come accross when installing the kit.

 

The above picture shows the position of the tank under the rock/roll bed. I found this position the best place, better than the other option which is a tank that fits in the spare wheel well, this is because it is more difficault to run the pipes, and pipe to the gas filler. This is the standard size tank, but you can get them smaller or bigger. but when ordering the tank, they will ask you to measure the inside of the box where it will be housed, when doing this, remember to allow for the gadge/sender unit device, and the plastic box that it is housed in, plus the vent pipe, and the tank brackets. otherwise like me you will have to do some adaptions to make it all fit. I.E. cut the wooden floor base out, plus put a strip of wood on the top where the bed base sits on to raise it slightly. The sender unit box will have to sit at a 30% angle on the tank, that is about 10 past the hour if you look at a clock face. This is explained in the instructions anyway.You do lose some space, but as you can see you can still fit some stuff around the tank. at least with a westy, you have under the side seat to fall back on.

 

The above picture shows in my opinion the most fiddly part of the set up. It is the probe that heats the gas. Being an aircooled, this is one of the very few ways that you can get enought heat for the gas. What you have to do is to drill a hole in the side of your silencer the size of the ferral that you get with the kit, weld it in half way into the exhaust, then insert the probe all the way in, and screw it up on the threaded end of the ferral. Fuzzyjuice who I got the kit from made it sound so simple, but be warned, you will likely have to do some hacking about to the inside baffles of your exhaust to get the probe in. it depends on the exhaust that you have, I have got a genuine vw one, so there is probebly more inside it than the cheaper ones. I found the only place that it would go in was right at the end on the bumper side, on the left hand side of the van if you are looking at it from the back. it took me most of the day to do this, after much hacking about.

 

The picture above shows where we found the best place to house the vaporiser/reducer was to the spare wheel well,it was well out of the way here. you do get a mounting bracket with it. The lpg valve we chose to mount just underneath the vaporiser. The screw with a slotted head that you can see in the middle of the rubber hose, is what adjusts the amount of gas that goes into the carb. It works the same way as the idler screw on the carb.

 

The picture above shows where we chose to house the petrol valve , because it was one of the few places that we could put it. We didn't want to screw it to the tin ware incase we I needed to take it off in the future. There is an adjustment screw on the bottom of the valve, but you shouldn't need to touch it. We didn't need to, as it was pre set.

 

You also get with the kit this collar that fits ontop of your carb that the other end of the rubber hose clamps onto. you simply rempve your air filter off the top of the carb, slot the collar on, do up the three screws that you get with it, then put the airfilter onto the new collar. They do say in the kit that these collars can vary depending on the carb you have, if it is wrong, you have to send it back for the corect one. so it would pay you to tell them when you order the kit what type of carb you have. In my case it was the correct one anyway.

 

The above shows the dash mounted switch which switches it from petrol to gas, The red light on the left means that it is on petrol. You have to start it on petrol until the exhaust gets hot, which is about 50 yards travelling, you then put the swich to the middle, which cuts off the petrol, then as the engine begins to die, switch it to the right which instantly cuts in the gas. the green lights on the right show how much gas you have in the tank. all 4 shows it is full. as the pressure drops in the tank the lights gradually go out.

 

This was the easiest place to put the filler in relation to where the gas tank is, it is also on the same side as the petrol filler. Fixing the filler on is definatly a two handed job, as it is very fiddly.