Lpg tuneup london

I wanted to ask advice on having the hijet 1.3 LPG system checked as it never has been since new in 2003 and is now at nearly 40,000 miles.
I felt a auto gas shop would be best but don,t know if this is needed .
Battersea autogas london does a mini lpg tune/check for £55 but I am only aware of one small filter that my need checking and little else?
Does anyone have a opinion if this is a waste of time as the vehical was serviced by a regular mechanic in may 2011.
It was getting about 5miles to a litre of lpg pre- may regular tune up but the van is loaded quite heavy, it was better when new with same load..
I imagined lpg sensors may be tested or perhaps a gas metering adjustment but have no idea ?

A problem to note since new that crept up ie got worse over 3years is that it hesitates on petrol and has never run right on it .
The essex daihatsu garage later blamed the injectors in 2007 (after saying it was running perfect) which it was not as it stumbled /hesitated at the lights outside immediatly on petrol.
I realise the petrol system is nothing to do with LPG system but best to mention it, as it runs fine on LPG although uses alot.

Has anyone ever had a lpg tuneup or can advise on battersea auto gas at all.
The guy who owns this shop is claudia a Italian chap but is not hands on, having polish lads,although is on a LPG coversion forum.

Something isn't right with the core fundamentals on that.

How does it score on the exhaust emission sheet you got from last years MOT?

Injectors is a bullshit answer - one of those fob you off out of sight replys

Things to check are - MAP sensor - TPS sensor - Lambda sensor. - and the vacume pipes to the map sensor and gubbins.

Quallity of fuel/water in fuel - as it never gets used. Fuel filter.


You shuold be getting a good solid 30mpg at least out of the LPG with normal city driving.

My ploy would be to attach your multimeter to the lambda sensor signal wire and see how the air/fuel mixture is running according to the volts out and this graph:-



14.7 is perfection - so between about 0.7volts and 0.3 volts is where you want it. above 0.8v your pissing away fuel being over rich, below 0.2v your going to cook it as its dangerously too lean.

Highlyjetted,
I have replied twice but computor lost it twice dam it, like the van the computor needs a real mechanic next.
Figures were CO % vol -0.004
LPG ppm vol -60
This was May 2011 MOT.(Another year Lpg ppm vol was 80?)
Checked two old invoices no fuel filter replacement so will see what Battersea Autogas say next week.
Also can ring too see if fuel filter was replaced with Essex daihatsu but doubt it.

Pity you don,t work down this way,I need thinking out of the box tuning work and less Mc Donalds no1 or no2 tune up service.
So much time and money wasted I need a experienced hijet garage for LPG and petrol.
I can see this going round in circles like previously but hope otherwise.
So thankyou for your detailed reply and time spent.
Those fuel ratio figures are interesting and how you obtained them also for possible future exhaust and KN filter changes would be needed.

With figures like that it looks like the sniffer pipe never even went up the exhaust pipe!!

I really don't think the fuel filter is your fault - but it was worth just mentioning. In the hundred I have swapped i've never seen one dirty enough to cause a fault BUT if the petrol was never used (always ran on gas due to the running issue) it could be contaminated with water. This would be a last resort if I couldn't find an electrical fault on it anywhere - and I bet I would swap it at the customers expense and it wouldn't solve anything.

Forget dealerships they are clueless - just parts fitters, and bad at that too. No diagnostic ability what so ever. They follow flow charts - badly.

I'd be tempted to go see an auto-electrician instead because I don't think you have any fundamental mechanical issues, more sensors and setup issues. Otherwise find a little private garage where you talk direct to the mechanic, and one thats not a pig thick grease monkey with a filthy workshop covered in scrap.

I've worked at so many garages i've lost count, but left due to falling out with the 'management'. I wont work for someone who rips people off, tells lies, fits unrequired parts, charges people when they haven't fixed the fault - so that puts 99.9% of garages out of the question!

Good luck!

Yes my post ,experiences and future tune up concerns were about ...exactly what you have described.
Probably more so than the technical info you have givern,first things first etc but you need to be aware as possible with as much info as possible when looking for somewhere.
Thanks for the reply its better than great I can only hope to get further replys on here.

I just could,nt ever put it the way you have because I,m not in the trade with the knowledge but its sums it up .

Its probably one of the best posts on here for hijet owners needing garages in reality.

Hijet van owners need to be aware of these facts and I was not, although Acton Daihatsu before they got robbed and shut down seemed to be better than the rest and aware of the electrical side as noted.
I was gutted afterwards but not as much as the mechanics that lost a lifes worth of tools collected for work.
I hope they got some payback.

I swallowed a few bitter pills via dealerships, the time wasted was alot, not to mention money and no result sometimes repeatedly except basic plugs and filters.
I had two new 1.3lpg hilets at that time so it was two fold ,now just having one I would like to have it running its best.
I am hitting walls though finding somewhere so your statements of probability (ie water in fuel) as in the process of elimination are real good.
Just this finding a combo spark/mechanic is proving a search, like Oneil says- try a little harder go a little further .
I would have to think about driving up to cheshire garage though thats hell of a long one although I did cornwall once?

I need to find this hijet sparky/mechanic for annual use also so I have someone who can tune it if I ever put a better exhaust and filter on it in the future otherwise its a waste of time.

I always came on here hoping for a bit of direction as a working van is a little different and needs turn key reliability.

I have a Piaggio Porter brochure which shows fuel consumption as:

Fuel Consumption at constant 90kph, fully laden
Petrol 130 kph max speed, 8.3 l/100km, 34 mpg, 7.48 mpl
LPG 130 kph max speed, 10 l/100km, 28.25 mpg, 6.22 mpl

The Porter is a Daihatsu Hijet 1.3 with a different badge.
The figures for mpg and mpl are my conversions; Piaggio only show metric values, being Italian!
130kph = 81.25mph
90kph = 56.25mph

If you are getting 5mpl it doesn't seem too far out but could probably be improved.

As a guide, I had my 1 litre converted last year and average about:

Petrol 7.24 l/100km, 39.02 mpg, 8.58 mpl
LPG 8.86 l/100km, 31.9 mpg, 7.02 mpl

However, my MPV is used as a car rather than a van and doesn't carry heavy loads.

I also saw a magazine article some time ago which suggested that you should make sure the petrol side is running properly first then tune the lpg side to match. They gave an example showing laptop readouts with the parameters but I can't remember what they were.

It has also been suggested that ordinary garages won't touch lpg at all, or try their best to avoid it, as they simply don't understand it and wished it would go away!

One other problem is that lpg garages seem to deal with one or two makes only. If you have another lpg system make you may be invited to go away. That happened to a neighbour, he eventually tracked an agent down to somewhere close to the midlands which was a bit of a trek. So the moral is get the vehicle converted yourself by someone in the locality so that you do not have far to go for servicing.

Your Acton garage sounds ok. A lot of the systems are Italian made and Poland is, I believe, something like the second largest European market for lpg conversions. So the expertise could well be there.

Hey Bushwacker.
The Acton daihatsu garage is shut for a quite a few years now as gypsys got it twice forcing it to close down as tools were stolen.
It was ok for what we needed and they fixed sliding doors, that actually fell off one van.
The hesitation never really went away on petrol but this one van was so busy we just ran gas and got a nasty reminder on rare petrol occasions.

As Highlyjetted states, heres a example, we took the two vehicals twice or thrice each too the original dealership too adjust the sliding doors so they would shut like normal.
As would be expected on new vehicals all doors should close shut but they did,nt slide shut in this case.

They never did fix any sliding doors closing on mutiple occasions on either of two vehicals over 2-3 years.
They could not adjust a sliding door, it just never happened so we gave up on both vehicals.
In the end the side sliding door fell off one van and we caught it in our arms thats why we looked and found the closer Acton garage after 3 years trying at the dealership.
After Acton closed went too another dealer, Woodfield essex but hopefully never again.

The Autogas Battersea is a shared LPG conversion garage with two young guys in it,one a polish mechanic (that I saw) so yes could well be ok but I was,nt convinced it is what I need ,more so after listening to Highlyjetted on electrics.

I think you are right the LPG consumption is probably close but could be a little better maybe if the petrol running is sorted first.

Sorry, misremembered the name whilst typing. I meant Battersea.

Hey Bushwacker
Your mpg figures are quite detailed so I will keep those as a ref to go by, thanks very informative.

Glad it was useful.