Annual gas price bitching thread

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oilycreek said:
Not sure what you mean by just any natural gas.
Anytime your want proof I will show you my truck running on gasoline, then on natural. It's only convenient if you have a home VRA. there's only 5 public stations, one in St. Catherine's, one in south Etobicoke, one in north Etobicoke one in Scarborough and one in Peterborough. There's a few garbage companies that have converted. In the USA they have approx. 700 stations because there's more government incentives. Here we are concentrating on fleet vehicles. My company has over 700 vehicles on natural gas. GFL in Orangeville just had a station installed, BFI in Barrie had one installed, there's one in Ottawa. Collins auto parts run their vehicles on natural. Most zambonis in the gta are on natural, tons of companies running natural gas fork lifts. There's over 250 VRA's in the gta.

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Yeh I was thinking of infrastructure support. Have you ever run out of NG because you couldn't find a filling station?

What if I'm doing a road trip? Would I be limited?
 
RockerGuy said:
Yeh I was thinking of infrastructure support. Have you ever run out of NG because you couldn't find a filling station?

What if I'm doing a road trip? Would I be limited?
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You can use a simple switch to enable/disable NG mode. The vehicle will always start on gasoline and once it is some heat in the motor it will automatically switch to NG. If you are on a road trip or somewhere that NG is not available you flip the switch to disable the NG system then you're running on gasoline only.
 
Torren said:
Both propane and NG converted vehicles have a habit of burning valves or holes in the tops of pistons. They run much leaner then a gas engine and have much higher cylinder temps. The newer systems are much better then the ones of even 10 years ago, but if not properly setup and maintained you could run into trouble. For a while in the late 90's early 2000's you could get a GM Savanna van with a factory NG system. They were pretty good.

I'd never buy a conversion vehicle because i've never seen a conversion that was not a complete hack job. The propane jobs were worse then the NG's but then again I saw alot more propane conversions then NG to be fair.




They get by this little restriction by dumping in way more fuel. A gas powered truck might consume 16L/100km but on NG or propane it will burn 30L/100km but since the fuel is a third of the price it's still cheaper.

It would be nice to have a NG vehicle and a filling station at home simply to not have to go to the gas station.
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Hack jobs, lmfao. I guess our 700 vehicles are hack jobs. There's only a couple places to get conversions done. One in St Catherine's, but I've never dealt with that guy, one in Brampton, he does most of our conversions and it probably the best around, and one in Peterborough. The only down side to a home VRA it's the time to fill. It takes from 12 to 15 hrs to fill a vehicle, but the savings are incredible. My truck is a 2012 gas 97000 and except for 7 oil changes last year there's no problems. We have vehicles with over 300000 on them and they run great, except they are older conversions and have tons of power loss.

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caboose56 said:
You can use a simple switch to enable/disable NG mode. The vehicle will always start on gasoline and once it is some heat in the motor it will automatically switch to NG. If you are on a road trip or somewhere that NG is not available you flip the switch to disable the NG system then you're running on gasoline only.
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Some vehicles are dedicated, which is stupid. I would never recommend anyone have a dedicated natural gas vehicle.

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oilycreek said:
Hack jobs, lmfao. I guess our 700 vehicles are hack jobs. There's only a couple places to get conversions done. One in St Catherine's, but I've never dealt with that guy, one in Brampton, he does most of our conversions and it probably the best around, and one in Peterborough. The only down side to a home VRA it's the time to fill. It takes from 12 to 15 hrs to fill a vehicle, but the savings are incredible. My truck is a 2012 gas 97000 and except for 7 oil changes last year there's no problems. We have vehicles with over 300000 on them and they run great, except they are older conversions and have tons of power loss.

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Drilling a hole into a plastic intake manifold and then using silicone to install hoses is a hack job. Re-routing the main engine harness from beside the engine to up and over the valve cover across a sharp bracket and directly onto the oil dipstick tube stud to make clearance for the fuel hoses only to have the engine harness either damaged or sliced nearly in two is a hack job. Tapping into the main harness with scotch blocks is a hack job.
Drilling holes in a stock thermostat instead of changing it out for a lower temp model is a hack job.

The poor quality workmanship made it easy to repair though. If a converted vehicle got towed in for a no start you would just look at anything the conversion place had touched and you'd generally find the issue.
 
.....or a bicycle!
 
I guess you should have your own business converting vehicles Lmao. Back in 1990 I was driving a converted van and even then I never had an issue with the Nat. You're 10 times more likely to have issues with the average new vehicles poor quality then you are with the NGV system.

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How much does it cost to rent the home VRA? I assume that means you simply pay the normal going rate for home NG use to refuel the vehicle?
 
Too good to be true. If there isn't a catch now there will be one soon. It's the way of the universe. Do NG prices ever fluctuate?
 
caboose56 said:
You can use a simple switch to enable/disable NG mode. The vehicle will always start on gasoline and once it is some heat in the motor it will automatically switch to NG. If you are on a road trip or somewhere that NG is not available you flip the switch to disable the NG system then you're running on gasoline only.
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Wasn't aware that it was switchable
 
caboose56 said:
How much does it cost to rent the home VRA? I assume that means you simply pay the normal going rate for home NG use to refuel the vehicle?
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I think we charge 90 a month. Err service it, change compressor head every 3k hrs. Yes it connects to your gas meter. They say the cost of the rental, hydro and Nat had it uses is about 45 cents a litre. It was around 39 cents up until the gas price increase, but Nat gas price will decrease again. The only reason for the increase was because of the abnormally cold winter. What most people don't know is, Enbridge buys natural gas at a low rate at the beginning of the winter, stores it in gas wells, but because the winter was so bad they ran out of had and had to buy it at higher price off the open market, but still charging the lower rates to customers. They can only apply for increases at certain times, unlike gas stations that can increase prices without having to apply for it. When they recoup the lost money, they will apply for a decrease.

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inreb said:
Too good to be true. If there isn't a catch now there will be one soon. It's the way of the universe. Do NG prices ever fluctuate?
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No catch, unlike gasoline, Nat gas prices don't fluctuate every day. You could go a year without a change in price, if you have a vra you pay the same price as you do with your other gas alliances.

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inreb said:
Too good to be true. If there isn't a catch now there will be one soon. It's the way of the universe. Do NG prices ever fluctuate?
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To me it sounds like there are a few pretty big catches, one being that there are only 5 refueling stations in Ontario and two being that it takes 12 - 14 hours to refuel at home.

If you started fueling it last night at 11pm you might be ready to go now, or may have to wait a couple more hours. Who has that kind of time? Sure you can run it on petro, but where is the advantage then?

If you have to go anywhere more than 1/2 a tank of fuel away, again you are running on petro, so where is the advantage again?

In the past I considered getting a vehicle that runs on propane as it is a lot more available in cities as most taxis run on propane, and propane is also considerably cheaper than petro, but I don't drive enough to make going that route worthwhile.
 
oilycreek said:
The conversion would depend on the millage you drive. I wouldn't recommend it if you don't drive a lot. Conversions start at 5k

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Gas prices will only increase!
I'll keep my eye on this & when the price of gas goes to high heaven, this might be a viable option

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Diesel said:
To me it sounds like there are a few pretty big catches, one being that there are only 5 refueling stations in Ontario and two being that it takes 12 - 14 hours to refuel at home.

If you started fueling it last night at 11pm you might be ready to go now, or may have to wait a couple more hours. Who has that kind of time? Sure you can run it on petro, but where is the advantage then?

If you have to go anywhere more than 1/2 a tank of fuel away, again you are running on petro, so where is the advantage again?

In the past I considered getting a vehicle that runs on propane as it is a lot more available in cities as most taxis run on propane, and propane is also considerably cheaper than petro, but I don't drive enough to make going that route worthwhile.
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the only setbacks are the amount of public stations, we used to have approx 35 in the gta, but when shell north America was taken over, the parent company didn't want the do called liability of having the compressors on their properties, and thing in Ottawa. The other major setback its the cylinder size.



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