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Author Topic: Fitting LPG - 4 Cylinder Front End  (Read 7090 times)

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Lazydocker

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Fitting LPG - 4 Cylinder Front End
« on: 11 May 2010, 17:39:13 »

I would advise you read the entire guide before starting. The pictures and guide here are based on a 2.2 but fitting to a 2.0 will be very similar, just a few extra items to work around/remove (like the throttle cable ;))

[size=14]Do not attempt any of this unless you are comfortable with mechanical work.[/size] Also, there is no point in starting to fit LPG to your car if you have any running faults as you will just introduce more "unknowns" into the equation.

The first job is to decide where to mount the various components. The locations shown in this guide are perfectly acceptable IMO but you may decide you'd prefer to locate them in different places.

Once those decisions have been made you can see if any additional items need removing to do the job :y

[size=12]Be sure that the engine is cold before progressing any further![/size]

Remove the air intake and throttle bodies following this guide for help if needed. You may as well give them a clean whilst they're out :y

You should end up with something resembling this picture.



You will need to remove the air filter box later on so you may as well do it now too.

Next remove the inlet manifold.



You also need to make space for the "piggy back" injector connections so I decided it would be easier to scrap the cable tray and make up a taped loom instead.





My preference is to mount the ECU in the void behind the front bumper, in front of the wheel (there wasn't quite enough room in the main ECU box). Tunnie decided to mount it directly to the wheel arch liner but it can easily be fitted to brackets (which is what I would probably do) but it is essential that it is mounted with the plug down to minimise any risk of water ingress, although the Stag ECU's are very well protected.



You need to take a coolant feed for the vaporiser. From experience, the best way to do this for the Omega is to intercept the coolant feed to the HBV and plumb the vaporiser in series (before the HBV) than to Tee into the heater pipes as suggested by most kit manufacturers. So, remove the "Helter Skelter" pipe and cut it so that you have a feed and return pointing towards where you have chosen to mount the vaporiser (O/S inner wing seems to work well)



Connect the coolant hoses to the connectors showing in the above picture and route them to where the vaporiser is going to be mounted.

You also need a Vacuum feed. This can be taken from one of the small vacuum pipes at the rear of the engine bay (which has worked OK in this case) although the advice from the kit supplier is not to use a shared vacuum feed and to fit a nozzle as close to the throttle butterfly as possible to use as the vacuum feed.

Feed the LPG ECU plug into location and plug it into the ECU, ensuring you keep enough slack. Then I find it most useful to sort through the loom, sending the wires in roughly the right direction for where they will be connecting. This is made much easier if you have marked them all up as suggested in the LPG Preparation & Nozzle Fitting guide.



The loom is now pointing in the right directions.





Temporarily mount the vaporiser (I bolted it straight through the inner wing in this case)





You can see that the wiring loom is just loosely routed and will need tidying up later. This is just in case things need moving.

You may find that the LPG inlet for the vaporiser is at the wrong angle when you do this trial fit. In this case it came out of the front face of the vaporiser and a 90 degree elbow was required to enable connection. This is fitted and needs thread locking with a Lock and Seal type of thread lock. If the inlet on your vaporiser is just pointing the wrong way it can be adjusted and sealed in the same way.



I found that the wiring that needed routing to the N/S of the car fitted into the front cable tray, which makes it a nice, neat installation. (Again, only loosely fitted in place at present)

« Last Edit: 12 May 2010, 10:11:17 by jimbob »
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Lazydocker

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Re: Fitting LPG - 4 Cylinder Front End
« Reply #1 on: 11 May 2010, 19:15:50 »

Once you are happy with the route of the coolant pipes and that all the connections will reach the vaporiser properly you can make them and fix the vaporiser properly in it's location. You may find it beneficial to connect the vapour out pipe and tighten the connection, leaving the pipe pointing in the right direction, before tightening the vaporiser up.

If you have already fitted the nozzles to a manifold then you can now re-fit the manifold. If you are using the manifold you removed earlier then you need to follow this guide and fit the nozzles. Make sure that the 4 equal lengths of injector hose will be long enough to reach where you have decided to mount the injectors otherwise you will have to remove the manifold again to fit new hoses.

Don't forget to connect the main Vacuum pipe back up (as I did :-[) because access to tighten it up once everything is fitted is very tight.

Once the manifold is re-fitted (don't re-fit the throttle body yet!) you can connect the LPG "piggy back" connectors to the existing injector connectors. If you have checked through the loom it is straight forward but if not, now is a good time to consult the wiring diagram to ensure that the plugs all match up to the colours they should as it is possible (although unlikely) that the little numbered clips have been attached to the wrong wires.

Also, make sure that you have marked which injector pipe corresponds to which cylinder for when you fit the injector rail later.

Wiring connections are covered in more detail in this guide.

As an aside, if you intend to feed the wiring for the switch/level gauge into the cabin via the heater matrix grommet then this is best done before re-fitting the inlet manifold ;) Feeding wires through the grommets is (I find) easiest done with a length of wire coat hanger, cut at an angle to make it sharp, with the relevant wiring taped firmly to the other end.

With the inlet manifold back in place, the rest of the LPG connections (electrical will be covered later) can be made. The schematic diagram supplied with the kit (or downloaded from the website) is very good and clearly shows the connections that need making. The Vacuum connections are actually the ones which require the most thought, IMO, but are fairly simple to work out. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of these in situ.

The vapour feed that you took from the vaporiser and left loose needs to go to the LPG filter. This is a service item and should be positioned with this in mind as you will need to access it to change it.



Then, from the filter it goes into the LPG measurement Tee



And from there it will go into the injector rail. At this point it is best to route the pipe (but not cut it and fit the injectors) and leave it until the throttle bodies are re-fitted, which can now be done, torquing the relevant bolts to the correct values. Temporarily fit the air intake pipe to the top and route it in the right direction to see how much space you have.

You can now see how much space remains for fitting the injectors. These should be mounted on the little rubber mounts supplied to reduce noise. Then make a/some brackets and mount them after connecting the injector pipes and cutting and fitting the vapour feed. In this picture we have mounted them to the cam cover using 2 of the bolts. The rear bracket is actually a little short and could do with being extended so that it completely covers the recessed hole to ensure it applies an even pressure. I don't think this has caused any leakage problems but you should really pack out the hole with some washers. These bolts should be torqued to the correct value.





With the injectors in place you can now connect the correct plugs to them, ensuring that the plug, petrol injectors, and injector pipes all correspond to the correct cylinders.

Remove the air intake pipe again for space as required and this can be re-fitted after all the wiring has been tidied up.

Now we make the connections to the car's ECU. Make sure that the battery is disconnected before continuing!

The connections are all covered in the LPG Electrical Connections thread so I will pass over it but will supply some pictures!

The wiring can be taken into the ECU box through the rubber grommet as can be seen in the last picture. Then it's just a case of locating the correct wires and making the connections.









Apart from the extra wires there's very little evidence that any additional wiring has been done :y

« Last Edit: 12 May 2010, 10:08:29 by jimbob »
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Re: Fitting LPG - 4 Cylinder Front End
« Reply #2 on: 11 May 2010, 19:42:24 »

At this point the only connections left to be made are the ones inside the cabin and the battery connections. I prefer to leave the battery connections until last but they can be made now with the fuse removed from the positive connection if you wish.

Inside the cabin, route the wiring through to wherever you decide to mount the level gauge/switch. This is very much a personal preference but to comply with COP 11 it should be mounted somewhere it is clearly visible (although "clearly visible" is something which is down to interpretation). I will show pictures of a couple of options.

Again, the connections are covered in a separate thread so I'll just post some more pictures.








Some final pictures of switch locations







Once all the electrical connections have been made the battery can be reconnected (keeping the fuse out of the LPG live), the rest of the removed parts re-fitted and all the wiring connected up.


With everything re-fitted and tidied up there should be very little evidence, excluding the obvious additional items, any work has been done.

The only thing I didn't cover anywhere in this guide is the location of the diagnostic socket. My preference is to cable tie it to the hose underneath the plastic panel at the front left of the engine bay.



Now that everything is fitted, stand back and admire the engine bay!



The final step required to complete the installation of your LPG kit and start enjoying cheaper motoring is to follow the LPG Commissioning & Calibration guide!

As a point to note and to reiterate the first comment I made in this guide. Please do not attempt to fit LPG unless you are confident and the vehicle is running perfectly on petrol. There is a lot of support on this forum for LPG now but long distance diagnostics is very tricky!

LPG requires a much stronger spark than petrol and will highlight any HT faults which are present, even if they are not showing on petrol. If, for example, your spark plugs are nearly due a change then it would be common sense to replace them whist you are working on the car.
« Last Edit: 12 May 2010, 09:04:55 by jimbob »
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