Revised 14/06/2005 .

After visiting a few installation companies, I decided on Northern Autogas, based at Liversedge, near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. They certainly weren't the cheapest, but looking at examples of installations to vehicles they had in the workshop at the time I was convinced they had the exerience and ability to carry out the conversion. Installations were being carried out at the time on brand new Mercedes vans and also on a new hearse based on a Vauxhall Omega. It was difficult to spot which parts were factory fitted and which they had installed.

The system to be installed was an SGI (sequential gas injection) system manufactured by AG Autogas Systems - SGI being a more sophisticated version of the multipoint system. On this system, AG themselves come and programme the ECU.

The installation looked great, however there were problems with the programming to 3D map the ECU. The engine was running, however not running on all 6 cylinders. It was suspected that it was the new ECU that was at fault, so another was sent across from the headquarters in Holland. Still the engine was mis-firing.

The chief programmer came over from Holland (well he was over here on business anyway) and couldn't get it to work. He organised that when he got back to Holland he would try again via a modem link. Still no joy. After that, the system was completely taken off and put back on again just to check if anything had been missed.

Next a programmer from France tried via a modem link - still misfiring. By this time, Ray at Northern Autogas was getting just a bit frustrated - my car had been with him for 4 weeks, during which time I had benefited from driving round in his car, clocking up the miles on LPG.

The AG system was taken out and and a Tartarini Etagas system installed. The benefit of this being that Ray could carry out his own programming without waiting for the manufacturer to check the system  ........... however this didn't work either. He was just about to take out the whole system and replace the bumper where the new filler cap had been installed when ........... after examining the engine in detail noticed that there was an additional inlet vent pipe entering the cylinder head - the correct amount of gas had been injected all along, it was just being diluted by this additional air source. The solution being to simply extend the end of the injectors within the manifold (using additional plastic tube) to the valve side of this additional vent pipe. Problem solved thanks to Ray and his team's perseverance.

Over the following two weeks I drove 3000 miles throughout France, without any problems on LPG. Following a remapping exercise once the system had run in, I have so far continued to have another 5,000 miles of trouble free driving.

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