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Background
Feel free to skip my ramblings and look at more interesting parts of this site!
My first experience of mechanics was probably pretty similar to a lot of people's - dirt bikes held together with duct tape, Ford cortinas with blown engines (due to my older brother's constant attempts to break the land speed record when late for work!) and the fact that we were all driving around in cars that were on thier last legs. The options were simple - learn how to fix it or scrap it!
I cut my teeth in what most people would, quite rightly call, a typical  back street garage. There I learnt the basics of everything from brakes to body work. Under the watchful eye of an excellent tutor who is now, many years on, my brother in law.
Funny old world eh?!
Later the obsession was to fit a diesel engine into pretty much anything.  If you wanted a 4x4 it had to have a diesel engine in order for you to afford to run it!
It was whilst I owned a two door Range Rover which had a 2.0ltr turbo Perkins Prima (better known as an austin montego engine) that I worked at Strathcarron Sports Cars. There we built a new British two seater sports car running a triumph 4cyl engine, which was later changed to a Rover k series. Here I worked closely with the design engineers Chapman Associates, based in Norfolk, and held the record for the only employee to build a complete car from scratch in the allotted time scale of three days! I was also responsible for the SVGA approval of the cars that we built. Unfortunately like many British car companies production ceased after a couple of years due to financial troubles. But I believe the Strathcarron company does live on.
I was working here when my Rangey had an uncomfortable experience with a deep ditch whilst on an offroading trip, and a new shell had to be found for my prima engine.
This came from the guys at Oak Tree Garage, Kimpton (near Stevanage) but it still had the original 3.5 twin carb V8. After driving it I couldn't bring myself to remove the V8, but nor could I bring myself to pay the petrol bill either!  9 years ago it was costing me £50 a week to commute to work, something had to be done! 
That's when I found Tinley Tech LPG, now based in Cambridgeshire.  I bought an LPG kit for my Range Rover, fitted it and never looked back!
Then all my offroading pals bought V8s and I converted them too.
This was the early days of LPG systems as we know them today and they have certainly moved on.  They have had to, due to the increase in vehicle technology. They were good then but they're fantastic now!
From that day on I have been involved in LPG in one way or another. Including the inspection of converted vehicles and the practical training of people who wish to become installers. 

 
One of my more unusual conversions to a delorean, this one was owned by a local actor named Dean who used it for his daily commute to various film sets around the country. It was a interesting vehicle to convert, with its mechanical injection, similar to a 3.0ltr Merc. I loved it!  Its a pleasant change to work on such an unusual vehicle.  

 
 
. A recent conversion to a Ford Mondeo, it is possible to see a couple of components, I think it is a good example of a quality, tidy job. 


Example of a job well done!
One customer springs to mind. A year or so ago I converted a P38 Range Rover to bigas multipoint.  It worked very well and Eddie, the chap who owned it, was very happy with it.
He rang me a few days later to ask if I would take a look at another P38 which belonged to his friend and had been in and out of a Buckinghamshire Land Rover main dealership for the past three months. There where two main problems.  One turned out to be the airflow meter, which when I heard the symptoms was painfully obvious (shame it wasn't to the dealership!) The other problem was with the LPG system.  It was a multipoint system with two vaporisers, this is quite common on older systems.
The problem was that once the engine was running on LPG the second vaporiser began to freeze and continued to freeze until the engine choked up and flooded.
On closer inspection it was clear to see that the vaporisers had been piped in series, this meant that as the heat was used up in the first vaporiser the second received colder water and as the lpg vaporised in the second it caused the freezing.
It was a simple cure, by adding a second pair of water T's and a small amount of pipe I changed the flow of water to parrell instead of series. It was a low cost easy fix. And it wasn't down to expertise or experience - it was common sense!! 
The point is that it's not rocket science.  A bit of common sense and simple thought will go a long way.
The thing that really drives me crazy is that this simple cure and many others like it should not be neccassary!  And worse still is the negative vibe that stupid problems like this create for autogas in general. The owner of the P38 had a bad experience and part of that was down to the LPG system. If I hadn't fixed it when I did he would probably have sold it at a knocked down price and never touched another LPG powered vehicle again!  Not only that but he would have told everyone who would listen what a bad experience he had had.
This is also what worries me about cheap conversions.  For one thing there are a lot of cheap kits on the market these days and they are tempting, not only for the home diy mechanic, but also for the professional fitter.
I was given the opportunity to fit three of these low cost systems, two were so bad that they were removed straight away, the third was not so bad and stayed on the vehicle, but it didn't stand up to the test of time.
. The warranty work was high and many components had be be changed in a short space of time. When this happens it means, as an installer, you can never rest on that vehicle, your always waiting for the phone to ring with another problem. Of course for the owner it's far worse, nobody wants an unreliable vehicle.
In this case the system had been fitted to a friend's car who was well aware of the situation and was an active part of the experiment.
During the last couple of years the increasing petrol prices have bought about a boom in autogas conversions and with it an increase in installers.  I'm not knocking that!  A healthy LPG trade is always what I want, of course.  And generally speaking people are not daft, most will not jump at the lowest cost conversion or the first one they see advertised.  Some will of course, which is a shame but thats life. Generally if the trade is good installers can charge a reasonable price and use a good quality conversion kit that will be reliable. This means that a good kit is fitted in a sensible manner.
Everyone is happy.  The installer makes a living and the customer receives a good service.
Now however, money is tight for everyone.  The cost of a conversion seems a lot more of an investment.  Especially as the seemingly unstoppable petrol prices do seem to have slowed down.  This makes for a difficult time for converters.
Which means that some will try and find ways to offer a lower cost conversion and still earn a living.  The truth is that these are the converters that will not stand the test of time and many have already moved on to other things.
However the installers who have been in the game for longer will stick to quality kits and quality installations and will be here to honor the warranty that they offer with their conversions. 
I rarely see a car return for warranty work and there is a good reason for that. Take time to achieve the best conversion possible.  If it doesn't fit right or the connection could be better, do it again. Just as important is that time is spent driving the vehicle to be sure that the system is working as it should.