I thought I heard Nat. Gas has doubled in price over the past few weeks. Any truth to that? It could possibly be a regional thing you are not dealing with.

 

When you say it is $1.61/gal equiv is that per btu? $1.61 of CNG has the equivalent btu of 1 gal of gasoline?

 

Hey OP a little off topic but how did you change the background on the home screen to have four pictures like that? creative editing or is there an option for a picture for climate nav phone and radio?

 

CNG is an awesome alternative for an OLDER vehicle, but if the vast majority of us aren't going to have the 5-7K$ for the conversion. Besides that, I'd expect way the hell better MPG. With a tune on my EB, 2.5" level, 305/55/20 tires I get 20mpg on highway, and 16.4 in city traffic. 91octane is 3.10 in Oklahoma and I fill up 3, sometimes 4 times per month. I'd save 45$ a month on gas. So it would take me OVER 10 years to recoup 7K$ for a cng conversion. If its a work truck or old rig that you plan on keeping forever then go for it, otherwise its a complete waste right now.

 

Sure, with a free install it becomes more feasible. And of course you're giving up bed space for the tank.

I looked into waiting for a 2014 which has an option for hardened engine parts for natural gas, vs. buying my 2013 in December.

"The 2014 Ford F-150 with 3.7-liter V6 engine will be available this fall with a factory-installed, gaseous-fuel prep package that includes hardened valves, valve seats, pistons and rings so it can operate on either natural gas or gasoline through separate fuel systems."

What my research showed was that with the significant installation cost, even with a tax credit, this doesn't pay off for many, many years and like many of the energy options out there (solar for your home, wind for your home) you may never break even or break even and it's time to buy new equipment or in this case a new truck.

With someone else paying for the install (and being in the industry and "walking the talk" it makes sense.

I also found that where I live there are 2 Meijer gas stations and one city owned fueling area, otherwise nothing. Fueling at a service station puts much less fuel in the tank than fueling at home overnight, but the home fueling option is very expensive. The company that makes Phill, the home refueling option, was bought by a foreign company in 2012. http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles/refue...g-at-home.aspx

I don't know the ramifications of installing natural gas on a vehicle that is not equipped with the hardened valves, valve seats, pistons and rings.

There are limited fueling options in many states, for example Michigan has 12 stations in 7 cities. It's $2.40 per GGE (gasoline gallon equivalent) by us, here's what that means:

Gasoline, Diesel and CNG

The energy content of liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel actually varies considerably between summer and winter and also depending on what sort of oxygenate it is blended with (that 10% ethanol gasoline has a fewer BTUs than gasoline reformulated with MTBE and both have fewer BTUs than pure gasoline). A summer gallon of gasoline will typically contain 114,500 BTUs while a winter gallon is 112,500 BTUs.

GGE – Gallon of Gasoline Equivalent is the typical way CNG is sold at public fueling stations and the typical way that CNG tanks are rated. One standard GGE = 114,000 BTUs which equals 126.67 SCF (126.67). Now, the sharp reader will immediately notice that if an SCF has 1,020 BTUs then 126.67 scf should be 129,000 BTUs so something isn’t adding up! That something known as “lower heating values” or LHV (also called net calorific value). You can read all about this here, but for the purpose of understanding CNG you need to know that an SCF of Natural Gas only yields 900 BTUs of useable gasoline equivalent energy.

CNG compresses the gas to 3,600 psi (some older vehicles were compressed at 2,400 psi). At this compression level, one GGE requires 0.51 cubic feet of space in a CNG tank. So the interior space of a 20 GGE tank is approximately 10 cubic feet (think roughly 42″ wide, 18″ deep, and 18″ tall).

"DGE – Diesel Gallon Equivalent is another way to rate CNG vehicle storage. Since Diesel has a higher energy content than gasoline (129,500 BTUs standard), 1 DGE = 1.136 GGE and 1 GGE = 0.88 DGE. Since most CNG metrics are in GGEs if you want to calculate how many cubic feet would be required for an equivalent number of DGEs, just divide by 0.88 (in terms of Standard Cubic Feet, a DGE = 126.67/0.88 or 143.94 SCF and so forth). The reverse is also true. If, for example, you want to convert a cylinder capacity from GGE to DGE, you can multiply by 0.88. So, for example, a 24 GGE cylinder holds about 21 DGEs."

Website showing stations: http://www.cngprices.com/station_map.php

 

Here are a few install pictures....

 

That's awesome, was your max combined range?

 

Its cool, but that Big Honkin Tank in the bed would Kill it for me!

 

I haven't run a full tank of CNG yet all thought I'm not seeing much change in my avg Meg's in commute. With my standard tank and 24.5 GGE tank I'm estimating at ~900 miles, although bathroom breaks would be sooner that gas fills. Lol

 

The next step down was 17 GGE which would have been sleeker in the SWB truck, but given some of my frequent travel paths, I decided to stay with the larger. If the infrastructure catches is in the surrounding areas, I can always step it down.