Replacing Gas Engines with TBD Injection Engines

Forget it unless you live in some remote area that doesn't care about Federal laws, and you don't need to license the vehicle.

Any conversion you do will cost $10,000.00USD by the time it's all done.

You need to consider the return on investment period. How long will it take you to recoup the investment in the old engine/technology?

Thank you for your input. Don

You must also take into account that any conversion may not meet EPA standards. That also goes for VW rabbits. In states that have yearly emissions inspection, older cars won't pass and will require work to get them to comply; can be expensive.

Thank you for your comment. I am looking for the holy grail. Don

For the price you note for the converion, you can get a very nice reliable TDI Jetta or TDI Golf from year 2000 or newer. These cars stock get over 40 mpg and easily get 50 mpg with minor tweaking.

Thank you for your comment. What tweaking would you suggest for the tdi engine that would help in getting 10 more mpg? Don

I've done several small cheap modifications to my TDI Jetta and now average just over 53 mpg. The things that are responsible for the majority of the improvement in efficiency are;

1. Removing the convoluted air intake restrictions prior to the filter. The car sounds a little louder after removing these, but you can immediately feel the difference.

2. I run my tire pressure on the high side. I run 90% of the max pressure listed on the sidewall. This may make my emergecy stopping distance longer, so i leave extra room ahead of me on the road.

3. This one is cheating a little.... I don't run an alternator. Alternators consume between 15% and 25% of most cars fuel. Wall power and solar is so much cheaper. I have 4 additional batteries in the trunk, and I charge using electric whenever my car is at home. I also have a small dash mounted solar charger. With this setup, I have made 12 hour trips through the night, without a problem.

4. I carry a bottle of cetane boost to use any time I cannot fill up at a station I know provides at least 40 cetane.

Check out ecomodder.com for good ideas.

Driving like Granny can make a huge difference.

Normally, we get 15-16 MPG with our Chevy Suburban on a long highway trip not pulling our travel trailer (then it drops to 9-10 MPG). On one trip recently when the price of gas topped $4.00 per gallon here in the Colonies (I know you folks across the pond pay a lot more) I set the cruise control to 62 MPH (about 100 km/hr) and I was rewarded with 19.7 MPG on a 400 mile trip.

The point is, you can make a measurable improvement with changes to our "normal" habits. A review of websites devoted to hypermiling (a hobby for maximizing fuel mileage ) will reveal a number of techniques that can be used. I can't recommend all of them for safety reasons, and some may create more wear and tear on the engine but many of the "passive" techniques can apply with just a little effort and thought.

Cheers !

Thank you for your comment. I have read numerous... get better fuel efficiency suggestions. I agree that many are helpful and some are possibly unreasonable or unsafe. If you have a moment, check out ... opel ecospeedster video. It never made it to the common people. Opel I believe was purchased by GM. Some websites suggest the Opel patents were turned over to the US Treasury for money help for GM with the anticipation of a later buy-back. Whatever the case, the Opel Speedster disappeared and one might wonder why. Couldn't that engine and transmission been placed in a GM model? Don