Happy, John- sorta
Thursday April 24th 2008, 4:19 pm

win!

John HoWARd’s gone like the sabre-toothed gibbon, but I took up his $2000 bribe for a $3000 LPG system for my 20+ year-old, $1500 yoot anyway- and didn’t even have to vote for him.

Petrol’s $1.54/L today but gas is just 62c. What would the price of petrol be absent the ill-considered Iraq war? At least now my motor fuel comes from the Bass Strait instead of Basra.

Less pollution will come out of the tailpipe but there’ll still be oil spots on the driveway.

The future’s bright.

Kinda.

-weez


19 Comments so far
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Weez, sounds like you have good timing, if i heard right.

Labor has recently killed this one.

Comment by joe2 04.24.08 @ 9:10 pm

joe, there was a news item on it a couple of weeks ago- Labor leaked that they were considering scrapping it, so I jumped. It’s not dead just yet, just in ‘trial balloon’ stage to gauge public outcry.

It’s a huge hunk of pork and makes little financial sense to the govt du jour, which is not (at this moment) trying to buy an election. πŸ˜†

I DO love election bribes in Australia. This was a pretty good one as they go. I’m amazed that they don’t ask for a receipt from the poll to make sure you voted for the briber.

I’m most amused that I could get HoWARd to spend $2000 on my old yoot, which has 260,000km on it and is probably not worth anywhere near my $1500 guess. πŸ˜€

Comment by weez 04.24.08 @ 9:25 pm

Weez, and could you cover yoot with $7000 worth of solar panels if it was your actual home?

Comment by joe2 04.24.08 @ 10:23 pm

Whooo. There’s an idea. Off da grid, baby!

Abbie Hoffmann once said that anyone who wasn’t collecting a government payment was a lazy slob. Too right. πŸ˜€

Comment by weez 04.24.08 @ 11:17 pm

BTW, the solar rebate is now up to $8000 and that’s for a piddling 1kW system that would barely run a fridge.

Far be it from me to not exploit the government’s silliness.

I’m on it! πŸ˜€

Comment by weez 04.24.08 @ 11:21 pm

Weez, you mentioned the nine billion in coal subsidies, now I’m stuck with a steam-powered step-thru…

Comment by hip 04.25.08 @ 4:43 pm

Love the ol’ step-thrus. Gotta have SOME place to put the boiler. πŸ˜‰

Comment by weez 04.25.08 @ 5:17 pm

Weez, i heard some guy from Ballarat explaining how a large number of folks had hooked up to take advantage of the solar grant. A group buying/installing plan allowed them to get the system up with a personal outlay of just one grand.

As you say, though, it is still not a lot of power and you are required to be set up to feed it back into the grid to get the grant.

You would end up with some pretty expensive panels on the roof that seem to hold their value very well if ebay is any guide. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge and say no more.

Comment by joe2 04.28.08 @ 6:52 pm

joe, if you have any details on that mob, I’d be interested to know more. Thanks for that. πŸ™‚

Comment by weez 04.28.08 @ 8:23 pm

I’ve run through my first couple of tanks of LPG in the yoot. It was getting 9.1km/l on ULP. Goes 8.2km/L on LPG, 10% poorer economy than on ULP. It was predicted to be as much as 20% poorer. As it stands, at $1.549 for ULP vs 62.9c/L for LPG, it now costs just 7.2c/km to fuel the yoot as opposed to 16.9c/km.

Downside is that LPG does not produce as much power and there’s more downshifting climbing the local mountains. The LPG tank is good for about 280km as opposed to about 420km on the full sized petrol tank. To fit the LPG tank under the cargo floor, I had to have a modified, half petrol tank installed, which only holds 35L, but still is enough for 320km. You have to fill the LPG more often, about 3 tanks of LPG to 2 full-sized tanks of petrol.

The 55.1% reduction in fuel cost is well worth the inconveniences. It’s the equivalent of petrol dropping from $1.549 to 69.5c/L. With the $2000 bribe, my net cost to install was $1000. I’ll save more than that in petrol in the first year.

It’s so much nicer to hand over a $20 note for a full tank of fuel- and get change back… than fork out nearly $72 for a 46L tank of ULP @ 1.549!

Comment by weez 04.28.08 @ 8:32 pm

Discussion happening here, coincidentally, on the solar panel bribe subject, Weez.

Comment by joe2 04.29.08 @ 6:27 pm

hoo hoo! You’re always good value, joe. πŸ™‚

Comment by weez 04.29.08 @ 9:40 pm

WTF is with the banner ads on LP, joe?

Whores. πŸ˜•

Comment by weez 04.29.08 @ 9:42 pm

“hoo hoo! You’re always good value, joe.”

ta and not sure on banner ads.

They seem a bit creepy but there is a cheap motel in Melbourne, for 3, that we may check out.

Comment by joe2 04.29.08 @ 10:30 pm

Do they rent by the hour? Free water-based lube on public holidays? πŸ˜€

Comment by weez 04.29.08 @ 10:52 pm

The LPG installer was very upbeat. He explained that new LPG installations get a little square metal tag for the red LPG sticker on the number plate. Why? In a fire, the plastic sticker is gone almost immediately, but the tag remains… so the fireys will know exactly what turned you into a crispy critter. πŸ˜†

Comment by weez 05.02.08 @ 5:53 pm

I’ve run the first couple thousand km on LPG now. Found some old dockets from running petrol and calculated that 400km per 46L tank is a more accurate average on ULP than the previously cited 420km.

Here’s the maths:

2169.7 km, used 307.83L LPG

7.05km/L (14.2 litres per 100 km)

$185.58 actual cost

60.2c/litre average

8.5c/km

***

2169.7 km @ 8.69km/L (11.5 litres per 100 km), based on 400km for 46L ULP, consumes 249.67 litres ULP

249.67 litres ULP @ $1.559/L = $389.23

17.9c/km

***

$389.23 (petrol cost estimate)
-$185.58 (LPG actual cost)
_________

$203.65 total savings using LPG

52.3% cost savings

20% of the net $1000 installation cost has been recovered in about a month.

Comment by weez 05.27.08 @ 11:37 pm

At 2 months and about 3500km post installation:

3497km required 487.98L LPG. The price of LPG has not changed from 57.9 (61.9 -4c voucher, Caltex, 588 High St, Penrith) in the time I’ve had it installed. 487.98L * $0.579 = $282.54

Avg 7.16km/L (13.9L per 100km)

The yoot gets 8.69km/l on petrol. 3497km / 8.69km/l= 402.41L. 402.41 * $1.709 = $687.72. Already saved $405.18 over using petrol; $687.72 (ULP estimate) – $282.54 (LPG cost) = $405.18 saved. At current prices, the yoot’s fuel tab has been cut by 58.9%.

The $1000 out of pocket for the conversion has been 40.5% recovered in 2 months.

Environmentalists will love the 15% less CO2 emissions from LPG vehicles, but the low cost of the fuel definitely tempts one to drive more. I don’t go driving just for fun, but I do drive a bit more knowing it’s so much cheaper.

Comment by weez 06.29.08 @ 7:44 pm

OK, it’s been a year since I had the LPG system installed.

The yoot went 16007km on 2336.14L of LPG (6.85km/L or 14.6L/100km) at an average per litre cost of 54.5cpl, for a total cost of $1276.73.

ULP equivalent for 16007km @ 8.69km/L = 1842 litres * $1.373/L (ULP avg price) = $2529.07; $1252.34 saved using LPG (49.6% of the cost of ULP).

Comment by weez 04.24.09 @ 9:23 pm



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