How would you feel about running our trucks on 100% alcohol? I know I could make more money by selling the moonshine and buying gas
The other solution would be compressed natural gas. That would give us about a dollar and a half a gallon. It's 120 octane, and says it gets about the same mileage as regular gasoline. The part that gets you is that there are not many refueling stations. You could always put your own in at home, even though it'd run you 4-5 grand for the pump.
Take a look at this site and tell me what you think. For about a thousand dollars I could put this system in the Dodge. I bet i'm going to spend about a thousand dollar on fuel this summer alone, so it'd definitely be worth it if we could get it to work. http://www.ewsews.com/cnghome.html
If I did run out of natural gas, that kit still allows gasoline to power the engine.
Do we have throttle body injection, or multi-port injection?

 

Compressed gas conversions are very popular in Europe, where gas and diesel prices are much higher than ours. I read a report a few years ago that a Mercedes was setup as a test vehicle and at 350,000 miles the engine wear was less than the same engine run on gasoline with 50,000 miles on it by virtue of a clean burn, almost no emissions, no carbon and almost unmeasurable friction. The engine was also STILL RUNNING ON THE ORIGINAL SPARK PLUGS!

It was said that a gas engine running on CNG or even LPG for that matter will on average outlast a diesel engine by almost a 2:1 margin.

With gas prices going the way they are, I expect these conversions to gain in popularity on this side of the pond also...

 

Does natural gas still make the same compression rates and power as normal gasoline?

 

No. The conversion cost and loss of power and mileage will take quite a while to break even.

 

The natural gas conversion has been tried up here with no real sucess, it is tough to plan trips when there are very few limited fill up stations and with nat gas it's not like you can just carry a couple of jerry cans with ya lol. if i was to spend the money on a conversion i would want to solely run that fuel not just run it when it's conveinient. propane works i have seen alot of those conversions but with all gas conversions you have to stuff a tank somehere to hold the pressurized gas (usually in the box of the truck). This may be fine if you don't put much in your truck but the bottles take up a fair bit of space.

 

A long while. Plus remember those alternative fuels are not plentiful and easy to come by like gas is. At least around here is isnt. Ive never seen a station with E85.

 

This is my daily driver. I could easily refill the tanks each night. That's not a problem.

 

Be very careful about buying a CNG system on price alone because sometimes you get what you pay for (see CNGChat - Truck Backfires). If you have no experience with CNG, I highly recommend that you get the advice of a local CNG conversion shop before you spend any money. You really need some training in alternative fuel conversion before you should try undertaking a CNG conversion yourself.

Modern CNG conversions are all dual fuel. They all start on gasoline and automatically switch over to CNG when the engine become warm enough. If you run out of CNG, they also automatically switch back to gasoline so you never have to worry about running out. See ESIP LPG operation.

Because natural gas displaces a significant amount of air in the intake manifold, CNG operation has lower volumetric efficiency, which results in lower peak power as noted by Mike. However the lower VE tends to reduce pumping losses at part throttle, which gives a slight boost to fuel economy.

A CNG conversion can make a lot of sense, especially if a public CNG station (run by a gas utility) is along your commute. If there isn't one, you put in your own CNG VRA but these are a bit pricey. Because a CNG cylinder only holds the equivalent of a few gallons of gasoline (eg, 74L cylinder, 15.2"D x 35.4"L, holds 6.7 GGE), you'll be refuelling frequently. If you lived in Buffalo NY near the NFGC CNG station, you'd be paying about $1.25/GGE. Since a GGE is a Gasoline Gallon Equivalent, your fuel economy on natural gas should be similar to your gasoline economy. Even if your CNG economy were 90% of your gasoline economy, $1.25/GGE for CNG would cost you as if gasoline cost $1.39/gallon. Gasoline is currently selling for about $4/gallon in Buffalo. With a reasonable amount of driving with a truck, a CNG conversion could pay for itself fairly quickly with that much of a price difference.