Propane outboards
- Thread starter macojoe
- Start date
spareparts
God
saw them at west marine, you gas bottle will no longer be safe to leave out at the marinas with sail boaters running propane.
Destroyer
God
Well, it's nice for sure, and may be the future of small boats. But I'd like to see some performance figures for Propane vs. Gasoline. Lets face facts... Gasoline powered boats do not get very good milage per gallon.
I'm sure that Propane powered boats do not get good milage either. So, for example, lets say that it takes 1 gallon of Gas to go 5 miles. The question then becomes, how much Propane does it take to get that same 5 miles of distance? And at what cost? Show me similar figures for both fuels and I'm sold on Propane.
I know that around here in NJ it costs $27-30 dollars to fill a standard 7.9 gal. fork lift Propane tank, which would, I think, be about the maximum convient size for a boat due to the weight of the gas and cylinder. I think that most people would probably be using their 20# grill size tank.
Right now, the National price of Propane on the East Coast is $3.49 a gal. (About the same as a gallon of Gasoline) This same time last year, the price of a gallon of Propane was $5.77 a gallon. As you can see, the price fluctuates wildly. So the statement in the video about the cost of Propane being about half of that of Gasoline is simply not true.
But it (Propane) does have a lot of things going for it. Clean burning, low emissions, no carb., no fuel/water seperators, no gummed up fuel lines from ethanol, etc. So the pros may very well top the cons for using Propane... Time will tell. But I still want to see the performance figures before I make a decision.
I'm sure that Propane powered boats do not get good milage either. So, for example, lets say that it takes 1 gallon of Gas to go 5 miles. The question then becomes, how much Propane does it take to get that same 5 miles of distance? And at what cost? Show me similar figures for both fuels and I'm sold on Propane.
I know that around here in NJ it costs $27-30 dollars to fill a standard 7.9 gal. fork lift Propane tank, which would, I think, be about the maximum convient size for a boat due to the weight of the gas and cylinder. I think that most people would probably be using their 20# grill size tank.
Right now, the National price of Propane on the East Coast is $3.49 a gal. (About the same as a gallon of Gasoline) This same time last year, the price of a gallon of Propane was $5.77 a gallon. As you can see, the price fluctuates wildly. So the statement in the video about the cost of Propane being about half of that of Gasoline is simply not true.
But it (Propane) does have a lot of things going for it. Clean burning, low emissions, no carb., no fuel/water seperators, no gummed up fuel lines from ethanol, etc. So the pros may very well top the cons for using Propane... Time will tell. But I still want to see the performance figures before I make a decision.
smokeonthewater
God
IIRC a gallon of 'pane has about 75% of the energy as a gallon of gasoline
I believe it would cost substantially more to go the same 5 miles with 'pane
I believe it would cost substantially more to go the same 5 miles with 'pane
spareparts
God
one of the reasons we run propane on rock buggies is so when we are done, and put the buggy up for a while, all you have to do is turn off the gas, no carbs to gum up, no fuel pumps to die, no gaskets or seals to leak, no gas to go bad. Just turn the valve off and walk away. It would be especially nice on a sail boat as you wouldn't have to keep gas on board and wouldn't have any gas smell form the engine. Once you disconnect the tank, the motor can be stored anywhere. As far as power goes, we see about a 20% decrease in power verses gasoline on the same motor, but we can make up for some of it by running higher compression(up to 13:1 with pane). i couldn't give you any comparisons on mileage, but we generally burn up 1 full fork lift tank in an average day of wheeling, I guess you could compare that to about 15 gallons of gas