How to Increase CNG Car Pickup

Most people take it for granted that when you covert your car to CNG the pick up of the vehicle would always be much lower than that on Petrol…this is merely a misconception and an unfound myth. We would like to clear out that the pick up of cars running on CNG can be as good as that on Petrol provided you use correct equipment in the kit with high quality, like constant  pressure reducers, good quality ECU and software as well as fast response time CNG injectors. Lately, the market is flooded with low quality CNG kit equipment from China including the reducers, ecu’s and gas injectors which are copies of popular brands like Tomasetto, BRC, AEB, Valtek or Rail and thus compromise heavily on performance and using such spurious products and kits its not possible to  increase CNG car pickup.

It is equally important to have installation done correctly by an expert. Simple things like placement of manifold nozzles, CNG hose size length , CNG injector nozzle size etc can make a big difference in performance of the car on CNG.

One should ensure that while calibrating the car, the installer takes interest to match the petrol fuel trims and CNG fuel trims using an OBD2 scanner or has his CNG software showing these fuel trims which enables him to tune the car properly. This would also require some experience from the tuner as he needs to drive and see whether the entire MAP is covered in this way. This ensures that there are no MIL lamps on the car while running due to Rich or lean fuel trims.  Please also remember that both leaner fuel as well as richer fuel on CNG than the one desired/set by the car manufacturer on Petrol is harmful and can damage your engine, catalyst and other systems –besides this condition would always make your car sluggish on CNG . Thus the installer should ensure that he is always as close as possible to stoichiometric ratio on CNG. Once this is followed, it would automatically ensure good CNG kit pickup.

CNG fuel burns slower compared to petrol and thus the power delivery from the engine maybe slower. In some cars – specially older or un-maintained cars, it may be necessary to improve the spark of the car by way of changing to a good quality spark plugs like BRISK Silver which increase the quantum of the spark and also by using a Timing Advancer (TAP) which increases the spark duration to the engine by few seconds while engine is running on CNG to make the Gas Fuel / Air mixture ignite fully in one cycle , thus produce optimum power and greater mileage.

There are two types of Timing avancers available, static and dynamic, which can be used depending upon the requirement. The static advancers always advance the timing of the car while running on CNG by certain degree across all engine RPM or load, whereas in Dynamic or Variable advance, you can set different degrees advance at different load conditions (eg at out of idle, high RPM’s, cut off etc ) to ensure a balanced and linear performance necessary for the engine.

EG Dyamic is one such Dynamic Timing Advance processors which is programmable and can set up different timing advance degrees at different engine loads based upon the car’s RPM, Throttle position and Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP) to get unmatched performance on CNG. While in static advancers one can only set one type of degree advance via a combination of micro switch, in EG Dynamic, one can see all parameters of the car in the software and can graphically see the load map of the vechicle and pin point the desired degree advance at the desired level for maximum efficiency and performance.

This system also enables one system to use in different cars having both Inductive or Digital type of Crankshaft Position Sensor or Camshaft Position sensors and has the ability to scan the car’s sensor signal wave for proper set up and functioning on the car while it runs on CNG – hence a boon for all cars converted to CNG. It also negates a chances of Check Engine light (MIL) owing to the Timing advance using this system.

One can also advance the vehicle on CNG using an injection order advance a unique feature available in our CNG ECU’s where it’s not possible to advance timing of vehicle using a CKP or CMP sensor of the car. This feature also vastly improves the drivability of the car  and increase CNG car  pickup. An increase in fuel efficiency would also be noted using this feature.

We hope the above mentioned points would help you achieve the best performance and efficiency from your CNG vehicle. Visitors may please feel free to contact us for any technical clarification regarding your already converted vehicle to CNG at support@evoautogas.com

Increase CNG car pickup