Yes you need to do some things safely otherwise you'll get blown up or burnt ,I would use water for car petrol tanks but with LPG I just use compressed air to fill the tank then let the air out and keep repeating the process until the air coming out of the tank will not burn , it takes quite a few times filling them with air but is less messy, then I cut the tank up.
I've always thought about trying arc cutting rods but no idea how long or how well they work.
I have never tried those rods Max, I have oxy here but I use it only when I have to weld copper or brass. The only cutting I have is grinders with thin discs, I have often contemplated getting a small plasma cutter but I keep thinking that at my age would I get enough use out of it to cover the cost. Doing mostly hobby stuff and not making much money out of my equipment I can't justify it to myself.
Hi Max, the cutting discs cost me 60 cents each and would probably use 3 to cut a tank in half. Plenty of plasmas out there just have to make sure you can get the consumables for them
I never knew you could buy them that cheap online ,I see if I buy 100 discs they are 62 cents each.
Problem I have is one LPG tank is 25 kg and price per kg is .076 cents for 1 kg ,25 x .076 cents is $1.90 for the tank and for 3 discs x .62 cents is $1.87 and then the time cutting and the fuel cost to the scrap yard and it's not worth it , some scrap yards here are 24 hours ,there is no one there after hours but you can dump your metal for free so I may as well just dump the tanks for free without cutting them.
I've just got my hands on a LP Gas carby unit from China for a mower engine etc, just to have a look ,it was $17. with free post.
Looking at the gas converter ,I'm glad I didn't use this type as this one would leak gas if the engine cuts out and it is a small converter so I don't think it would run well on natural gas if you wanted to run a generator off the house gas meter.
The plastic primer button I assume would disintegrate in sunlight as the newer models have been changed to an alloy primer button.
The orange plastic gas switch has 2 holes that go through to the gas so gas could leak out or air mixes with the gas.
I was only planning on using the carby so I can test that out.
This gas unit is for about 5 Hp but I see now they sell a bigger unit now for about 10 hp
I just tested the new LPG carburetor, which is a dual-fuel carburetor, and I couldn't get it to run properly. The motor sounded terrible with this gas carburetor. I tried more LPG and less LPG using the tuning screw, but it made no difference; it was still running poorly.
I put the original modified LPG carburetor back on, and it ran perfectly again. I'm not sure why the new carburetor was so bad—possibly the LPG connection in the new carburetor doesn't have an angled fitting inside to draw gas. One thing I thought I shouldn't have done with the homemade LPG carburetor was make the venturi so large, as I drilled the carburetor out as far as it would go.
You can see the differences in the venturi in the picture below. I guess I can use the new LPG carburetor as a petrol-only carburetor on another mower if I want to get some use out of it.
It has been a few years now since I started using an LPG mower, and I still haven't needed to buy any LPG, as I have been using up gas from discarded LPG bottles.
I just had another look at this LPG mower and why the new carby wouldn't work well on LPG.
I didn't spend much time on it fixing the problem ,just drilled the gas fitting out a couple sizes larger and put an angled edge on the brass inside of the carby also I had to change the throttle shaft as before I hadn't noticed where the carby linkage fits in is slightly different on the gas carby as it was for horizontal shaft motor and I'm using the vertical shaft motor.
One extra thing I did was install a plastic fuel tap on the petrol fuel line.
Turned the bottle on and it ran well but had to adjust the lpg down so the fitting most likely is drawing LPG better now.
It ran well on petrol too, no problems on either fuel.
Instead of using the alloy fuel bowl, I've installed a metal one.
