I seem to recall because it costed less than petrol it wasnt bringing in enough tax at the time, maby it was just a conspiracy floating around at the time, but scrapping cng, just when the last valve burning piston ring burning engines were about to be replaced with stronger engines without the valve seat recession problem or poor quality piston rings they canned it, i cant help but wonder why, all the cars from the 90s or possibly 80s onwards had hardened valve seats and better rings and bores, anything built to run on 91 octane petrol with no additives added to it would have been perfectly fine running on cng and they sold the pumps.
franc123,
Jun 15, 3:38pm
Farting about with service station visits every 2-3 days, separate WoF's for the gas system, losing huge amounts of power and boot space and the cost of maintaining the storage and dispensing gear were all killers of CNG. It wasnt available down south either. Its a pity because modern tech can certainly make CNG work a lot better.
tygertung,
Jun 15, 4:10pm
Only rubbish Australian cars had the soft valve seats. Decent Japanese cars always had them.
gunna-1,
Jun 15, 4:14pm
The valveseats and piston rings were desighned to run on lead fule, it seems criminal that cng got canned just as better engines were comeing down the line, ea falcons for example would have done well to continue on cng.
onl_148,
Jun 15, 4:27pm
Basically there is no money in selling petrol, at the retail level. the petrol is just there to get you to perhaps visit their mini market / coffee shop / food cabinets. now that is were the money is ! Also remember that NZ is very similar to Australia, about 40% of fuel sales is made at a discount to the price displayed on the pump ! . be it on a fuel card, supermarket docket, flybuys, special offers etc etc.
tygertung,
Jun 15, 4:40pm
But the petrol only stations seem to be popping up, so must be a profit in it.
joanie04,
Jun 15, 7:21pm
That is why my father got out of selling petrol back sometime in the 70s (can't ask him he is no longer here.). Better mark up on oil and filters etc. We didn't have a service station, just a country workshop with pumps. The local cockies would book up their fuel and pay when their milk cheque came in, using the following month. In the meantime the fuel companies wanted cash or a bank cheque when they come to fill the tanks.
paul861,
Jun 16, 7:03am
and british and american cars,tractors ,planes and trucks, was not a problem with leaded fuel
gblack,
Jun 16, 7:55am
Exactly. You can make a profit of fuel sales through volume.
Even a modest site can hit 10,000 litres per day, no staff costs with unmanned sites so you only need 10c a litre margin to make a nice little profit.
Automatic tank gauges keep tanks filled and fuel flowing
gunna-1,
Jun 17, 5:40am
Luckily there was plenty of parts around for British cars during that, it only took 20 bucks every couple of months for some upper cylinder lubricant, but no someone had to thrash the ring out of them on 91 octane doing 6 hour open road trips with no additives in the petrol, the poor old hillman hunter i got wich was one of many back then, that barely limped into town from way down south, it had recessed a valve, then burnt half of it off, and taken some out of the head aswell, it couldn't be fixed, it was an old cast iron head motor in a station wagon and i had another two or three spare heads to go on it, but i got bored and put a drill through the valve stem hole in the head and shoved a valve out of a 202 holden in there wich was a tad shorter and much bigger, so i lapped that into the surface of the head and not the valveseat then wound the tappet adjustment down as far as it would go, and bugger me it ran on all four, it was tapping quite bad on one cylinder because i didnt have anymore adjustment left to fix it and when one of my mates told me to fix it i said you wont believe what i put in this thing.
rhys12,
Jun 17, 6:13am
I agree OP. I stopped going to one of our local 'service' stations in the morning, because they only had 1 person on and I almost always encountered someone getting a coffee before me. I only ever use pay at the pump at that station now, so they miss out on me buying ciggies/mints/drinks etc there.
The worst is, the people working in them now have zero knowledge about cars. Donkeys years ago, back when they used to do the pump for you and check your oil & water, gas station attendants used to know things like what oil etc you would need if you needed to purchase any. These days, if you ask them, they just look at you blankly.
gunna-1,
Jun 17, 7:02am
Yea any car that uses oil now is going to blow up, my sisters car never burnt any blue but it still used oil but didnt leak, just used a tiny amount and she ran the sump dry three times, and drove it to get oil once about three minuts down the road with nothing on the oil light, and another chick i saw was driveing a car ready drop the conrods with no oil but she wasnt listening to the engine, driveing over the ramp heading out of town.
gunna-1,
Jun 17, 7:09am
I think most cars now use 20/50 engine oil, any old sludge is better than no oil at all, but make sure you do change it early if you happen to mix grades.
nice_lady,
Jun 17, 7:40am
Hubby had a 318V8 which he swears ran beautifully on CNG. Yeah the range wasn't as good as LPG per Litre of tank space but it was only about half the cost of petrol. That was a big incentive to use it. Loss of power didn't matter much with the V8 and he had a large boot so the tank didn't bother him either lol. Good all round. You could also easily run an upper cylinder lube kit to combat issues with the gas being very dry. Started beautifully also - every time - no matter how cold it was there was no 'warming up' required for the engine to run well. Also it's very environmentally friendly to run. The gas lines are still there, (all underground), but the Govt seems to be ignoring this very good alternative fuel.
tygertung,
Jun 17, 8:10am
You only get minimum wage at a petrol station or slightly above it, and no training is given on vehicle maintenance.
It is a pretty busy job, with all the cleaning of the shop to do, tank dips, gas bottle fills, car wash maintenance, restocking of shelves, stocktakes, working the till, organising the fire brigade to come after people spill diesel everywhere, restocking pie warmers and more.
So can't really expect the staff to be mechanics as well.
stevo2,
Jul 24, 4:05pm
Well I stopped at the unmanned Gull at Bethlehem at 7am this morning for diesel. $1.25/lt. Only me and another car there. Drove 100mt down the road past the local BP and it was full of cars with vehicles waiting to get in. Diesel was $1.44 there. I can only assume they all wanted coffees.
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