2001 Bi-Fuel Propane Ford F-Series Chassis Cabs
The Texas bureaucrats in charge of air quality fixes for trucks have a new truck. It cost them $25, so the voters shouldn't complain too much. Ford gave them the truck. A 2001 F-350 SuperCab chassis cab with the V-10 engine and the bi-fuel option. XLT, so it's a lot nicer than the standard taxpayer-bought XL-trim work trucks.
And on the back is a beautiful Royal Sport tow body. It looks like a normal pickup bed until you notice all the exterior doors for cubbyholes. And the custom "V" tailgate for hooking up the 5er. Yes, Royal Truck Body donated the body. The truck was assembled at KTP, then shipped next door where the tow body was mounted by the Royal shop.
Wow! That is one nice-looking tow vehicle.
And the bi-fuel? It's a standard V-10 engine converted to run on either gasoline or propane (butane). That's nothing new around here. My Dad had bi-fuel gasoline/butane Ford pickups as early as the late 1950s. We had a 50-gallon butane tank in the front of the bed - about the size of a big cross-bed toolbox on today's pickups. And a switch under the dash to switch between gasoline and butane. The difference is this one is a Ford factory offering, whereas Dad's and most of the neighbors who had butane-powered pickups in the 1950s thru the 1980s had theirs converted by the local farm-fuel supplier - Blocker Oil Company and Franklin & Sons Oil Company. In the last dozen years or so, after the GM diesel-engine fiasco wore off, most of the locals now run diesel instead of butane conversions, so a newer pickup with a big butane tank in the back is rather rare now.
The disadvantage of butane is it gets worse fuel mileage than gasoline. The burreaucrat driving the free Ford demo with the Royal Sport body said he rarely goes anywhere without towing an office/display 5er that fully loads his F-350 to the GVWR and the GCWR of the tow vehicle. He gets about 10.5 MPG on gasoline, and about 8 MPG on propane when towing.
The advantages of butane/propane are much lower emissions and a longer lived engine with less required maintenance. The Texas bureaucrats are pushing the bi-fuel Fords because (when running on propane) they contribute almost nothing to the bad air around Houston and Dallas - while even the newest PSD diesels are still relatively "dirty" by comparison. And you can double or tripple your oil-change interval because the butane/propane burns so much cleaner than gasoline that any blowby does not contaminate the oil the way blowby from gasoline combustion does.
And there is a big effort by the envirofreaks in Texas to take the road tax off butane/propane - to lower the fuel cost per mile of propane to less than gasoline on vehicles that can run on propane - to encourage more sales of the bi-fuel trucks which they assume will help the air quality fight.
I now have an old early-'60s Massy-Ferguson tractor with a factory-installed butane system. Not bi-fuel, just butane. It has never been overhauled. I abuse the heck out of it and rarely change the oil. It still cranks right up and runs like a champ on butane. And the oil is nice and clean as though I changed it yesterday. Instead of a year ago yesterday,
The 2001 Fords have the one (optional) or two (standard) or three (optional) butane tanks as well as the gasoline tank - all under the bed. So you won't have that big ole 30-to-50-gallon butane tank taking up a third of your useable bed. Now that's a big improvement over the butane conversions installed by Blocker Oil company!
Nah, I won't be trading in my PSD for a bi-fuel chassis cab. But I thought you V-10 fans would be interested in this.
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Ole retired guy in west Texas with Darling Wife and Sierra Blanca - the white mountain of a '99.5 F250 PSD CrewCab.
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[This message has been edited by SmokeyWren (edited 12-16-2000).]
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