Vlog 20: Gas guzzler

For the gas supply in the van I wanted something that was refillable and could be used abroad but didn’t cost the earth for refills so I ended up buying a Gaslow R67 6kg LPG cylinder with filling kit. In this video, I show how much pondering I had to do in order to install the filler section.

Essentially you have to drill a hole in the side skirt of your van (not into the habitation area, in case of a gas leak when filling – the filler pipe connection needs to emerge outside and below the living area) into which you screw the supplied filler nozzle assembly. This consists of two plastic halves which screw into each other from either side of the hole you just made, along with a metal filler pipe into which the fuel pipe at the LPG station will be pushed and locked into place when filling.

One issue with this connection is that the outer plastic side has two tiny notches in it at the top and bottom, which you’re supposed to cut corresponding notches for in the hole you drill; the notches latching into the hole then prevents the plastic turning when you try to lock the filler hose into it. Unfortunately, the notches are tiny and if you have a less-than-perfect installation environment as I did on my van, it might be quite difficult to make this work.

The trouble on the Proace was that the outer plastic bumper was a couple of inches from the metalwork of the van, it sloped down at an angle (was not a flush surface into which to push the filler cap) and the underlying metal was a peculiar shape (see the video). After a lot of experimentation, I ended up mounting the filler cap onto the van’s metal side with the addition of Plastic Padding “Chemical Metal” to even out the odd shape – this had the benefit of glooping itself all around the notches so the installation should be held tight. I made a hole in the bumper so that I can put the filler hose nozzle through this when filling. Again, see the video to see what this looks like.

Having installed the filler cap, the supplied metal-shielded high-pressure filler hose is then tightened onto the end of the filler hole that you just installed, and fed up into your gas locker – you can choose the route but again, best not to take it through the habitation area (although Gaslow do now sell a protective gas-safe outer shielding specifically for this purpose) so I brought mine up through the gas locker’s drop out vent.

This is then tightened onto the cylinder’s inlet valve. Obviously these connections need to be very tight as the liquid gas is at high pressure but equally they are just metal-to-metal connections so there comes a time when they just will not screw together any tighter.