I have a 2001 & a 1999 cherokee, I am in the process of gathering the parts to convert it to compresed natural gas, has anyone here heard of anyone doing this? I will probably start a thread in the jeep build area once i start, in oklahoma CNG is plentiful @ .88 cents a gallon thats 1/4 the price of gasoline, Please let me know if you know anyone who has done this, thanks riper1

 

You're going to spend a ton of cash doing a conversion, you'll get only half the fuel range as you would with gasoline, the composit CNG tanks have to be replaced every 15 years, there are very few places to fuel up compared to gasoline, the tanks take up a lot of room, and the delivery system is completely different. It will take a long time in order for the CNG system to pay for its self for what you will spend doing the conversion. LPG is an easier conversion and has more fuel range than CNG, and you could make it a dual fuel vehicle. But again, the LPG tank hogs a lot of space.

 

did you ever do the cng conversion?
-Jay

 

Just replying to this thread in case anyone looks for CNG info in an XJ in the future. I had a 2001 XJ in Minnesota for years, loved driving it and had to sell when I moved to Colombia (in South America!) three years ago.

I got sick of not having a car about 1 year in and bought a 1998 XJ. I've practically redone the car, it drives amazing now and is my loyal companion on my weekend adventures. About the CNG I put in 3 smaller tanks in the back so that I could still have some cargo room above them. I built a flat top above those tanks which isn't shown in the picture.

The reason I did this originally is 1 or 2 days a week in all the major Colombian cities you cannot drive your car or face a $250 fine! The fine is from police or cameras so almost impossible to evade not driving a day or 2 a week depending on what the Mayor's office says. The only way to not be affected is to have an electric or natural gas powered car.... Hence my motivation to convert.

I have a third generation system that has a switch on the dash that allows me to go between gasoline and natural gas. If I run out of natural gas it auto switches back to gasoline. Natural gas down here is way cheaper than gasoline too so you get the benefit of saving at the pump and being able to drive whenever you want.

You lose a little power with natural gas but honestly it's not that big of a deal. I drive on natural gas whenever possible...It actually runs super smooth on CNG I prefer it to gasoline..or maybe that's me just liking saving $.

Down here there are a lot of mechanics who hate CNG and say it will kill your engine, it has no power, etc. etc. I think that is true if you take a new car that has a 1.0 engine and convert to CNG. But this old tank with a 4.0 seems to do just fine power wise and no fancy computers or whatever to get messed up. Just my experience from 2 years now of using CNG...