Well, I bought me a Land Rover Discovery earlier this year (2005).  Nothing special, just a K-plate V8, five door, auto box.  I was under pressure to get something more ‘family friendly’ than a 3 door Ford Focus.  What an opportunity, eh?

Anyway, I traded the ol’ trusty Focus in, ended the finance and walked away with a pretty good example of a V8 Discovery.  Bit rough ’round the edges but, at 12 years old, what’dya expect?

At the time I was commuting from North London, around the North Circular to the M4 every day, hence the auto box!  I don’t regret my decision as I feel, at 32 years old, my age justifies my reluctance to use a third pedal.

It soon became apparent that 200 miles for £55 of petrol was not going to win me any bonus points with the missus, bear in mind she was unaware that her precious Focus had gone to a better place because she was in Poland, so I had to do something to rectify the situation.  A gas conversion’s a great idea, I convinced myself, but, for me, is prohibitively expensive in the UK.  At least £1500 which is almost what the car was worth at the time.  Not good.  Now, having a Polish fiancee can be a blessing at times because the Polish are definitely resourceful people in an inexpensive country.  So the plan was born…  A gas conversion holiday in Poland.

I’d been in her home town, Gorzanka -South Eastern Poland, for a week or so and it was time to travel to Bedzin – Southern Poland, to get the gas sorted because, even at Polish prices, the Disco was making a dent in the wallet.

The game plan was to get the gas conversion done in a single day so we set off at 01:00, after a miserable 2 hour sleep and arrived in Bedzin at 06:30, tired, grumpy and 1.5 hours early.  By that time we couldn’t sleep in the car so sat awake, smoked, ate and drank until people started turning up at about 07:30.

At 08:30, half an hour after promised time, the manger / owner turned up, Voitek, and agreed that they’d start work.  Voitek himself is a keen 4×4 driver – having a 4.0 Jeep with gas, BFG M/T’s and a thirst for speed,  and offered to take us to the nearest hotel so we could get some shuteye.  As there’s not much else around the premises apart from a Renault Commercial garage and a wooden flooring shop we agreed and promptly hurried off to a motel at the side of the main A1.   Comfortable and cheap and hospitable we got a good few hours sleep and was told, by Voitek, that he’d be back at about 16:30 to pick us up and take us back to the workshop.

16:30, no Voitek,  17:00 Voitek.  We sat and ate dinner and chatted.  Voitek’s English is somewhat broken but is less broken than my Polish.  Thankfully I had the services, as interpreter, of my fiancee ‘Polish Ula’ – as she’s affectionately known, so we had a good discussion about the merits of various types of tyres for different terrain.  We eventually arrived back at the workshop at about 17:45 only to find out that the Disco wasn’t quite ready.  They gave us an estimation of about 19:00 finish time.

Now, in hindsite, it’s my own fault because I knew that the Disco was giving false readings on both the Lambda Sonz and could run like a pig, sometimes, unfortunately this was one of those times so they couldn’t tune the gas properly.  So, the answer?  Cut the downpipe and fit an individual Lambda Sonz specifically for the gas.  Now I’m not overly happy about that but what can I do?  In their defense I’ve had no real troubles with this setup, so far.

19:00, nothing, 20:00 nothing, 21:00 – offer of a lift to McDonalds to get tea, 22:00 nothing, 23:00 still nothing.  Now at this point I was getting worried because it was a Friday night and they all had places to go, they don’t work weekends and they, by law, can’t let the car leave until it’s finished and has been authorised with a certificate. 

That’s worrying because I don’t have the funds to stay in Bedzin all weekend nor would I want to stay in Bedzin all weekend.

“No problem” I was told, “it’ll get sorted tonight” and it did!  01:00 Saturday morning (or was it 02:00?  I can’t remember now) I rolled out of the workshop and on my way home, to Gorzanka again.

My biggest concern was always going to be reliability issues.  If I get it converted in Poland what happens when / if it goes wrong?  There is more then one answer to that question:

• I take another holiday to Poland – I’m always up for that.
• I contact them, at Bedzin Autogas, to see what they recommend.
• I contact the UK suppliers of the Italian installed equipment.

It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I’ve had a couple of little issue with it but nothing major.  I had it given the once over on my journey back to the UK, about a month after installation (yes, I was in Poland for two months!), and all was clear.

As I said, I did have a couple of issues with it but that’s been put down to my driving.  I now know how not to do certain things!  Other than that, what can I say? Cheap motoring, first class dedication and service, friendly people and an all round excellent experience.  One of the best parts?  Price. The whole kit, installed, certified and serviced?  About £500 – and that included that extra Lambda Sonz and foreign currency conversion charges.  The workshop was clean and professional too although there wasn’t much in the way of customer facilities apart from comfy armchairs to sleep in!

A small price to pay is that the Polish gas connector is not that of the English connector (it is the same as the French, which is different to the Germans which, in turn, is the same as the Belgians.  If I went to Holland then I need to use the same connector as in the UK – you’ve got to laugh haven’t you?) but I had all the European connectors included in the price and when I’m filling up and people are looking at my connector, I can smirk in the knowledge that my conversion is as every bit as good as theirs only it cost a third of their price.

I do notice a slight drop in power, although there’s certain things I can do to recover some of the loss – like replace the air filter as I was advised to do, and if I ever need the power I just switch effortlessly back to petrol (and watch that petrol gauge drop!) and floor it.

All in all, a great job.  Well done Voitek, I’ll see you at Christmas in Gorzanka for the snow fun we talked about!

Special thanks goes out to Patsy Dziedziela, of Invicta Poland, for getting the ball rolling and to Zbyszek, Voitek’s cousin, for all the phone calls and effort in arranging it all.