E-Paper
Smuggling in ?risks? cheap from abroad
SOMETHING could just blow up on your face, or trigger an unexplained fire in your car. This is a clear possibility as sub-standard LPG conversion car kits, suspected to be smuggled from east European countries such as Romania and Poland, have started flooding the Lucknow market.
SOMETHING could just blow up on your face, or trigger an unexplained fire in your car.
This is a clear possibility as sub-standard LPG conversion car kits, suspected to be smuggled from east European countries such as Romania and Poland, have started flooding the Lucknow market.
These sub-standard kits are in the range of Rs 3,500 to Rs 4,000 compared to reputed Argentinean and Italian LPG and CNG conversion kits priced between Rs 7,000 and 15,000. They are now being hawked by auto parts dealers and LPG conversion car kit retrofitters working in automobile repair garages to those looking for a cheaper and a “dangerous” option to save on fuel costs.
“The LPG conversion kits are being clandestinely fitted in many vehicles in Lucknow. This is mainly being done to very old models of cars, or by taxi owners who want to use domestic LPG cylinders clandestinely and save on fuel,” a prominent auto dealer in the city told HT Lucknow Live.
The Romanian and Polish LPG conversion kits look exactly like any other LPG kit of superior quality. But people who fitted them came back saying that the pressure regulator did not work and LPG leakage was rampant inside the car, he said.
The manufacture of LPG conversion kits is like a cottage industry in northern India.
The craze for a cheaper “imported” brand is laying the death trap for many LPG conversion kit buyers in the city, the dealer said. There is another dimension to the entire story.
The sundry garages which repair cars in the city have become a hunting ground for cheap LPG conversion kits.
Thanks to the ease with which these kits can be installed in a car, many garage owners are making a fast buck by recommending cheaper options, while falsely claiming their “safety record”.
The clampdown by district authorities on illegal use of LPG cylinders in school vans has left out a prime aspect of safety — the LPG conversion kit itself whose quality in most cases is questionable unless fitted by the automobile manufacturers from the factory or recommended to use certain brand only in vehicles.
