The RI gasoline engine haying a sub-chamber had a high cycle variation due to the difficulty of the residual gas scavenge in the sub-chamber. To solve this problem and improve the combustion performance of RI engine, we devised a method to inject directly CNG fuel into the sub-chamber. A DI diesel engine of single cylinder was converted into a RI-CNG engine and an electronic control unit for the engine was manufactured. In this study, the combustion characteristics of the RI-CNG engine were investigated with the injection timings and air excess ratios at the load conditions of 50% throttle open rate and 1700rpm. As the results from this study, the RI-CNG engine worked reliably under the condition of the ignitable lean limit of $lambda=1.7$ by showing the $COV_{imep}$ below about 5%. And the highest thermal efficiency could be obtained in the injection timing that produced the high imep and the low $COV_{imep}$ at the same time. The CO emission concentration indicated very low values and the THC and $NO_x$ showed an opposite pattern. With a view to improving the thermal efficiency and reducing the harmful emissions, the proper control region of the ignition timing and the mixture ratio were nearly ATDC $20^{circ}sim50^{circ}$ and $lambda=1.4$ respectively.