What petrol to use

Gel

A couple of questions.

1. If I'm not sure whether the engine of my car has been converted for unleaded, should I still keep adding lead additive?

2. What petrol should I use to avoid enthanol?

alex404coupe

How old is the engine?

Gel

74 MG - not sure! seller said it could take unleaded but may not be true. Certainly runs really well on unleaded, no sign of valve seat wear

69 Beetle - engine rebuilt about 2000. Only 24,000 miles, runs like a dream. Found lead additive in car when I bought it so I guess that says enough.

I suppose the question is can I put in lead additive just as a precaution anyway and what fuel is the best to use to avoid ethanol corrosion?

dr.fuzzenstein

Not sure about the MG, but Beetles seem to be able to run without problems on unleaded without any conversion done to them.
http://www.volkszone.com/VZi/showthread.php?t=637356

StiophanM

You are unlikely to find petrol without ethanol - its a legal requirement to put it in. Hopefully if the car has had an unleaded conversion then seals may have been upgraded. The other problem with ethanol is if you leave your car lying up say for over a month - ethanol attracts water and separates from the petrol thus it can cause rust in the tank. The IVVCC have a good article on the website here:-

http://www.ivvcc.ie/Ethanol%20in%20petrol.html

As I can't avoid ethanol I tend use Maxol as they claim to have 99 octane juice or Texaco which seems the best of the rest. Applegreen did not reply to my mail asking them their octane rating. The rest just give bad mileage in the TR.

Millers have an 'Ethanol' protector out as will the others I assume. Whether it works or not I dunno as I would have thought the exact effects of ethanol are not yet known as we haven't had it in the petrol long enough

There is a school of thought that says you don't need to worry about unleaded substitute especially if the car is high mileage as lead will have built up. Your choice there of course. Did the car come with receipts that might indicate unleaded conversion?. Maybe the MG owners club can advise....

:pac:

JoeySully

This "Ohh ethanol is Baad for ould cars" thing to me is just a big scare technique so that we buy all these additives for mad prices. €14 euro I heard soemone say they bought a bottle of it recently - that's for 250ml of this stuff. Enough to buy 10l of fuel.

With the way fuel prices are going, adding any additives the fuel makes a full tank very expensive. A bottle of lead additive costing ~€10-€15 per fill really adds up if you are using your car regularly.

If your car is running nicely on unleaded without the additive then I wouldn't bother putting any in at all. Just put your €10 away every-time you fill up and soon enough you will have enough to get the valves fitted with hardened seats anyway. Probably at this stage your engine will require the head(s) taking off anyway for new gasket or valve stem seals. If the engine is not running well on unleaded the retarding the timing may help.

Yes the Ethanol eats rubber fuel lines, It makes them hard and brittle, Checking and changing regularly is essential. Buying a length of it in the motor factor is cheap so no reason to skimp on new fuel hoses when they look a bit tired.

As for water building up in the tank? Id like to see proof of this TBH. Tanks that are 30-40 years old I think will rust more from the outside due to salt spray on the road than water collected by ethanol on the inside.. Most tanks are sealed system with small venting holes which don't let much moist air into the fuel system. Brass jets will get eaten by excessive ethanol in the fuel but do they not also get eaten by good ould leaded fuel it just happens quicker. You will always have the few that will tell you the fuel will "go off" if you leave it int he tank for too long - so which is it ? the fuel has gone off or the the evil ethanol and joined up with the water that just somehow magically gets in your tank and is sitting at the bottom of the tank!
Last winter in the middle of the winter with ice on the ground I started an early 80's car that was parked up outside for two years with the fuel that was in the tank all that time. It started up first go and ran fine. So yes I'm a bit of a cynic when it come to all these stories about fuel.

corktina

yeah, I agree with Joey. the unleaded thing was blown out of all proportion and so I think is this issue.Just replace bits when they need replacing using the money you will have saved without the additives.

Having said that I use Castrol Valvemaster in my cars as it has an octane booster and does not harm, but Im fully in the "get valves seats done if ever they doing " camp.

StiophanM

I agree with the previous 2 messages - hence I used the term 'can' rather than 'will'. I haven't seen any evidence of rust within the tank of my car and its shielded from the weather. Only what I am reading elsewhere.

I also support get the valve seats and whatever else needs doing or upgrading from an engineering point of view rather than paying for any of these additives.

I recently bought some 'off the shelf' Octane booster from one of the well known companies and I didn't notice any difference if anything it ran worse and the car has perfomed better since its been flushed thru. I got some racing grade booster given to me a while back - that did work but it was very expensive at €22 to do a tankful 50l

ianobrien

I was using Castrol Valvemaster until I got the head converted to unleaded. It seemed to work as the company doing the head for me said that there was no damage to the valves or valve seats.

The car did have one of them in-line "fuel converters" plumbed into it when we got it but I didn't trust it.

I'm now using Miller CVL in the engine.

corktina

maybe you are a gentle driver? the damage is only likely to happen when it gets really hot, like on a long distance motorway thrash

hi5

There is supposed to be a layer of lead left on the valves and seats and this should last 10,000 miles or so,"Lead memory" I think its called.
I buy a bottle every now and then ,Christmas and Birtdays:D

JoeySully

I found this information about Fuel Lines and thought Id post it up - seems like a very releveant thread. Its from a VW parts seller but the information really does relate to all classics.

http://www.volksbolts.com/faq/fuelhose.htm.

I have recently chaged the rubber hoses on my 96 BMW which was suffering from badly corroded fuel hoes. So if your car is Old but not yet classic then it might be time to change those fuel lines. The last part of the article shows the Fuel pump problem which affects all manual pumps like this - well worth chcking the inlet outlet pipes of them too while your at it.