Old Cars and New Fuels

[My thanks to Elwyn Jordan for the following contribution.]

While I am not, presently, a member of the club, I am a member of the classic vehicle movement (I am a member of a classic motorcycle club), and am interested in all classic vehicles.

I am the owner of two vehicles that are pre-1986, and so were designed to run on the old leaded Super petrol; a 1974 Triumph 2500TC, and a 1984 Yamaha XJ600. (Oh yes, and there is a 1954 BSA Bantam, but as it isn't running at the moment, that doesn't really count I suppose!). Probably like a lot of people, I had been concerned about Lead Replacement Petrol ever since it's introduction at the start of 2001, but like everyone else, I just pulled up at the same petrol pump I always had, and went onto the new fuel. But all was not well! 

The first thing I noticed was a slightly rougher running, and slightly poorer performance of both the car and the bike. But it was only fairly slight; there was no pinging, or mis-firing, no hard to start when hot etc. It felt like perhaps they just needed a tune-up, like the ignition was slightly retarded. And they were both a little rougher at idle than they had been. The drop in performance was most noticeable with the bike. Previously, a twist of the throttle would see it revving out quite willingly, but now it seemed a little sluggish, not as free-revving as it normally had been. But because I don't use either on a day-to-day basis, it took a while for these symptoms to become apparent, and I didn't initially attribute it to the new petrol.

But there was another, more alarming effect. After a reasonable distance, around 50 - 60 km, both car and bike seemed to get hot and fumey. I have a bad sense of smell, so I wasn't able to identify any particular smell, but the effect was strong enough to make me feel a bit sick. My wife, who has a much keener sense of smell, complained when she was in the car that it "stinks of petrol"! This was making her feel ill after only a short distance in the car. I went looking for petrol leaks, but as it was also happening with the bike, I became suspicious. I had previously read an article in our club magazine, from a member who had experienced increased running temperatures when using LRP in his vintage bike. This particular member had subsequently changes to using a mixture of unleaded petrol and an additive called Flashlube; and that had cured the problems. This made me suspicious that the fuel could be the cause of the problem. There was no indication from the temperature gauge that the car was running hotter, but I noticed that there was an abnormal amount of heat coming from around the engine, even after it had been parked for some time. The bike also seemed to be running hotter.

So I began investigating this whole matter of Lead Replacement Petrol. I spoke to the Technical Department of the NRMA, and also to the major petrol companies. I also spoke to the Technical section of Flashlube, the product recommended by the member in the magazine article. And I did some research on the internet as well. And I came up with some rather fascinating facts!

For example, did you know that the reason we went to unleaded petrol was not, primarily, to remove the lead from petrol, but to allow catalytic converters to be fitted to our cars! Lead was not the major concern; the other emissions were! And did you know that the petrol companies use one of two main additives in their LRP; one is manganese, and the other is phosphor. Each have problems. Manganese has suspected (but not proven!) health concerns (as well as turning your spark plugs a rusty-orange colour!), while phosphor has had problems with sooting-up of plugs. But it gets more complicated when you find that the same petrol company uses different additives in various states!

Anyway, after all this investigating, I decided to give Flashlube a try. As the club member had reasoned, it has been around for a long time (being used in vehicles running LPG), and so is a "tried and proven" product. I drained the tank in the bike, and poured in some Premium Unleaded with about double the amount of Flashlube recommended (it doesn't matter if you over-dose it). Immediately the bike ran smoother; it idled more evenly, and revved out just like it always did. The "sparkle" in the performance was back!

With the car, I intended running it almost empty and then changing to Premium Unleaded and Flashlube. As it turned out, a slightly inaccurate fuel gauge saw me totally running out of petrol! My wife was in the car at the time, and had been complaining again about the petrol smell. A phone call to my daughter had some Premium Unleaded delivered, and I added the Flashlube (again, almost doubling the recommended dose). Again, the change was immediate. The car idled smoother, and was back to it's original performance. Also, the smell of petrol had gone! We traveled further that day on the new mixture than we had done on the LRP, but at the end my wife still said the smell of petrol had all but gone. And I wasn't getting the hot, fumey sensations I had previously noticed. After it was home and parked, I also noticed that there wasn't the same amount of heat coming out from around the front of the car as there had been with the LRP.

So, I am very happy with this solution (no pun intended!) to the problem! Now I want to make it clear that this is in no way an add for Flashlube! There are several other over-the-counter additives available, which probably work just as well.

However I thought it could be good for others to share the benefits of my research, and so I have produced a web-site on this subject. It is related to cars and bikes, and details the findings of my research. It describes the problems of removing lead from our petrol, and also details the problems of Lead Replacement Petrol. It also tells you what the petrol companies had to say, as well as what the NRMA recommended. There are pictures of spark plugs that have been running on the different fuels, and so on. Overall, I think you should find it interesting! So, if you have access to the internet, please feel welcome to take a look at it. Here is the address: http://carsandfuels.homestead.com