On 2009-11-05, Matthew Russotto <russotto (AT) grace (DOT) speakeasy.net> wrote:
I'm not so sure about that. it seems that such wear isn't as bad as was
once believed.

Matthew Russotto wrote:
That isn't true. There was a lot of concern about that at the time of
the switch over from leaded to unleaded. But just like the Y2K scare
that problem never seemed to materialize. I know a guy who put 300K on a
'49 willies jeep after lead was phased out without any valve or ring
problems and no increase in oil consumption. I myself ran a '66 chevy
283 for 20 years after lead was gone and didn't have any valve problems.
The real issue was lead was a lot cheaper way to boost octane than any
thing else. The scare tactic was just to keep lead in gasoline as long
as possible and it worked. If the problem had been truthfully posed as
do we continue to spew lead across the country only to benefit the oil
companies, then it would have been eliminated 20 years earlier. the
exact same thing can be said of MTBE.


-jim

"Joe Pfeiffer" <pfeiffer (AT) cs (DOT) nmsu.edu> wrote


Hey, Stellite!. Stelliiite!! *

*with apologies to Tennessee Williams

jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net> writes:

In fairness, Y2K was a huge problem, but it was seen coming just barely
far enough away that companies were able to put a huge amount of effort
in and fix (or band-aid) their code so that almost nobody outside was
inconvenienced. Had the work not gone into fixing it, the dire
predictions would have come true.

Likewise my impression remains that the concerns about valve life were
real, and not just oil company propaganda. But while the concerns were
real, they turned out to be unfounded.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

Matthew Russotto wrote:
Both my '65 Corvairs do, stock.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Joe Pfeiffer wrote:

Effective propaganda may produce real concerns. But consider the facts -
It was well known that lead was a poison when it was first added to gas
in 1920. and it was well known that lead is a substance that never
biodegrades when it is placed into the environment. It turned out that
there were considerable financial advantages to the automakers and oil
companies but hardly a shred of true evidence there was any advantage to
the consumer or driver of cars. Yet most people had been convinced it
did have advantages. But your right this wasn't oil company propaganda
The serious lying came from the auto manufacturers.

The lead in gasoline got there by agreement between Congress, auto
makers and oil refiners. The automakers wanted higher octane fuel the
oil companies didn't want to bear the large expense of the extra
processing to make high octane fuel. Back then it would have more than
doubled the cost. The deal they arrived at was simple. Put lead in the
gas. To sell this to the public the automakers would claim that their
cars would fall apart without lead and congress and the oil companies
would go about selling the public on the health benefits of lead in
gasoline.

The main reason that the automakers made a big deal out of coming out
with newly designed valves and other components when unleaded fuel was
first started to be sold in the 70's was that they had claimed 50
years prior that they had a mountain of scientific evidence that bad
things would happen to engines without lead. They couldn't now just
ignore those claims they had stated as scientific fact. Modern studies
have revealed that those early studies were probably complete frauds.
One 2003 study showed that adding Tetra ethyl lead to gasoline reduces
engine life by 50%. The current extended spark plug change intervals are
really almost entirely due to the removal of lead from gasoline.
Typically spark plugs electrodes and insulators erode 4 times as fast
when using leaded gasoline.


One interesting side note is the role ethanol played in this. Initially
the oil companies rejected the idea of creating higher octane fuel by
adding a well known poison to their fuel and told the automakers to take
a hike and they didn't give a damn about octane that was the automakers
problem not theirs. After all why should they compromise the image of
their product for the benefit of the automakers. So automakers (mostly
ford & GM) started fooling around with mixing ethanol as a fuel. That
got the oil companies attention and suddenly the oil companies saw the
light and started supporting the lead additive. Ethanol as a fuel
disappeared for quite a while. It took 80 years and 7 million tons of
lead blown out the tail pipes of cars but eventually ethanol made a come
back.


-jim

jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net> wrote:
No, there were _major_ advantages to ethyl. It not only made high octane
gas much cheaper to make, it made high octane gas _practical_ to make.
Yeah, it's possible to make 90 octane gas from casing head, but it evaporates
right from your tank and it's substantially less safe to transport.

Higher octane gas means higher performance engines for the consumer, and
the consumer demanded that.

A side effect was the fact that valve seats lasted a whole lot longer
because of the lubrication the lead provided.

And yes, everybody knew lead was toxic, but I don't think anyone had any
notion just how toxic it was. Remember only 20 years before, lead acetate
was a common ingredient in cakes and candies. On top of that, nobody had
any idea that the auto industry would explode to the point where emissions
were a big issue.

In retrospect, it turned out to be a bad idea, but I don't think you can
blame folks at the time. For a while, you could buy gas with and without
ethyl; they coexisted in the marketplace. But as I said, it's just not
practical to make high octane gas without an octane enhancer. And the
first convenient one that was found was lead.

I'd like to see a cite to that 2003 study. I'd also be curious if that
study used an engine with modern hardened valve seats or typical 1960s
soft seats.

Again, I have seen plenty of ads from the thirties promoting ethyl in
gas, but I have never seen any of them promoting ethanol in gas. I'm
not sure anyone ever knew about it in the general public.

Ethanol didn't make a comeback, though, until after lead was replaced by
MTBE, and then MTBE turned out to be even worse than lead was.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
So do consumers no longer demand that anymore??..


Which has proven to be a bunch of blarney. Maybe in an engine racing at
200mph it makes a difference but not an ordinary car.


Actually there were very accurate predictions made in the congressional
hearings in the 20's.

Except for ethanol. Lead never lived up to its claims. Lead didn't lead
to better gas mileage, didn't burn cleaner but they said they had
scientifc evidence it did.


No you are confused. The lead didn't cause any unusual wear to the valve
seats. That was about the only internal component in the engine that had
the same wear as unleaded. The study showed the rest of the engine does
see accelerated wear when run on leaded fuel. The tests were done on
modern engine comparing modern fuel to fuel of the same octane
formulated with TEL. The study may have been funded by the UN. Lead is
still used in some third world countries and there is some efforts to
encourage them to stop.


If you mean in the public in the thirties how was ethanol supposed to
get in their gas? It was prohibition and the oil companies and
automakers had already perjured themselves in front of congress
declaring there was no possible substitute for lead.

You gotta love that about ethanol. Despite the best efforts of all the
big players to make it look bad - it is the only one left standing.

Again ethanol was rejected for MTBE because it was just plain more
profitable for the oil companies. And ethanol is cutting into petroleum
sales. And the government and the oil companies again knew all about the
hazards of MTBE from the beginning and again the lies eventually didn't
hold up.


-jim

On Thu, 5 Nov 2009 19:54:01 +0000 (UTC), Brent
<tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

What was found was that if you ran leaded fuel for a few thousand
miles it built up a coating that could provide protection for a long
time after that even if you burned unleaded. But if you took a new 66
engine that had never been run and started it off on unleaded it would
burn the valves relatively quickly. That's why when leaded gas was
phased out there wasn't the problem people thought there would be -
all the already in service cars had been run on leaded for a long time
and the new ones had hardened valve seats.

jim wrote:

I wasn't aware of the faster electrode erosion with lead, but I do know
that quite often spark plug life was limited because of the lead being
vapor deposited onto the insulator that bridges the electrodes such that
eventually the surface of the insulator became conductive and would
short out the voltage before ionization/spark could occur. That's what
I saw more than anything forcing spark plug replacement when I was a
much younger DIY'er.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')