James,
It's amazing what pointless gadgets people will try and sell you!!
Numero Uno - The fuel catalyst. I remember several of these things
appearing a few years ago, in the run-up to the banning of leaded petrol.
They claim to catalytically 'modify' the fuel (i.e. the material encourages
the fuel to change without itself being affected), so that it works like
leaded fuel. It is complete bollocks, some might even consider it a con.
Their 'proof' relies on a number of testimonials from previous customers,
all purporting to be delighted. All of these cars no doubt have survived
well on the well-documented and proven 'lead memory' effect (whereby lead
impregnated into the metal after many years of leaded fuel use continues to
give protection for some time after unleaded has started to be used), and
would have gone on just as well whether or not the Fuel Cat was used.
The MG Owners Club offered to organise and support an independant test (to
be conducted by car industry testers MIRA) whereby 3 Midgets (I think) all
with brand new heads would be run - one with 4-star, one with unleaded, one
with unleaded and the fuel cat. The Fuel Cat suppliers were asked to pay
for it, on the basis that the sales benefits of a scientific test and
recommendation by the MGOC (50,000 members) would be well worth it. The
manufacturers declined, draw your own conclusions.
When the FBHVC were testing fuel additives (in a similar method to that
described above), the manufacturers of several of these Fuel Cat devices
were also invited to submit their products for testing - none did. Draw
your own conclusions. Interestingly, none of the major petrol companies
submitted their LRPs to these tests either.
Numero Duo - Well, I haven't heard of this one before, but I have my
doubts... Firstly, the coil will not be re-charged between each of these 5
little sparks, so you will get 5 sparks that are 1/5 as strong. Secondly,
how do the 4 sparks after the first one help? If the first one succeeded in
igniting the fuel, the other will not affect anything. There have been cars
with more than one spark plug in the past - early Rolls-Royces (redundancy
reasons mainly, so the car will still work if one ignition system fails),
and recent Alfa Romeos (but their second spark fires on the exhaust stroke,
I believe, to aid combustion of remaining hydrocarbons in the exhaust to
improve emissions). If having a sequence of sparks had any real benefit,
car manufacturers the world over would be doing it right now. They aren't.
Still, it's amusing to see people try to sell this tat. Even more amusing
to watch poor innocent sods part with their money for it, as long as it's
not someone you know...
Richard and Daffy
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