Trevor writes:
> Lead sucks. Frankly, we've been without it forever,
>and I don't see the massive automotive carnage that
>the british auto press seems to like portray.
I hope our UK friends don't get too upset about the lead thing.
Trevor's right...we have been running without it forever and it
doesn't seem to be causing any serious problems.
Unleaded fuel has actually been *available* <in the Unites States, not
sure about Canada> since the early sixties.
Anyone remember seeing Bob Hope on TV wearing his nifty red cap
hawking "Unleaded Ammoco"? This fuel was being hyped as a performance
enhancement that prevented fouling of spark plugs from lead deposits.
Nothing to do with emissions...WAY too early for that.
AFAIK, all grades of Ammoco sold in the sixties were unleaded. Since
this was a major brand, that says that one heck of a lotta really old
cars were using unleaded even then. If Ammoco was deluged with
lawsuits from folks who damaged their engines I missed hearing about
it.
Okay...I don't know for a fact that "Unleaded Ammoco" was completely
free of lead...we only knew what the Ad copy told us.
Still...my own empirical data looks pretty good. My '74 Plymouth ran
100k of it's 240k miles on unleaded fuel...never had the head off.
'71 and '74 Toyota's that my wife owned seemed happy as well.
My '74 Spit is still going strong...I'm not the original owner but by
the looks of it that head's been on there a good long while. :-)
Tom O'Malley <You can trust your car to the man who wears the star...>
'74, '77 Spits
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