In a message dated 98-11-04 11:45:04 EST, you write:
> We have a lot of correspondence in the magazine about unleaded fuel and
> what we can do about it at present (the UK goes unleaded on Jan 1st 2000 I
> think) - Does anyone in the USA have any good advice about this?
> My TR4 came from somewhere in Washington State and has valve seat
> inserts. Are they likely to be what I need for unleaded fuel ?
>
> Brian Johnson
>
Brian, methinks you guys in the UK are making way too big a deal about
unleaded fuel. ("The sky is falling" - courtesy of Chicken Little). We North
Americans have been running unleaded fuel for years (since the late '70's, I
think, although I was overseas for most of that decade.) I have heard very
few "horror stories" about our older cars breaking apart or blowing up on
unleaded fuel. And the few stories that I have heard were usually from some
"nervous nelly" who didn't appear to know what he was talking about.
What we do here is replace the valve seats with hardened seats when we rebuild
the engines. If your engine was rebuilt in the US it probably has the
hardened seats which will protect it from wear. But even if it doesn't have
them, I wouldn't sweat it. It will take many miles and much time for the
unleaded fuel to "ruin" your engine. You would probably wind up rebuilding it
before then. When you do a rebuild just put in the hardened seats. Cheers.
Art Kelly
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