The Vermont Triumph Register has an entry on their maintenance pages
discussing the subject. The entry is written by the senior Buick engineer
who designed the engines that went into the Rover, etc... He says that their
test showed that the amount of precession of the valve seats was almost
non-existent if the engine had ever run with leaded gasoline. The damage
only occurred on vehicles which had never had any leaded fuel. So, run a
little lead-replacement formula through the engine every so often and you
should never have a problem. Anyway, it sounds reassuring eh?
Mark Hooper
markhooper@pixelsystems.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ArthurK101@aol.com <ArthurK101@aol.com>
To: bjohnson@mmm.com <bjohnson@mmm.com>; triumphs@autox.team.net
<triumphs@autox.team.net>
Date: November 4, 1998 5:19 PM
Subject: Unleaded fuel
>
>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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