Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Unleaded Fuel question

I heard that most of the sixs were such low rev engines it wouldnt be a problem but V8s would be effected, but by the time they were they would be darn near ready for a rebuild anyways. If you hear no pings or knocks go for it!

I recently got a 53 with a 216 and spent about 40$ on gas this last weekend (I just got her road worthy and was a little excited!) running all over town and no pinging and Im not gonna change a thing. -Jeff

Before I got the 41 I ran my old Rover cars with inline six motors on unleaded gas for years without any problems. I think Jeff hit the nail on the head, these low revving motors driven normally shouldn't be a problem. Think of the muck they used to run on during WW2.Come rebuild time it would be sensible to put in hardened seats while its stripped down. Just my two bobs worth.

Cheers

Bob

I agree with Mozzie.

Cliff59

The big problem will be if you run your vehicle under extreme load a lot. Running the vehicle hard will have more of a tendancy to wear the seats. As a daily driver you would probably only loose 15% of your valve/seat life. Thats 15,000 miles out of 100,000 miles. Not worth getting excited about unless you are doing an overhaul already.

want to be safe? NAPA has a cheap "lead" subtitute about 1 oz for 5 gallon gas.

i met this elderly gent and while we were talkin trucks he was puting fuel in his newer 90's truck he took out a bottle of tranny fluid and put two capfuls in the tank,,,said it helped to keep things lubbed up,,,never tried it myself.
anybody else heard of this...this ol timer swore by it and said he never had to rebuild an engine .his cars and trucks fell apart first

But in this day in age, we're pulling down 2-300,000 mile on an engine with just maintenance like oil changes, nothing major. So how would you know?
Scott

If you have worries about valve seat damage from lack of lubrication with unleaded,add a couple of capfuls of Marvel Mystery Oil to the tank before every other fill up. As a sidenote,it seems to improve the octane of the gas by about a grade. I don't know how it does it,maybe it "fools" the engine into thinking the octane is higher,but it enabled me to run regular no-lead in my old Harley FLH,when it used to ping with anything less than 90 octane.
Speed

When did they invent leaded gas in the US?

Here in Germany there was no lead in gas till 1957.
So all the pre 1960 engines can handle it without any problem

I drove 216s, 235s since years with unleaded and had any kind a problems :rolleyes: but never a valve problem. We even do quatermile with that, never heard about no-lead related problems from my Hotrod friends and we do a lot of abuse.

Frank

I think it was around 1924.