lead substitute

I just spotted in another thread someone mentioning lead substitutes and it's got me going on one of my pet peaves! Most of you don't remember that in the old days the marine gas was "white" gas. White gas is straight run gas with no additives (no lead) that the marine engines ran fine on. It's my opinion that the lead substitute is a oil industry scam to sell a small over priced bottle of liquid! If the top end of your engine needs rebuilding I would say that it's most likely hours of run time and not the lack of lead in the gas. Yes there are some earlier engines that were built without basic things like hardened guides and seats but those wouldn't have lasted on leaded gas ether. If you do have one of them, don't though your money out on the little bottle, do a top end job instead and install the hardened guides and seats.

8122
I will have to disagree with you on this subject,the "lead" did a couple of jobs. The primary being its Anti-Knock ability,ie higher compression,more HP. The second was that the "lead" cushioned the valve, and seat leading to longer life of the valve train.
The newer style heads have Stellite or some type of harder valve seats,and a harder ,different metal, that does not promote "valve tuliping" of the exhaust valve.
The new style GT-40 heads have these improvements.If you are running an older motor,1960's that was to recomended to be run on "leaded fuel" the lead additive is cheap insurance against valve trouble.
And by the way the "White Gas" was recommended for the 2 stroke motors,Mercury insisted it be used in their 1960 thru 1970 outboad motors,the "lead" was not needed and was very "dirty" plugging exhaust ports manifolds...........boat dr   

All theory aside here gentlemen- real world use- My 1951 Ford F-1 pu with a flat head V8 ran like sh*t without lead substitute.

reid,
i don't think we will get the same results,white pipes ,as the additive is not really tetraethyllead.
The motors run so clean now that this is really a waste of money on a 4 stroke motor,look at a spark plug after 75000 miles now, compare that to a plug in the days of good premium fuel.Spark plug life was about 10,000 miles and gunked up from the "lead"
Barracuda,the "lead additive" should not have any bearing on engine performance,just on valve life.But then again the stuff we pay 2.50 gal.is not the same ,gasoline as in the 60 and 70's is history.Today the industry call it "REFORMULATED FUEL" and God only knows what that means............boat dr