another noob question, fuel types..

[vk.jonno]

i did a search and kinda got a answer but it wasnt really wat i was after..

when did holden start changing from leaded to unleaded?
and when i brought the car we didnt ask or anything but we have been
putting unleaded in but hasnt been driven enough to tell if it runs clean and fine or whatever

how can i tell ?

[Rusty]

This may not help a great deal but i had a vh commodore a while back. I ran that with unleaded but i had to put a bottle "lead substitute" in the fuel tank when i filled it up. The liquid comes in a small bottle that is easily purchased at supercheap, repco etc.

The vh drove perfectly with the fuel mix, good luck mate!

[kym192]

k they started to change to unleaded in the vk series and to my knolage all they changed was the valves and pistons to cope with unleaded and ive been running a vh for a few years now without that substitute stuff and it runs fine dont know whats going on inside though havnt taken the head off yet but i did have problems with the carby but i just took one off a vk and it fixed that problem

[vkberlina]

WRONG The emissions laws were changed in 1985 for vehicles produced in 1986 basically for the VL, the VK was the last leaded/super car. Read my posts on what fuel to use. YOU DONT NEED FLASH LUBE!~!



scott

[ari666]

lol, and it begins again in a NEW thread

[kym192]

haha i dont care if im WRONG cant give a **** if i am

[vk.jonno]

ill check out ur thread scott
/thread

[vkberlina]

haha i dont care if im WRONG cant give a **** if i am

Sometimes I feel like im in Ground Hog day well dude why post dodgy information then??

scott

[kym192]

i thought vk's were unleaded i got it wrong still dont care

[Rusty]

i thought vk's were unleaded i got it wrong still dont care

Great attitude mate, maybe next time just say cheers to guy for correcting you.

The rest of us are here to learn too!

Interesting thread SCOTT!

[Bravotwozero]

Great attitude mate, maybe next time just say cheers to guy for correcting you.

The rest of us are here to learn too!

Interesting thread SCOTT!

Maybe peeps shouldn't be smartasses and shoot other members down when they are wrong! Called people skills.

[VKCOMMO]

I run on UL and it is fine..

[ari666]

The rest of us are here to learn too!

+1 to that. wrong info needs to be corrected, no one was flaming him, just correcting. some people need to chill. i am wrong ALL the time, but the good thing is itll only happen once. (except for my belief that cast heads are better than alloy and carb if better than efi.. that will NEVER change!!!)

[viccib]

ok, then recently bought a vc and don't know if there has been any type of conversion from super to unleaded yet. hypothetically, if no conversion what fuel do i use??? Please help me....Thanks.

[vkberlina]

ok, then recently bought a vc and don't know if there has been any type of conversion from super to unleaded yet. hypothetically, if no conversion what fuel do i use??? Please help me....Thanks.

I am so not taking the bait on this one..... AAAgghhhh I swear this place will make me nuts. READ THE ABOVE POSTS AND SEARCH THE FORUM FOR ANSWERS!!!! This is still on the front page of the VB-VK section under valve savers. F$%^ it here we go again


I have posted this several times before this place is becoming like groundhog day

Now reasons for running correct octane fuel...

When you run a low or insufficient octane fuel, your engine pinks (detonates, pinking, pings, knock what ever you get the point.) Under load.

Now this causes huge increases of heat in the combustion chamber. Now what this does is causes your exhaust valves to get to point where they begin to melt on the surface. Now generally under high load and/or high-RPM this can/will cause engines to fail.

Now you don’t _have_ to run lead or an upper cylinder lubricant. Under normal every day driving conditions your exhaust valves wont get hot enough (using fuel of sufficient octane) to cause valve seat recession. Even under higher load scenarios this will mostly be the case as well.

I Oz we have had fuels with 98 octane like Shell V-Power and the mobil, BP & Catel Vortex 98 these generally exceed the octane rating for most cars. As you have sufficient octane the car wont pink, because it isn’t pinking you have lower combustion temps so your valves don’t get as hot. As they are not getting, as the valves don’t micro/localise weld themselves to the seats so you don’t get valve seat recession.
note Regular unleaded is around 94 from memory & premium is 96 along with caltex vortex which basically is premium with injector cleaner. V Power, Vortex 98 and the other flavours by mobil & BP are all 98 octane fuels.
Now with the advent of E10 91 octane fuels the problem will become worse, the lower octane ethanol fuel mix burns at much high temps which will cause even quicker valve seat recession. On high performance alcohol cars and rockets water has been used up to 25% mixture to lower combustion temps which could be adapted to a road car. Also fuel mixtures are all wrong so with carbie jetting needs to be changed or EFI computers remapped noral fuel/air ratios are about 14.1 to 15.1, but for ethanol fuels its lower so you need more fuel to the same amount of air to get the same bang, hence the higher fuel consumption on ethanol fuels.

If you drive an older car like a VB-VK and it is driven in a low-stress application, basically used as a daily driver, then you need have no real need to run upper cylinder lubes or lead. As long as you use a fuel that meets or exceeds the octane rating for your engine. Really the only time you hay require an upper cyl lube is high sustained loads and RPM all the time.

If you rebuild your engine the best way to overcome this from ever happening is to install hardened exhaust valve seat inserts and exhaust valves of harder materials, such as 4N stainless.
Also if you lower your compression this will enable you to run a lower octane fuel. Simply retarding your timing isn’t really the proper way to tune an engine to run a lower octane fuel. Although you can advance your timing when you run a higher octane fuel this is because the cars timing was retarded from factory to pass emissions laws etc.

If your car pinks for a longer period of time you may experience pre-ignition or overrun when you turn your engine off. Basically what’s happening is your cylinder is so hot it’s igniting the fuel without the need for spark. This generally wont last long as your engine will destroy itself pretty quick.

The early commodore engine were designed for 97 octane super. If you run 98 octane fuel you wont need to run an upper cylinder lube. Super used to contain approx .14grams per litre of lead, Potassium, Manganese, Sodium & Phosphorus based upper cylinder lubes wont do the same job as leaded fuels, they burn at a lower temperature than lead does. Although they may aid in protecting they wont do the job as well. Sodium based substitues have been linked to damage to turbo charges.
Most additives will also contain a octane booster component. The higher the octane fuel the cooler the compustion temperature will be.


Scott

[ari666]

AH HAHAHAHAHA

(caps intentional)

[viccib]

thanks, I think. i'm just a girl who don't know much about cars and didn't realise that there was a thread that explained it. now, sorry to be a pain but in plain english what do i use??? can i just use the premium unleaded???? or unleaded with an additive??? I'm sorry if i offend anyone but I am not mechanically minded and just wanted to know. thanks for all the tech info though.

[ari666]

premium is fine. no additives

[viccib]

thanks for the plain english answer.lol...

[viccib]

sorry to be a pain, is that premium unleaded 95??? and had the 98 got the e10 in it??? thanks.

[moose man]

viccib,
Your VN will run just fine on the cheapest fuel available - E10. 90% of australians do exactly the same thing and don't have problems.
If you want to spend more money and get less fuel, buy the premium grades, but your engine won't benefit. If you had a high performance V8, things might be different.

Save your money. Buy E10.

[viccib]

I am talking about my vc not my vn. at the moment my vn runs on normal unleaded but from what the news said, i will have to use the e10 stuff next year.

[ari666]

bp ultimate or mobil 98 is what i always go with. avoid v-power like the plague. and any seedy little places like liberty.

[mainpath]

just out of curiosity why avoid v-power ?

[ari666]

it goes off quicker than the other two. something to do with their additives. i had both the dyno tuner and the dizzy builder trying to explain it to me but it was just gobbledigook. something about xyele and blah blah.

but the short version is this: it goes off quickly, so if you park your car for a week or so, or if you fill up at a servo just before they get refilled with fresh fuel, your basically running a really low grade fuel, cos all the important additives have evaporated.

also, my car has fits when i put it in 70% of the time pings its face off at high rpm. ive never had a problem with mobil or BP though.