CD2 Lead substitute?

Are you using lead substitute?

  • Yes I use lead substitute

    Votes: 6 5.4%

  • No I do not use lead substitute

    Votes: 94 83.9%

  • I do not use lead substitute because I have hardened valve seats.

    Votes: 12 10.7%
  • Total voters
    112
29ModelA

29ModelA

Well-known member
How many of you are using lead substitute? I pick up my wife's car tomorrow from having the engine revived after 40 years and will be trying to get it road ready.

It's mostly bolting the body back together, but I need to hook up all the engine accessories as well.
 
i did use lead sub at one point but i found it made my valves stick. i now only use marv oil . cleans and lubes the fuel system as the car runs. the only side effect is if you put to much you car may smoke a little.
 
Lead is for the high performance mills becoming popular around the end of the A era. The stock A does not require lead.
 
The fuels at the time of the A were not leaded.They were being experimented with,but not available to the everyday driver.So the A was a lead-free car from day one anyway.I doubt my A saw lead until I used it in the mid-70's.The farm it spent it's life on always had cheap gas delivered there,and the car was parked in 54.
 
With the standard factory cylinder head compression, you could burn kerosene, But I am not suggesting that...
 
Funny story. This happened about twenty years ago just after a local gas station installed a new kerosene/diesel pump on the island with the gas pumps. While waiting for our local Christmas parade to start a few of the guys decided to top off the gas tanks on their Model A's. Well as luck would have it they all picked a different pump. One of the guys filled his tank with kerosene/diesel by accident. By the time they had driven 100 yards back to the shopping center parking lot where we were waiting you would have thought that he was spraying for mosquitos. There was a massive plume of dense white smoke coming from that Model A. Next thing we knew, one of the fire trucks that was lined up for the parade pulled out of line and rushed back to where our Model A's were waiting in line. They had seen all of the smoke and thought that the Model A was burning down. To funny!
 
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I did something like this when I was a kid when I was young and stupid. My dag kept a can of kerosine in the garage and he told me to cut the grass so I picked up the can of kerosine and filled the tank on the mower has a little gas in it. And it got to smoking flogging for skeeters. Now I am older but still stupid. This is according to the wife. She says I would make a good canditate fot the Jerry Springer show.:D Well hell theres probably a lot of you older gents on here that would do better than me.:D:D
 
In the early 50,s,Dad had a barrel of stove oil for the Coleman heater & sometimes when I didnt have money for gas ,I would run 1/3 stove oil & 2/3 gas & the A ran fine-but lots of smoke.
 
I have been using a lead sub. because I don't know what kind of valves I have. I think my engine has been rebuilt so I may not need it. I don't know maybe safe is better than sorry.
 
It doesn't matter what kind of valves you have,the gas wasn't leaded back then,and they didn't use a lead substitute.The machine shop I use said he gave up 30 years ago trying to explain that a lot of that old stuff didn't need an unleaded conversion.The owners read in a magazine somewhere they needed to do it,so it had to be done.He said he has cut out thousands of perfectly good valve seats to satisfy the armchair experts.
 
As stated there was no lead in the gas during the Model A era, and another thing of interest is that the octane was approx. 76. I use to burn Gulftane in the 60's when it was available as the Model A ran better on it. Some people called it white gas ?? It was cheaper and was a lower octane than regular gas that had lead in it.
 
Model A's were running back in the day with low octane gasoline and all gasoline was lead free. I always heard stories that Phillips 66 was the first "high" octane gasoline at 66 octane. Their gas was in the 60's for octane but it appear that it was not 66. Here is a link that explains their name.
http://books.google.com/books?id=s0hVI-EbPkEC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Phillips+66+where+name+come+from?&source=bl&ots=kBlW2TGtk8&sig=GEOj5cpqb0Jvff4q_nwy3E6VQ6g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U45eT6agFuqA2AWFmaWuCA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Phillips%2066%20where%20name%20come%20from%3F&f=false
 
Well maybe I don't need to bother with it then. I was just going off what my Auto shop teacher in Vo Tech school told us. He said the older cars needed the lead to keep the valves cool because of what they were made of. Modern car valves had better metal that didn't need the lead.

Well since they didn't have lead back then I guess we don't need to be adding it in. Oh well he must have been wrong.
 
modela@aol.com said:
Model A's were running back in the day with low octane gasoline and all gasoline was lead free. I always heard stories that Phillips 66 was the first "high" octane gasoline at 66 octane. Their gas was in the 60's for octane but it appear that it was not 66. Here is a link that explains their name.
http://books.google.com/books?id=s0hVI-EbPkEC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Phillips+66+where+name+come+from?&source=bl&ots=kBlW2TGtk8&sig=GEOj5cpqb0Jvff4q_nwy3E6VQ6g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U45eT6agFuqA2AWFmaWuCA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Phillips%2066%20where%20name%20come%20from%3F&f=false
Click to expand...

Straight run gasoline from crude is about 65-70 octane. This is what most of gasoline consisted of back in the 20s/30s.
 
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