Old car drivers drive cars that need additives in the gas. The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
They didn’t just add lead because it made the gas prettier; there was a reason. I would suppose that today there are other additives that can reproduce the lubricating effects for those old cars, but old car hobbyists are niche and you’re not going to find those products at Walmart, whereas there’s always a local airport somewhere nearby.
I’m not defending leaded gas, but I think vintage car enthusiasts do it not because they’re being stupididly misinformed and contrarian, but because they’re trying to keep their engines running well.
Thomas Midgley Jr is the same guy that invented leaded gas and also invented freon (chlorofluorocarbons). Imagine being the architect of not one but two of the greatest environmental calamities of the industrial age.
And he also died from complications from polio. Not actual complications mind you, he was ensnared in harnesses he made to get around after having suffered from Polio. Made worse by his poor health having worked on TEL.
The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
There were two issues. First, tetraethyl lead increased the effective octane level. That, in turn, reduced the probability of pre-ignition, e.g., the fuel-air mixture igniting before the compression cycle was completed. Higher octane allows for higher compression, which is more efficient. The other issue was the valves specifically; the lead provided a ‘cushion’ between the valves and the valve seats, which minimized valve wear.
The octane issue is easily solved by both better refining or by adding alcohol. It was known that you could add alcohol to gas to improve octane rating even when TEL was first added, but TEL could be patented, and alcohol couldn’t. The valve issue has largely been solved by better metallurgy and manufacturing.
The one are where it hasn’t been solved is small aircraft. Some small planes still use leaded gas, and it’s mostly for the octane boost. TEL can give them a better octane rating than alcohol or better refinement can, which allows them to operate at much high compression. Take that away, and the engines are too underpowered to keep the plane in the air. Over 150,000 small airplanes still use leaded AvGas; thankfully, newer turboprop planes and all jet planes mostly use Jet A or Jet B fuel, which is closer to kerosene.
In theory, I think that you could convert older cars to run on unleaded fuels, but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Thank you. All my knowledge of ICEs has been through osmosis via a friendship with a guy who used to be a mechanic; I don’t care about them myself, and I appreciate the extensive added information you took the time to write. It’s really the only way I learn about ICEs.
but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Yeah, that was ultimately my point. OEM is so important to that crowd; it’s both a status and a real value factor for them. They’re not just being contrarian: they do it because the cars they’re driving run better on leaded.
The end result may be the same, but I think the motivation matters for stuff like this. One is based on hostility, the other on a hobby passion.
I understand it as a hobby/passion, even though the old cars are far less efficient, die sooner, and are less safe than now. The only way they were better, IMO, was that they were less complicated, and thus easier to wrench on. It’s significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
It was a PITA to change the battery in my 2012 Volvo, and I dread the battery change in the 2016 BMW. I can’t imagine doing anything more complex than that.
I love those old engines I see at the state fair, where the fuel is literally in an open pan on the top, sloshing around. They look like something you could put together yourself with enough effort, but the trade-off is efficiency.
I’d be happy with a fully solid-state car. I’m not a mechanic, or mechanically inclined, so I have no romantic attachment to gas guzzlers.
It’s significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
Unless you know how to remap a car and have a car with plenty of power reserve.
Anything turbocharged can be remapped for more power unless you’re at the limit of either the turbo, or the fuelling - and when you get there, many have options for more fuel and air. Diesels in particular are magic because you take a car that does ridiculous economy figures stock, and you double its power figures just to show people you can.
E.g Bobby Singh got 600 hp out of his diesel Audi wagon. These come stock with 240ish horsepower (176 kW or 239 PS I believe). He’s done engine internals upgrades to this one, but on other peoples’ cars he usually does bolt-on mods and gets about 400hp-500hp depending on what mods someone is willing to shell out for. Minus the upgraded internals, you could do this at home if you wanted to.
On the gasoline side, BMW has the B58 where you can get 500-600 hp with bolt-on mods and if you build it like people used to build hot rods, 1500 hp is doable. It’s considered the new 2JZ because Toyota itself put it in the Supra instead of building their own successor to the 2JZ. The 2JZ itself was a supercar killer when built properly.
On the Japanese side, I’m not sure if they’re doing anything fun new and new today, but they’ve all historically had at least one or two ridiculously tunable engines and Nissan will still sell you the very tunable GT-R.
Yes, some of those tunable newer engines come in pretty expensive cars, but there are still plenty of 4 bangers you can mod easily too. And it’s not like the hot rodders typically used small engines in the past. It was usually big ass V8s that you couldn’t even buy in most of the world because they used too much fuel lol
Unless you know how to remap a car and have a car with plenty of power reserve.
Right, that’s my point though. With my '84 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, I could drop a new engine in (started with a 305, ended with a 400 short block), do a high-flow dual carb intake, get a couple Edelbrock carbs, buy some headers, straight pipes and a glasspack muffler, and get a ton more power. (And also much, much worse fuel economy.) Now you not only need to understand wrenching, you also have to have the software and knowledge to entirely re-map the fuel, since it’s all computerized.
And while you are technically correct that you can get tons more power out of a lot of mostly stock engines, that does sharply reduce your engine lifespan. Of course, that’s always been the case, but it used to be that you could fairly easily get your block bored and sleeved to have larger pistons (“there’s no replacement for displacement”), but generally engines are running with much less material now. Oh, and they’re aluminum rather than iron, so often you’re going to have to send your block off to a specialist to get the cylinder bores coated for longevity. (I think my Honda CBR600RR had alusil or nikasil plating in the cylinders? I’m not sure now.)
I’m really, really not nostalgic for those days; yeah, hot rods are kind of neat, and it’s fun being able to do your own mechanical work, but cars now are so much more efficient, more powerful, and last 3-4x as long as cars from the 60s through early 80s.
Right, that’s my point though. With my '84 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, I could drop a new engine in (started with a 305, ended with a 400 short block), do a high-flow dual carb intake, get a couple Edelbrock carbs, buy some headers, straight pipes and a glasspack muffler, and get a ton more power. (And also much, much worse fuel economy.)
Right. But with a lot of modern cars, you don’t need to drop in a new engine at all, and for a lot of people changing fuel trim tables is easier than getting carb jets juuuuuust right. Not to mention there are premade stage1 remaps for stock engines that should “mostly” work. There are engines out there that will give you around a 30% without a single mod, though generally not on those premade remaps, as those try to err on the safe side. Stock intake, stock exhaust, stock everything. Just a remap. Oftentimes, they give you BETTER fuel economy because of the improved torque curve. Though the increased effect of the fun pedal often cancels this out.
I’d say you can get into modding with less knowledge and skill nowadays, because as long as you have the hardware, you can get someone to remap your car remotely so you don’t even need to be able to drive it to a shop after doing whatever mods you want to do to it. True, if you want to do everything by yourself, then it’s harder.
While putting in a new generator is absolutely a better idea, that means it’s not the original car. Plenty of classic car (and computing and video game and music and any hobby) enthusiasts run original hardware on purpose. Where’s the fun in building an Apple IIe if you use a flash drive instead of the hard drive? Where’s the soul in listening to The Four Tops on a digital recording instead of the vinyl master? Why play Sega on a flash cart instead of the original cartridges? Why drive a classic Civic if you’re trying to drop a K20 in there?
New stuff is objectively better. A 4Cyl Mustang makes more power these days than a V8 from the 90s, more so for older models. You have to be a little irrational to put that amount of time into running something just because it’s older.
Where’s the fun in building an Apple IIe if you use a flash drive instead of the hard drive?
Not to be that guy, but the Apple IIe didn’t have a hard drive. External tape or floppy were your only storage choices. The real cool kids had two floppy drives, so you could pirate games directly disk-to-disk.
I think you misread their comment; they weren’t saying people they know are putting on new parts in old cars, they were saying people they know are maliciously putting leaded gas into new engines, presumably to “stick it to the libruls”.
Old car drivers drive cars that need additives in the gas. The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
They didn’t just add lead because it made the gas prettier; there was a reason. I would suppose that today there are other additives that can reproduce the lubricating effects for those old cars, but old car hobbyists are niche and you’re not going to find those products at Walmart, whereas there’s always a local airport somewhere nearby.
I’m not defending leaded gas, but I think vintage car enthusiasts do it not because they’re being stupididly misinformed and contrarian, but because they’re trying to keep their engines running well.
The reason was TEL stopped engine pinging.
Thomas Midgley Jr is the same guy that invented leaded gas and also invented freon (chlorofluorocarbons). Imagine being the architect of not one but two of the greatest environmental calamities of the industrial age.
And he also died from complications from polio. Not actual complications mind you, he was ensnared in harnesses he made to get around after having suffered from Polio. Made worse by his poor health having worked on TEL.
There were two issues. First, tetraethyl lead increased the effective octane level. That, in turn, reduced the probability of pre-ignition, e.g., the fuel-air mixture igniting before the compression cycle was completed. Higher octane allows for higher compression, which is more efficient. The other issue was the valves specifically; the lead provided a ‘cushion’ between the valves and the valve seats, which minimized valve wear.
The octane issue is easily solved by both better refining or by adding alcohol. It was known that you could add alcohol to gas to improve octane rating even when TEL was first added, but TEL could be patented, and alcohol couldn’t. The valve issue has largely been solved by better metallurgy and manufacturing.
The one are where it hasn’t been solved is small aircraft. Some small planes still use leaded gas, and it’s mostly for the octane boost. TEL can give them a better octane rating than alcohol or better refinement can, which allows them to operate at much high compression. Take that away, and the engines are too underpowered to keep the plane in the air. Over 150,000 small airplanes still use leaded AvGas; thankfully, newer turboprop planes and all jet planes mostly use Jet A or Jet B fuel, which is closer to kerosene.
In theory, I think that you could convert older cars to run on unleaded fuels, but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Thank you. All my knowledge of ICEs has been through osmosis via a friendship with a guy who used to be a mechanic; I don’t care about them myself, and I appreciate the extensive added information you took the time to write. It’s really the only way I learn about ICEs.
Yeah, that was ultimately my point. OEM is so important to that crowd; it’s both a status and a real value factor for them. They’re not just being contrarian: they do it because the cars they’re driving run better on leaded.
The end result may be the same, but I think the motivation matters for stuff like this. One is based on hostility, the other on a hobby passion.
I understand it as a hobby/passion, even though the old cars are far less efficient, die sooner, and are less safe than now. The only way they were better, IMO, was that they were less complicated, and thus easier to wrench on. It’s significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
It was a PITA to change the battery in my 2012 Volvo, and I dread the battery change in the 2016 BMW. I can’t imagine doing anything more complex than that.
I love those old engines I see at the state fair, where the fuel is literally in an open pan on the top, sloshing around. They look like something you could put together yourself with enough effort, but the trade-off is efficiency.
I’d be happy with a fully solid-state car. I’m not a mechanic, or mechanically inclined, so I have no romantic attachment to gas guzzlers.
Unless you know how to remap a car and have a car with plenty of power reserve.
Anything turbocharged can be remapped for more power unless you’re at the limit of either the turbo, or the fuelling - and when you get there, many have options for more fuel and air. Diesels in particular are magic because you take a car that does ridiculous economy figures stock, and you double its power figures just to show people you can.
E.g Bobby Singh got 600 hp out of his diesel Audi wagon. These come stock with 240ish horsepower (176 kW or 239 PS I believe). He’s done engine internals upgrades to this one, but on other peoples’ cars he usually does bolt-on mods and gets about 400hp-500hp depending on what mods someone is willing to shell out for. Minus the upgraded internals, you could do this at home if you wanted to.
On the gasoline side, BMW has the B58 where you can get 500-600 hp with bolt-on mods and if you build it like people used to build hot rods, 1500 hp is doable. It’s considered the new 2JZ because Toyota itself put it in the Supra instead of building their own successor to the 2JZ. The 2JZ itself was a supercar killer when built properly.
On the Japanese side, I’m not sure if they’re doing anything fun new and new today, but they’ve all historically had at least one or two ridiculously tunable engines and Nissan will still sell you the very tunable GT-R.
Yes, some of those tunable newer engines come in pretty expensive cars, but there are still plenty of 4 bangers you can mod easily too. And it’s not like the hot rodders typically used small engines in the past. It was usually big ass V8s that you couldn’t even buy in most of the world because they used too much fuel lol
Right, that’s my point though. With my '84 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, I could drop a new engine in (started with a 305, ended with a 400 short block), do a high-flow dual carb intake, get a couple Edelbrock carbs, buy some headers, straight pipes and a glasspack muffler, and get a ton more power. (And also much, much worse fuel economy.) Now you not only need to understand wrenching, you also have to have the software and knowledge to entirely re-map the fuel, since it’s all computerized.
And while you are technically correct that you can get tons more power out of a lot of mostly stock engines, that does sharply reduce your engine lifespan. Of course, that’s always been the case, but it used to be that you could fairly easily get your block bored and sleeved to have larger pistons (“there’s no replacement for displacement”), but generally engines are running with much less material now. Oh, and they’re aluminum rather than iron, so often you’re going to have to send your block off to a specialist to get the cylinder bores coated for longevity. (I think my Honda CBR600RR had alusil or nikasil plating in the cylinders? I’m not sure now.)
I’m really, really not nostalgic for those days; yeah, hot rods are kind of neat, and it’s fun being able to do your own mechanical work, but cars now are so much more efficient, more powerful, and last 3-4x as long as cars from the 60s through early 80s.
Right. But with a lot of modern cars, you don’t need to drop in a new engine at all, and for a lot of people changing fuel trim tables is easier than getting carb jets juuuuuust right. Not to mention there are premade stage1 remaps for stock engines that should “mostly” work. There are engines out there that will give you around a 30% without a single mod, though generally not on those premade remaps, as those try to err on the safe side. Stock intake, stock exhaust, stock everything. Just a remap. Oftentimes, they give you BETTER fuel economy because of the improved torque curve. Though the increased effect of the fun pedal often cancels this out.
I’d say you can get into modding with less knowledge and skill nowadays, because as long as you have the hardware, you can get someone to remap your car remotely so you don’t even need to be able to drive it to a shop after doing whatever mods you want to do to it. True, if you want to do everything by yourself, then it’s harder.
I ones I know are putting it in new generators.
While putting in a new generator is absolutely a better idea, that means it’s not the original car. Plenty of classic car (and computing and video game and music and any hobby) enthusiasts run original hardware on purpose. Where’s the fun in building an Apple IIe if you use a flash drive instead of the hard drive? Where’s the soul in listening to The Four Tops on a digital recording instead of the vinyl master? Why play Sega on a flash cart instead of the original cartridges? Why drive a classic Civic if you’re trying to drop a K20 in there?
New stuff is objectively better. A 4Cyl Mustang makes more power these days than a V8 from the 90s, more so for older models. You have to be a little irrational to put that amount of time into running something just because it’s older.
Not to be that guy, but the Apple IIe didn’t have a hard drive. External tape or floppy were your only storage choices. The real cool kids had two floppy drives, so you could pirate games directly disk-to-disk.
No, be that guy, correct incorrect information. Thank you.
What‽‽ I never used my dual drives for that.
I think you misread their comment; they weren’t saying people they know are putting on new parts in old cars, they were saying people they know are maliciously putting leaded gas into new engines, presumably to “stick it to the libruls”.