Just wondering what most people are doing about using unleaded gasoline and ethanol in their cars. Should I be using an additive?

Hello Richard.

All classic vehicle owners should by now have switched to ethanol proof fuel hose, purely as a sensible precaution - I use Gates Barricade fuel pipes.

If you are concerned about unleaded fuel then you can certainly purchase a lead replacement additive - such as Castrol; not sure what your options are in BC. Most classics have significant lead memory in the cylinder heads unless worked upon recently and not converted to unleaded. The lead memory will keep your cylinder heads in decent enough condition depending on how much mileage ad at what rev band you take your car to.

High revs and sustained high speed will accelerate valve seat recession, but for most those 2x factors are not a constant. Again depending on what car you have you could consider an unleaded head option.

If just driving around normally, then the addition of a lead replacement will put your mind at rest. The fuel pipe change is a must though - do fuel hoses in Canada use the R grades ?? A lot of fuel hose sold is R6 which is useless against ethanol - it needs to be minimum R9 or R14; or Gates Barricade (GB) as mentioned earlier. The benefit of GB is that they do Imperial sizes, being an American product.

One product in the UK is Ethanolmate which does what it says - it's an anti ethanol additive and a decent product at that.

Hope that assists as a starting point ??

Good luck.

Richard.

thx Richard.

Hi Richard
Since you have posted in this sub forum I assume you have a DV8 engine? In which case as it has an aluminium alloy cylinder head with hardened valve seats there is no worry regarding use of unleaded petrol. Lead replacement additives are unnecessary and a waste of money. In the long run one may find that exhaust valves may deteriorate a tad more rapidly but insignificant unless you do a high mileage.

H