Lead additive or not

[Myrtle1971]

I recently bought a 1971 Lincoln continental and was given a lead additive for the fuel. I have been running Rec fuel only (no ethanol) and lead additive. Is the lead additive necessary?

[papawayne]

Nope. But wait until others chime in for the results. Welcome to the forum, by the way, sometimes funny things happen on the way here. Wayne

[TonyC]

If it has actual tetraethyl lead in it, you're breaking the law. The use of that stuff is illegal.

Now, if it doesn't have lead in it, and it was given to you, then you aren't hurting anything...but you aren't really helping anything, either. You can use up your free stock, but you shouldn't waste any money on more. The '71 460 requires octane, not lead.

---Tony

[Dan Szwarc]

This has pretty much been discussed to death.

Subject: 64 430 Fuel Octane, Lead Additive, and Wideband O2.

You don't need a lead additive or substitute. You will never wear the valves out due to a lack of lead.

Octane need depends on how it is tuned. Advance the timing too much and even the premiumest of premiums won't stop it from knocking, but dial it back and you can easily run on 91, 89, or possibly 87. I'd tune it for 91.

You don't need an O2 sensor to tune it. All you need is a vacuum gage. Search for "throw away your timing light".

You can refine the primary jets and needle valves by judging spark plug colors and general performance.

And you don't mean methanol. You mean ethanol. .

[action]

The lead in fuel acts a lubricant and will cool the combustion just a little.
Adding a lead substitute was thought to reduce wear on valves and valve face in head.

That wear could happen on a daily driver over a very long period of time for some applications where the valve seats are a bit softer.
However most of these cars are hobby cars. Not driven daily. And generally not driven.

Most of the time the answer is "not"

Action

[jon schapiro]

Our Lincoln’s have hardened cylinder heads; hence no need for lead additives. My Cadillac requires it.

[TonyC]

I have brought this up in the extensive discussion of this topic Dan referred to; I'll reiterate here. It was established long ago by Ron Baker, the original guru for Lincoln restorations, that the popular consensus about the need for lead was fictional where Lincoln engines were concerned. There was and still is talk about valve seats and guides being burned out if the lubricating properties of tetraethyl lead were absent; he never saw any such problems in Lincoln engines. The Lincoln engines, even the venerable (or notorious, depending on your opinion) MEL engines, were huge, overbuilt, slow-turning torque monsters that could overcome that "inconvenience." What they could not overcome, however, is use of too low an octane rating. Any engine with a compression ratio of 10:1 or more must have premium-octane fuel, lest the predetonation of lower-octane (ergo, less-stable) fuel cause physical damage to anything in there: Piston crowns or sides, rings, valves, valve seats/guides, etc.). Know your engine, and know what octane rating to use. Maybe you can squeak by with 89 and retarding your distributor a couple of degrees...but if you try that, you must be vigilant for any symptoms, such as heavy spark knock, even light spark knock, or stalling/near-stalling upon acceleration. If you have any or all of those symptoms even after trying the "cheat" mentioned in the last sentence, then you must use the next-higher octane rating.

There is a reason why tetraethyl lead is illegal in this country (and in many others as well). Lead never burns. It never undergoes a chemical, molecular, or atomic change except when a nuclear-fusion reaction hits it. It only undergoes a physical change in a vehicle engine, from liquid form to gaseous form. Lead is established without refutation to be extremely poisonous, attacking just about anything in the human body from the lungs to the bloodstream to the reproductive cells. That was why the EPA made it illegal, with the phase-out beginning in the '70s (probably the only dictate by that bureaucracy that actually made sense). With some engines, most notably GM engines, that dictate could and did prove to be harmful to their existing engine stock; but hardened valve-train components now exist for virtually every GM engine that was made before the '70s anyway, so hobbyists have a means of living with it. Hardened components also exist for the Ford engines, and you can buy them if you wish. It's just that, for the Lincoln engines, it's not a critical need. The appropriate octane rating, however, is a critical need.

---Tony

[action]

Tetraethyl lead is not illegal in this country. Only in fuel used for on the road vehicle use. But is still found in some aviation fuels. And the EPA Clean Air act does not ban other off road use of tetraethyl lead either. So lead could be used in vehicles for
Racing
Marine
Farm machinery

tetraethyl lead has good characteristics in fuel to reduce knocking (Octane enhancer) and lubrication as mentioned above. The biggest benefit was to increase octane. Which allowed the development of high compression engines. However it doesn't have much use in anything else.
It is toxic and so is gasoline. These characteristics toxicities were known as early as the 1930s

EPA banned Tetraethyl lead not because of it's toxicity to humans. It was done via the CLEAN AIR ACT. And it banned Tetraethyl lead because Tetraethyl lead reduces the functioning of catalytic converters.

Action

[TonyC]

Tetraethyl lead is not illegal in this country. Only in fuel used for on the road vehicle use. But is still found in some aviation fuels. And the EPA Clean Air act does not ban other off road use of tetraethyl lead either. So lead could be used in vehicles for
Racing
Marine
Farm machinery
Action

Well, I suppose that gives scientific credence to all those mean jokes about backwoods/backroad people being retarded... Okay, my statement was partially incorrect; it is still used in propeller-aviation fuel. Since I haven't seen anything stating a ban on the other noted vehicle applications, it may be in use with them as well. But there is still an effort to modify those applications to outright remove lead entirely. The ban affects all road vehicles, i.e., cars and trucks.

EPA banned Tetraethyl lead not because of it's toxicity to humans. It was done via the CLEAN AIR ACT. And it banned Tetraethyl lead because Tetraethyl lead reduces the functioning of catalytic converters.
Action

I don't fully agree. The toxicity to humans was a major concern, not just the profit margin of catalytic-converter manufacturers which would not have even come to be had it not been for the concern of lead's toxicity to the human race. Skeptical as I am about government authorities stating what's good for you and what isn't (people who know me know this to be very true), I have to concede that they were right about lead. Studies claim that many mental problems that existed at high levels decades ago have dropped since the ban took effect (yes, subject to discussion, but better kept in a bioscience forum, I think). Sure, gasoline is also toxic; so is antifreeze, brake fluid, transmission fluid, engine oil...but the effects, concerning as they can be, aren't as concerning as lead.

Anyway, there you have it, Myrtle: All the pros and cons about lead additive. Bottom line, you don't need it (and it is illegal to use in your car engine in any case, if it contains actual lead—many additives don't). Your engine will be fine without it, as long as you use the correct octane of unleaded gasoline. Now, where corn syrup (or gasohol, as it's been known) is concerned, that's a topic for another debate.

---Tony