2.25 petrol, unleaded fuel and old petrol!

Dont worry about the old fuel. It may run a bit lumpy till you get some clean stuff in, but wont cause any long term probs. As for the timing, yes, next time you tune it, you may want to allow for the lower octane, but as most of use tune these by ear, again, see what it runs like. At worst it will 'pink' a bit. As for the long term running on unleaded, popular theory says that unless you do a lot of constant speed motorway work, it will do no damage at all. Even if you did do 10,000 miles ayear up & down the M1 & it did cause a problem, it wouldnt be worth changing anything unless a problem developed. It is not worth getting an 'unleaded' head unless you need to change it anyway.

Hope this helps.

I recently resurected an MG Midget which had sat for 10 years with a full tank of 4 star. It wouldn't do more than 40 mph and was not happy with it. Drained the fuel, put it in the Series 1 and it loved it. No probs.

You might want to clean out the carb first, otherwise just go.

Gordon

Well that has answered at least one of the questions about our Series 3. What additives can you use and in what ratio to petrol do you use?

I too have a 2.25 which I bought recently. The guy I bought it from says "Yeah, it runs on unleaded" - I'm not a landy expert so:

How do I know if I've got an unleaded head?

How would I know if I haven't got away with it? Will the engine just break or will it still run, but do loads of internal damage?

Is it worth buying one?

Pacman

That's saved me a job, as Bruce has just asked me to ask very similar questions!

Used to have an old Volvo 145... used to go karting regularly with a mate.. Now these Karters were serious about stale fuel, they used to buy it from their prefferd garage on the saturday morning, & dump any spare on the sunday (after mixing it with various 2 stroke oils...

You can guess what coming, I used to get them to 'dump' it staright into the Volvo, no problems whatsoever, & I didnt buy petrol for years...

I use a Castrol additive (Its what the 12 year old in Halfords recommended).

Last night while filling up with unleaded & additive some guy in a older Volvo told me to throw that crap away and use Redex, claiming it is cheaper and better.

Does anybody have any strong feelings on the subject, given that many of the group don't seem to bother with LRP or Additives I don't suppose it matters much which flavour of additive is used.

Martin

Don't think it's possable to tell without taking the head off It is fitted with hardened valve seats

What tends to happen is the valves recess themselves into the head so the valve gap closes up, Just check the gap on a regular interval if it's not closing up you have got away with it or better still have an unleaded head

I would wait until the valves have recessed themselves into the head abit your actuall saving the engineering company so time as the have to machine this portion of head away to get the hardened seats in

Andy

recommended).

I use the Redex diesel additive from time to time, and it seems to smoke less on startup, and I get about 8% more miles out of a tank, but this is highly non-scientific data.

David

I may try the Redex additive, but I don't know if I'll be able to tell the difference anyway.

In article , Andy.Smalley writes

I think it's a fairly safe bet that unless the owner said it had an unleaded head it probably doesn't. If the owner said it does have an unleaded head, it may or may not.

In article , Gordon writes

There's not really enough in the tank so I may just mix some fresh in as well.

Thanks, sounds quite easy...

So if you took the head off to have a look, how would you tell then?

Clean up the head around the valves and you should be able to see the valve seat inserts as a slightly different colour / texture to the rest of the head they are shaped something like:-

h h e ___ ____ e a l l _l l_ l l a _d_ l / / \ \ l___d__ l__/ / \ \_ _l /_valve __\ \ \ \ insert

hope this helps (I'm rubbish at drawing stick men as well)

Andy

On or around Fri, 4 Jul 2003 17:21:45 +0000 (UTC), "Andy.Smalley" enlightened us thusly:

I've taken the liberty of tidying up your ASCII_art (TM) -

one essential you forgot, you *have* to draw it and look at it in a fixed-pitch font.

the diagram show it all before assembly, once the seat insert is in place, it'll be flush with the surface, near enough.

Thank you Austin, Bruce looked at it with eyes squinted and even tried without his glasses!