Lead replacement additives for Ford V6 in 1966 Landie - help please!

On or around Fri, 27 May 2005 11:53:52 +0100, "Ed Hughes" enlightened us thusly:

I ran a 2.8 cologne "non-unleaded" on LPG for about 5000 miles and it didn't do any good to a couple of exhaust valve seats, requiring new (hard) seats. However, the previous owner ran it for quite a lot of miles on unleaded with no obvious ill-effects.

Some colognes had valve seats fitted, but this wasn't one of 'em.

I guess your best bet is "suck it and see" to be honest. That sort of mileage, especially if you're not thrashing it flat out, it might well last for years. The V6 degrades quite gracefully, you'll notice a lumpy idle first and a slight lack of power; eventually, it'll start to miss on one or more pots. At which point, you can have the heads off and take them to have valve seats fitted. That's what I did, and it wasn't that expensive, really

- probably no more so than keep on buying additive.

LRP is increasingly difficult to find. Thanks very much, bloody oilcos, "oh no, you'll be all right with your classic motors, we're going to make LRP instead of leaded". 4 years down the line, they're all bloody stopping doing it.

so Austin Shackles was, like...

I use Castrol Valvemaster in the Series 2, but I'm thinking of stopping it. It's 7-8 quid a pop, and I've heard that with gentle use the thing may well go for years until it becomes unusable, at which point new valve seats are in order. As you correctly say, you've probably saved the cost of the work in not buying the additive. However, I do hear a Turner stage 1 head calling my name...

If you live in the South Bucks Area,

Platts Garage in Marlow still advertise as having either leaded, or LRp, not sure which, give them a try if you are local

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i had a 1962 landie with a 3.1 v6 essex in it , with 310 degs burton cam and ported heads , it ran on unleaded perfectly ok .

i did use a piper magnum distributor previously but this made 38degs of advance at 2800rpm and just did not like unleaded, after this i changed the distributor back to a standard ford unit and also altered the springs in the advance unit by swapping to ones from a std chevy 350cu in small block distributor , in fact you can buy vacuum advance spring kits for chevy distributors which you can play around with to vary the advance curves , see the SUMMIT RACING of ohio website .

you may like to back off youre static ignition timing by about 2-3degs with a strobe light .

if you want to use an octane booster try something like PROBOOST which is for motocross racing , or you can buy real lead octance booster from some companies off internet within the uk .

the v6 essex with 10-1 powermax pistons does not like unleaded, i melted 3 pistons on one occasion and went back to std 9-1 pistons .

the one most important thing when running these on unleaded is to ease off the high revs and hard pulling , especially uphill and on motorway .

the achilles heel of the essex engine is the lack of head bolts per cylinder , they are more likely to blow head gaskets than anything else , even the rheinz head gaskets are not much good .

i used a std inlet manifold with an ali plate welded to it and a holley

390cfm 4 barrel carb fitted, i think i still have the manifold and carb in shed somewhere .

if you want to hammer the engine on unleaded fuel do what they do when fitting a supercharger to a v6 essex and turn 0.100" off top of pistons to reduce compression ratio to 7-1 .

the other option is to mix some AVGAS 100LL in the tank when you fill up , this costs about 1.06 pounds per litre at present ., you can obtain it if you know where to go .

easiest option is to do search of internet for octane booster and buy some , add this to tank fills and you wont have any probs. hope info is of some use .

low. I was looking at an MG B head yesterday the owner was told when he bought it that " of course its been converted to unleaded" so never bothered with an additive. After he had re set the tappets a few time the screws couldnt be undone any more and so the head had to come off. the valves are recessed about 1or 2 mm below the surface of the head , not a pretty sight. Now the guy has no alternative but to have inserts fitted. There are a few products that work and are endorsed by the FHVC each uses a different chemical additive , one is sodium based another pottasium etc so its probably best to stick with one product. I chose valve master because I know it works and has been used in NZ /Aus since the early nineties when leaded was banned out there. However, I've now fitted a "flashlube " kit to my flathead and this also seems to work great , with the advantage of only having to fill the bottle once every six months or so. Works on manifold vacuum to draw a drip feed amount thru a metering valve and into the manifold. its good kit was about £40 , find it on the web. I think FES autogas sell it as its used on LPG systems as no lead there either. Steve the grease steve the grease