Alpines on Unleaded

[rroberts]

Good afternoon all--

I'm new to the group, and I'm sure this has been covered before, but here goes:

I'm working on a barn fresh Series V that came to me with a stuck motor. I tried the usual tricks to free it up, but finally gave up and pulled the head. I did a thorough cleanup on the head, checked the cylinder walls, rebuilt the carbs, etc. etc.. I'm now on the reassembly stage, and it occurred to me that the valves might not be compatible with unleaded petrol.

The engine has less than 20k miles on it, and the valves look good, so I don't want to replace them if I don't have to. None of the usual parts suppliers seem to mention a problem (in their catalogs, anyway). I just freshened up the top end on my '71 MGB. The warnings about using unleaded gas with the stock valves are everywhere...

TIA
Rich R.
'68 Alpine
'71 MGB
'72 Lotus Europa

 

[Wombat]

Rich

The Alpine is probably better than most of the old cars on unleaded because it has the hardened valve seats in the alloy head. However, the valves were meant to run with lead and some on the forum have said that the exhaust valves do wear.

I suppose it comes down to how much and how hard you intend to drive it (and how much money you want to spend). i will be facing the same problem shortly.

 

[SIVAllan]

One can use lead substitutes with each fillup if hardening is not done.

I will be doing that soon but know little about them.

On Ebay I saw one that comes in what must be solid form. From
the picture I saw, a golf ball sized "something" goes into the tank
and is good for a long long time. It must slowly dissolve.

Allan