Greetings folks. Here is a letter from Richard.
Michael,
LRP stands for Lead Replacement Petrol. Since leaded petrol was banned in the
UK at the beginning of this year, the petrol companies have been peddling
this
stuff as a direct swap for people whose engines cannot used unleaded petrol
(at least without modification). However, there is no independant standard
for this stuff (some nonsense about a court case preventing the British
Standards people from developing a standard against which it could be
judged),
none of the oil companies would submit any samples when the FBHVC (Federation
of British Historical Vehicle Clubs) was testing alternatives to 4* leaded
fuel, different companies use different additives which are NOT compatible
with each other - in fact mixing different fuels can cause more damage than
just using normal unleaded, although the petrol companies do not make this
fact widely known - and, as far as I know, none of the petrol companies have
published any scientific data to demonstrate this stuffs effectiveness.
Although I have an instictive distrust of 'Miracle Cures In A Bottle', several
additives have been tested and approved by the FBHVC, and, even more
encouragingly, several were tested and NOT approved, demonstrating that the
tests were thorough enough to pick up the failures, and that some are better
than others. As a result, if my car had not already been converted to run on
unleaded, I would ONLY use an approved additive, and would not touch LRP from
a petrol station. As with the LRPs, they are not all compatible with each
other, so it essential to pick one product and stick with it. If you have to
change, run through a few tanks of pure unleaded before using the new
additive, to flush out all traces of the old.
Just in case anyone still hasn't seen the list of approved additives (it's
been
in most UK magazines several times), here it is again:
Castrol Valvemaster
Castrol Valvemaster Plus
Red Line Lead Substitute
Superblend Zero Lead 2000
Nitrox 4-star
Nitrox 4-lead
Millers VSP-Plus
Some of these also contain an Octane-booster, helpful if your engine suffers
from pre-ignition with normal unleaded.
I don't know if any of these are available in the States under the same or
different names - if you can't find them under the same names it could be
worth contacting the manufacturers. Castrol is certainly an international
company, and I believe Nitrox is made by Car Plan (don't know if they have a
presence in the USA), but the others may be made by smaller companies who
don't sell over there.
Richard Gosling and Daffy
P.S. Same request as I make to everyone I mail - could you forward this to the
List for me? Thanks!
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