Fuel Addative - Valvemaster which product to buy I am confused.com

[Top Banana]

All,

I am confused which valvemaster lead replacement to buy next. My first purchase which is running out was "Classics valvemaster plus" at around £20.00 from amazon. I chose this one because it mentions lots of benfits - protection against ethanol, increased octane efficiency / ecomnomy but doesnt explicitly mention Octane Boost. (see attached image with me holding the bottle in my hand you can read the entire label or text). 

I had remembered that the Club Shop also sells the Valvemaster addative at £10 and £15 see second image attachment of a screenshot of the club website showing the two products. Neither of these mention they protect from Ethonol !! and the £10 version provides lead as an addative and the £15 gives lead addative and an "Octane boost" suggesting that you dont have to change the timing of your engine to run on lower octane 97 / 95 etc..

On the question of timing and performance; the Mk1 engine, it say 5 Star at 13 degrees BTDC, 8 Degrees BTDC for 97 Octane.  I can only sensibly get 95 octane in E5 and E10 without driving 50 miles to get 97 Octane. With my timing marks being virtual illegable  there is a nice score mark and Tipex at around 10 Degress which I time to. So, if I can get an Octane Boost by buying the right Valvemaster product it would be a bonus but my importance is set on smooth running rather than performance.

Would be interested to know "who buys what" and what their criteria hierarchy is - Ehtonal protection, Performance from Octane boost or just  lead addative to protect the valves. And does the "Classics valvemaster plus" which I have bought to date the "Full Monty" product.

Thank you 

John

N.B. lesson i learned is that the tops of these valvemaster bottles dont secure well and can leak, so best to use some cling film under the lid when closing. I now have a very well preserved and oily boot bag.

 

 

 

[Badwolf]

I keep the valvemaster plus in the boot but only use it when I can't get the high octane stuff from the supermarket. 

[Gully]

This is the one I use - octane boost, lead replacement and ethanol protection:

https://www.millersoils-shop.co.uk/vspe-power-plus-multishot

Gully

[Pete Lewis]

there is so much  past lead memory in the head to last for many years of unleaded driving

really  just adjust the timing so it doesnt pink under load and go with what you can get locally 

there is a lot of snake oil products about to raid the wallet 

use decent branded fuel hose , no one has had the car disolve with ethanol eating away any parts 

crap fake fuel hose is the bigger problem . club shop sell gates Barricade wwhich is very good 

using alower octane is often all thats available  so time to suit , you loose some performance but 

if the ultimate is not important  you have to live with it and i would save money and not buy any addatives 

just buy fuel and drive 

Pete

 

 

[Mjit]

The first question is do you need anything at all?  The Triumph engines don't seem to have especially soft valve seats anyway so don't seem to get major issues with valve regression even when run on straight unleaded - to the point you're probably better off putting £10 in your piggy bank every X fill-ups and by the time you need to worry about the valves you'll have more than enough saved up to pay to have the head reconditioned and hardened value seats fitted.

I'm not sure what the big saloons were designed for but I'd guess just 4* - and that seems perfectly happy running on 95 (half the time straight/half the time with addative, based on me remembering/forgetting to put it in when I fill up).

And for timing for 100/97/95 octane - time it somewhere, run it on 95 and see if it makes any odd noises.  Pinking's quite easy to hear (someone shaking a washer in a jam jar) and if you get some, advance the timing a degree, repeating until you no longer get pinking.

[Steve P]

Don`t know about Ethanol but i use Valvemaster plus in my 2.5 Vitesse,running a CR of 10:1. It runs terribly on low octane fuel and would not have had lead memory as it was rebuilt in 2011.It pinks and runs on without it.

I have some Gates hose ready to swap as the old hoses have gone soft and i suspect it`s pulling air in.

Steve

[Josef]

I’m not sure really what ‘ethanol protection’ can actually be. The problem for us with more ethanol being added to petrol is that it combusts differently (which you can adjust for) and that the different mixtures will dissolve / degrade parts of the fuel system that weren’t designed to cope with that particular mixture of solvents. Mainly fuel hose, which is where the car going up in flames danger lies. The other problem areas are carb floats and needle valves. Keep an eye on these if you don’t know yours are ethanol rated ones.  You’d have to add a large volume of something else to change the bulk solvent properties of the E5/E10 petrol enough to stop these things dissolving. So I’m not sure what protection a few mL per litre of petrol any additive could add. I should really go and read the data sheets/fine print and see what they’re claiming it actually does. 

[Nigel Clark]

Don't bother with any of these additives. Use E5 super unleaded fuel, and make sure that all fuel hoses are suitable for ethanol, e.g. hoses from the Club Shop. That's all that's required.

By the way, no additive can protect old fuel hoses against ethanol.

Nigel

 

 

 

 

[Pete Lewis]

remember the milenium clock was the end of the world     did it happen 

when lead disappeared all the cars were going to fall apart valves would all burn out   ...were still waiting 

yes its all changing who remembers cleveland discol petrol   well before any must haves were sold 

many of our cars probably ran on it in their early life and theybare still here 

Pete

[Josef]

Quite a sensible looking article on the subject here (even if it is on an MG site :P).

[JohnD]

The Americans think that our obsession with valve recession in the face of lead free is ludicrous.   They had lead free fuel years before we did, and never had a problem with valves.

[PeteH]

Cleveland Discol, derived from industrial Alcohol, primarily from The Distillers Co, Was produced from 1928 to 1968. Father, ran his Hillman almost exclusivly on it as It was sold by the nearest garage.

Pete

[steveo]

Previous owner of my Herald was using Wynn's lead substitute & left a full bottle in the boot so I am using it mixed with Silkolene super 2 two stroke oil.

Any old cars I run that are pre cat always stick a bit of two stroke in with the fuel, never had a problem.

[Wagger]

We have had all of this before. High compression (above 9:1) probably requires 100 octane fuel for optimum performance. but retarding the ignition will allow it to run on lower octane. 

Lead replacement is unnecessary unless you have some tetra-ethyl-lead that increases octane.

Most of this was marketing ploy to get us to spend money unnecessarily.

My son used ethanol fuels in the USA for ten years in his classics out there encountering no problems, AND, it was cheaper.

[Clive]

5 hours ago, Top Banana said:

I am confused which valvemaster lead replacement to buy next. My first purchase which is running out was "Classics valvemaster plus" at around £20.00 from amazon. I chose this one because it mentions lots of benfits - protection against ethanol, increased octane efficiency / ecomnomy but doesnt explicitly mention Octane Boost. (see attached image with me holding the bottle in my hand you can read the entire label or text). 

 

On the question of timing and performance; the Mk1 engine, it say 5 Star at 13 degrees BTDC, 8 Degrees BTDC for 97 Octane.  I can only sensibly get 95 octane in E5 and E10 without driving 50 miles to get 97 Octane. With my timing marks being virtual illegable  there is a nice score mark and Tipex at around 10 Degress which I time to. So, if I can get an Octane Boost by buying the right Valvemaster product it would be a bonus but my importance is set on smooth running rather than performance.

Don't be confused. I believe all the latest valvemaster offers some form of ethanol stabaliser, if you have cncerns on that front. There are no claims it protects hoses etc, just helps stop the fuel degrading. Not that I have had issues with my rarely used spitfire.

Next, octane and timing. The original timing is only a very rough guide. The best way to set timing is to keep advancing the timing until you get a little pinking under load, then back off a smidge. 

As to valve protection, it is very rare to get valve seat recession, I have heard of about 5 examples in the last 20 years. I have never used any additives, and even my hard driven cars have never suffered. Even after 30k plus miles.