From: Scott Dorsey on
jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m(a)mwt,net> wrote:
>Effective propaganda may produce real concerns. But consider the facts -
>It was well known that lead was a poison when it was first added to gas
>in 1920. and it was well known that lead is a substance that never
>biodegrades when it is placed into the environment. It turned out that
>there were considerable financial advantages to the automakers and oil
>companies but hardly a shred of true evidence there was any advantage to
>the consumer or driver of cars. Yet most people had been convinced it
>did have advantages. But your right this wasn't oil company propaganda
>The serious lying came from the auto manufacturers.

No, there were _major_ advantages to ethyl. It not only made high octane
gas much cheaper to make, it made high octane gas _practical_ to make.
Yeah, it's possible to make 90 octane gas from casing head, but it evaporates
right from your tank and it's substantially less safe to transport.

Higher octane gas means higher performance engines for the consumer, and
the consumer demanded that.

A side effect was the fact that valve seats lasted a whole lot longer
because of the lubrication the lead provided.

And yes, everybody knew lead was toxic, but I don't think anyone had any
notion just how toxic it was. Remember only 20 years before, lead acetate
was a common ingredient in cakes and candies. On top of that, nobody had
any idea that the auto industry would explode to the point where emissions
were a big issue.

> The lead in gasoline got there by agreement between Congress, auto
>makers and oil refiners. The automakers wanted higher octane fuel the
>oil companies didn't want to bear the large expense of the extra
>processing to make high octane fuel. Back then it would have more than
>doubled the cost. The deal they arrived at was simple. Put lead in the
>gas. To sell this to the public the automakers would claim that their
>cars would fall apart without lead and congress and the oil companies
>would go about selling the public on the health benefits of lead in
>gasoline.

In retrospect, it turned out to be a bad idea, but I don't think you can
blame folks at the time. For a while, you could buy gas with and without
ethyl; they coexisted in the marketplace. But as I said, it's just not
practical to make high octane gas without an octane enhancer. And the
first convenient one that was found was lead.

> The main reason that the automakers made a big deal out of coming out
>with newly designed valves and other components when unleaded fuel was
>first started to be sold in the 70's was that they had claimed 50
>years prior that they had a mountain of scientific evidence that bad
>things would happen to engines without lead. They couldn't now just
>ignore those claims they had stated as scientific fact. Modern studies
>have revealed that those early studies were probably complete frauds.
>One 2003 study showed that adding Tetra ethyl lead to gasoline reduces
>engine life by 50%. The current extended spark plug change intervals are
>really almost entirely due to the removal of lead from gasoline.
>Typically spark plugs electrodes and insulators erode 4 times as fast
>when using leaded gasoline.

I'd like to see a cite to that 2003 study. I'd also be curious if that
study used an engine with modern hardened valve seats or typical 1960s
soft seats.

> One interesting side note is the role ethanol played in this. Initially
>the oil companies rejected the idea of creating higher octane fuel by
>adding a well known poison to their fuel and told the automakers to take
>a hike and they didn't give a damn about octane that was the automakers
>problem not theirs. After all why should they compromise the image of
>their product for the benefit of the automakers. So automakers (mostly
>ford & GM) started fooling around with mixing ethanol as a fuel. That
>got the oil companies attention and suddenly the oil companies saw the
>light and started supporting the lead additive. Ethanol as a fuel
>disappeared for quite a while. It took 80 years and 7 million tons of
>lead blown out the tail pipes of cars but eventually ethanol made a come
>back.

Again, I have seen plenty of ads from the thirties promoting ethyl in
gas, but I have never seen any of them promoting ethanol in gas. I'm
not sure anyone ever knew about it in the general public.

Ethanol didn't make a comeback, though, until after lead was replaced by
MTBE, and then MTBE turned out to be even worse than lead was.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
From: jim on


Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
> jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m(a)mwt,net> wrote:
> >Effective propaganda may produce real concerns. But consider the facts -
> >It was well known that lead was a poison when it was first added to gas
> >in 1920. and it was well known that lead is a substance that never
> >biodegrades when it is placed into the environment. It turned out that
> >there were considerable financial advantages to the automakers and oil
> >companies but hardly a shred of true evidence there was any advantage to
> >the consumer or driver of cars. Yet most people had been convinced it
> >did have advantages. But your right this wasn't oil company propaganda
> >The serious lying came from the auto manufacturers.
>
> No, there were _major_ advantages to ethyl. It not only made high octane
> gas much cheaper to make, it made high octane gas _practical_ to make.
> Yeah, it's possible to make 90 octane gas from casing head, but it evaporates
> right from your tank and it's substantially less safe to transport.
>
> Higher octane gas means higher performance engines for the consumer, and
> the consumer demanded that.

So do consumers no longer demand that anymore??..


>
> A side effect was the fact that valve seats lasted a whole lot longer
> because of the lubrication the lead provided.

Which has proven to be a bunch of blarney. Maybe in an engine racing at
200mph it makes a difference but not an ordinary car.


>
> And yes, everybody knew lead was toxic, but I don't think anyone had any
> notion just how toxic it was. Remember only 20 years before, lead acetate
> was a common ingredient in cakes and candies. On top of that, nobody had
> any idea that the auto industry would explode to the point where emissions
> were a big issue.

Actually there were very accurate predictions made in the congressional
hearings in the 20's.

>
> > The lead in gasoline got there by agreement between Congress, auto
> >makers and oil refiners. The automakers wanted higher octane fuel the
> >oil companies didn't want to bear the large expense of the extra
> >processing to make high octane fuel. Back then it would have more than
> >doubled the cost. The deal they arrived at was simple. Put lead in the
> >gas. To sell this to the public the automakers would claim that their
> >cars would fall apart without lead and congress and the oil companies
> >would go about selling the public on the health benefits of lead in
> >gasoline.
>
> In retrospect, it turned out to be a bad idea, but I don't think you can
> blame folks at the time. For a while, you could buy gas with and without
> ethyl; they coexisted in the marketplace. But as I said, it's just not
> practical to make high octane gas without an octane enhancer. And the
> first convenient one that was found was lead.

Except for ethanol. Lead never lived up to its claims. Lead didn't lead
to better gas mileage, didn't burn cleaner but they said they had
scientifc evidence it did.


>
> > The main reason that the automakers made a big deal out of coming out
> >with newly designed valves and other components when unleaded fuel was
> >first started to be sold in the 70's was that they had claimed 50
> >years prior that they had a mountain of scientific evidence that bad
> >things would happen to engines without lead. They couldn't now just
> >ignore those claims they had stated as scientific fact. Modern studies
> >have revealed that those early studies were probably complete frauds.
> >One 2003 study showed that adding Tetra ethyl lead to gasoline reduces
> >engine life by 50%. The current extended spark plug change intervals are
> >really almost entirely due to the removal of lead from gasoline.
> >Typically spark plugs electrodes and insulators erode 4 times as fast
> >when using leaded gasoline.
>
> I'd like to see a cite to that 2003 study. I'd also be curious if that
> study used an engine with modern hardened valve seats or typical 1960s
> soft seats.

No you are confused. The lead didn't cause any unusual wear to the valve
seats. That was about the only internal component in the engine that had
the same wear as unleaded. The study showed the rest of the engine does
see accelerated wear when run on leaded fuel. The tests were done on
modern engine comparing modern fuel to fuel of the same octane
formulated with TEL. The study may have been funded by the UN. Lead is
still used in some third world countries and there is some efforts to
encourage them to stop.


>
> > One interesting side note is the role ethanol played in this. Initially
> >the oil companies rejected the idea of creating higher octane fuel by
> >adding a well known poison to their fuel and told the automakers to take
> >a hike and they didn't give a damn about octane that was the automakers
> >problem not theirs. After all why should they compromise the image of
> >their product for the benefit of the automakers. So automakers (mostly
> >ford & GM) started fooling around with mixing ethanol as a fuel. That
> >got the oil companies attention and suddenly the oil companies saw the
> >light and started supporting the lead additive. Ethanol as a fuel
> >disappeared for quite a while. It took 80 years and 7 million tons of
> >lead blown out the tail pipes of cars but eventually ethanol made a come
> >back.
>
> Again, I have seen plenty of ads from the thirties promoting ethyl in
> gas, but I have never seen any of them promoting ethanol in gas. I'm
> not sure anyone ever knew about it in the general public.

If you mean in the public in the thirties how was ethanol supposed to
get in their gas? It was prohibition and the oil companies and
automakers had already perjured themselves in front of congress
declaring there was no possible substitute for lead.

You gotta love that about ethanol. Despite the best efforts of all the
big players to make it look bad - it is the only one left standing.

>
> Ethanol didn't make a comeback, though, until after lead was replaced by
> MTBE, and then MTBE turned out to be even worse than lead was.

Again ethanol was rejected for MTBE because it was just plain more
profitable for the oil companies. And ethanol is cutting into petroleum
sales. And the government and the oil companies again knew all about the
hazards of MTBE from the beginning and again the lies eventually didn't
hold up.


-jim


> --scott
>
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
From: Ashton Crusher on
On Thu, 5 Nov 2009 19:54:01 +0000 (UTC), Brent
<tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

>On 2009-11-05, Matthew Russotto <russotto(a)grace.speakeasy.net> wrote:
>> In article <-NydnQPDm9rTim7XnZ2dnUVZ_sGdnZ2d(a)texas.net>,
>> Steve <no(a)spam.thanks> wrote:
>>>
>>>Also left out of the discussion is the fact the the VERY BEST motor oil
>>>you could buy in the late 60's wouldn't qualify as chainsaw bar oil
>>>today. Lubricants have come WAY further than engine design- at least in
>>>terms of bearings, rings, and other "hard" parts. Fuel managment systems
>>>have come as far as the oils or even further. If you could find a
>>>"pickled" (preserved, never run) factory engine from 1965 and put it
>>>into use with today's synthetic oils
>>
>> It would fail in short order without good old tetraethyl lead in the
>> fuel; no hardened valve seats in an engine from that era.
>
>I'm not so sure about that. it seems that such wear isn't as bad as was
>once believed.
>

What was found was that if you ran leaded fuel for a few thousand
miles it built up a coating that could provide protection for a long
time after that even if you burned unleaded. But if you took a new 66
engine that had never been run and started it off on unleaded it would
burn the valves relatively quickly. That's why when leaded gas was
phased out there wasn't the problem people thought there would be -
all the already in service cars had been run on leaded for a long time
and the new ones had hardened valve seats.
From: Bill Putney on
jim wrote:

> ...The current extended spark plug change intervals are
> really almost entirely due to the removal of lead from gasoline.
> Typically spark plugs electrodes and insulators erode 4 times as fast
> when using leaded gasoline.

I wasn't aware of the faster electrode erosion with lead, but I do know
that quite often spark plug life was limited because of the lead being
vapor deposited onto the insulator that bridges the electrodes such that
eventually the surface of the insulator became conductive and would
short out the voltage before ionization/spark could occur. That's what
I saw more than anything forcing spark plug replacement when I was a
much younger DIY'er.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')
From: Bill Putney on
Scott Dorsey wrote:

> ...And yes, everybody knew lead was toxic, but I don't think anyone had any
> notion just how toxic it was. Remember only 20 years before, lead acetate
> was a common ingredient in cakes and candies...

I bet most people aren't aware that today, lead is one of the powdered
ingredients in many brushes in the d.c. motors and alternators on our
cars. I was amazed to learn that when I worked as an
engineer/engineering manager in a brush manufacturing company supplying
60% of the brushes to the U.S. auto industry.

Think about it - lead in the brushes - brushes that wear and create dust
that gets blown about into the air. Who'd a thunk that they would allow
that - but it's a fact and you never hear anything about it. Whyizthat?

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')