PETROL THE TRUTH
FEW WOULD ARGUE THAT THE MOVE to lead-free petrol was a bad thing and despite the doom merchants prophesising the end to poppet valves and cylinder heads in old vehicles, the reality was rather different. Just where have those adverts gone from old vehicle magazines, offering lead-free valve seat conversions? The issue was nowhere near as profound as many expected.
Our latest enemy?
We have had a maximum of 5% ethanol in unleaded petrol since 2013, and from September 2021 it will need to have a minimum of 5% and a maximum of 10%.
Super unleaded is so far unaffected, though most petrol companies do use a small amount of ethanol in there up to a max of 5%, to help raise the octane.
Since the advent of mandatory ethanol into pump petrol for its environmental benefits on the air we breathe, all manner of problems have surfaced. Hardening fuel pipes, leaking tap seals, corroding fuel tanks, gunged up carburettors and expanding plastic petrol tanks, along with tank liners suddenly being attacked, are now part and parcel of the classic bike world.
Yet similar issues were happening with car drivers long before the law required ethanol to be added to pump petrol back in 2013. Somewhere between then and when Britain had gone lead-free, fuel companies were already tinkering with the formulas of what we bought at the pumps.
At least one brand of ‘enhanced’ petrol was found to give serious issues with certain makes of cars and their valve train. There were also incidences of new cars being affected by fuel line decay/ softening at the tail end of the 1980s when consistently run on a certain brand of petrol.
Closer to home, brand new Kawasakis suddenly became prone to carburettor icing – a hideous phenomenon where ice builds inside the inlet tract during cold, damp, weather. It appeared that a subtle change in the general formula of pump petrol was disproportionally affecting Kawasakis. The firm got around it by latterly rolling out
