[VAC] Re: Vintage haulers and unleaded fuel

["Carol and Oliver Filippi" <ofilippi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Somehow, people seem to want to believe in the ulterior motive, conspiracy
theory.  Most of the time this is reading far too much into the subject and
represents a search to find a scapegoat and become a victim.

The best example of this, in my experience, is the famous or infamous
reformulation of Coca Cola into "New Coke".    As it turned out, Coca Cola
discovered (while trying to formulate a tasteful diet version of their main
product) that consumers preferred a sweeter and more bland beverage than the
existing Coca Cola -actually more like Pepsi.  So, they thought they were
doing the right thing by reformulating regular Coca Cola.  As we know, this
caused a major "revolt" among the existing Coca Cola customer base, and the
company was forced to reintroduce the old product under the title "Classic
Coke".  At a press conference shortly thereafter, the president of Coca Cola
was asked by the press, "How do we know that this whole business of
modifying the old formula and then bringing it back wasn't a huge
premeditated publicity stunt?"

The president's response is priceless: "Because we aren't that smart, and we
aren't that dumb."
AMEN.

There is an axiom among sales and marketing types that says, "If you have a
liability,. feature it!"

In the case of leaded fuel, the only game the major oil companies had, that
was cost effective,was to increase the octane of the gasoline with
tetraethyl lead.  Without the lead, they simply could not produce high
octane fuel.  Obviously they are going to tout every possible advantage of
their product and ignore any negative aspects. Note that high octane fuel is
a prerequisite for high compression ratios which in turn are a major factor
in fuel efficient gasoline engines. [ with modern unleaded gas, with a
maximum octane in the low 90's, the highest compression ratios today are in
the 8:1 area.  This contrasts to the 10.5 :1 compression ratios of the
muscle cars of the late 50's and early 60's, when premium pump gas was in
the 110 octane range.]

One of the reasons that the auto industry was so reluctant to embrace the
EPA emission standards was that virtually every then known technique to
reduce emissions lowered the thermodynamic efficiency (and performance and
fuel economy) of the gasoline engine.

The theoretical efficiency of a heat engine is (T2 -T1) / T2   where T2 is
the high temperature (typically of combustion, and T1 is the ambient or
intake/exhaust temperature).  Even today, with precise, closed loop computer
controlled engines, the oxides of nitrogen are reduced by lowering the
combustion temperature via exhaust gas recalculation (with a resultant
impact on fuel economy and power).  This is also why a jet airliner burns
80% of the fuel while taxiing (at 5 mph that it would burn at full speed
(500 + mph) at 40,000 feet altitude.  The jet engine is far more efficient
where T1 is 40 degrees below zero F.  incidentally, this is also why the 100
mile per gallon carburetor is a pipe dream, but sound good to the conspiracy
folks.

I hope I haven't gotten too technical here, but the moral of the story is
that reality is not reality, but one's perception of reality.

Due to a series of circumstances, automobile engines had to be modified (and
eventually redesigned) to meet the new emission standards.  This caused
major impacts in many areas, one of which was the elimination of lead based
anti knock compounds in motor fuel.

Very high compression gas engines (10:1 or more) simply need 100 plus octane
fuel (slower burning to prevent knock or pre ignition).   Tetraethyl lead
was a cost effective way to raise the octane into this range,  and no one
has come up with a comparable substitute since.

Consequently today's automobile engines get  good gas mileage and
performance through improved fuel management via computer control, and not
through good thermodynamic efficiency.

Oliver Filippi