A Nice Little Earner from Testing Additives

A bit of a ‘set to’ is bubbling away within the additive market. It concerns the testing of additives that can be retailed to counteract the affects of owners of older cars using lead replacement fuel or lead free 4 star.

For years now, petrol has contained lead additives, mainly to improve combustion and raise octane. A neat side effect is that the lead oxide formed during combustion settles on the valve sets, providing a cushion that prevents recession and in doing so allows engine manufacturers to fit soft valve sets. Since the advent of unleaded fuel and more recently cats, vehicle assemblers have specified hardened valve seats – so preventing the recession phenomenon.

Environmental pressure has now quite rightly led to the banning of lead in fuel and hopefully the reduction of brain damage in our children if some research is correct. The result of the ban of leaded fuel after December 1999 will leave around 2 million cars in the UK without the hardened valve seats unleaded fuel use requires.

The government has provided a standard for lead replacement fuel at the pumps and this will probably be potassium based, although some observers believe phosphor has also been approved. This point has not been made clear yet. However, the question is whether forecourt operators will want to gum up their forecourts with the £5 fill-up customers when they can sell unleaded to the majority in large quantities. Whatever, there will be a premium to pay at the pumps to those who can least afford it because the volumes of LRP are going to be low to manufacture and pump.

Protecting Soft Valve Seats

All additive companies will have launched or be launching a lead substitute, which can be added to the tank at fill-up. A well as a lead substitute, some of these additives contain octane booster, which is intended to boost the octane rating of unleaded fuel from 95 RON to 97 RON (as 4 star). Some cars can be adjusted so that octane booster is not required. Others run poorly without the higher octane fuel. Some additives contain both.

There are three basic valve seat protection technologies:-

1 Sodium. This is Lubrizol technology and has now been dropped in favour of potassium due to risks to turbochargers and other potential problems with high speed running.

2 Potassium. This is available from Lubrizol and Adibis (formerly a BP division). It appears to be the chosen technology for LRP. Indications are that it will be the standard.

3 Phosphor. This is Associated Octel’s Valvemaster. Phosphor is probably the most effective protector of the three but it does poison cats although the chance of finding a cat-equipped car with soft valve seats is of course fairly low.

Boosting Octane Ratings

There are two basic octane booster technologies:-

1 MMT. This is Ethyl’s manganese based product and is a very effective booster. But it is a solid and although not as dangerous as lead some feel it may just be substituting one airborne solid for another. Ethyl claim that as well as boosting octane it protects valve seats.

2 Ferrocene. This comes from France and is a ferric product. A less powerful octane booster than MMT it needs careful formulation because overdose can negate any initial gain due to combustion chamber build-up.

FBHVC Testing

Organised by the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, standard independent tests have been made available to additive producers to test the different brews. Although the well-respected MIRA carried out the tests the results are not necessarily published in detail as they have been commissioned by the brew mixers who have paid £5,500 each.

The brews were supplied by the manufacturers rather than selected at random as canned items from retailers. Some feel this could be considered as a questionable practice because it is the strength of active material in the mix that is critical and nobody seems to know whether any precautions were taken to ensure the brew submitted was the same as that readily available in the cans.

Because tests were commissioned and paid for, brew manufacturers can suppress the results of their tests if they so choose. This implies that a manufacturer not publishing the results has something to hide. It may not be the case but it certainly prevents the consumer from making a fully informed judgement of the product and its content.

Nobody knows how much the FBHVC paid MIRA for the tests, but the receipts from brew manufacturers are put at around £70,000 – maybe much higher. Remembering that Rover provided the cylinder heads for the tests, rightly or wrongly the feeling amongst the brew mixers is that it seems like a nice little earner.

Major brew manufacturers have tested their products internally and the results are readily available. The FBHVC tests are offered as an independent test – despite the results being closed – so in reality it forces all manufacturers to cough up £5,500 just to make the claim that the brew has been independently tested. Yet the manufacturers tests might be more comprehensive and more informative because the test data is available. Without the publication of the results the independent test is at best only protecting a minimum basic standard. It gives no measure for the open market to offer improved standards unless they pay the test fee and get the results.

Many feel that the results of these tests could have been achieved much more cheaply and more effectively by testing the three base technologies then recommending the most effective technology at the optimum concentration. Additive companies could then state their technology and blend on the pack, and consumers could easily decide the preference and have a choice of compatible technologies across brands. Whatever the truth of the matter is – there is a lot of bad feeling about that perhaps could have been avoided. (8/99)