Morris Minor Owners Club

In the USA our pump gasoline is lead free, sorry I don't know about GB, do I have to use a lead additive in the Gasoline I add to my 1959 1000 ? I only had the car running for several minutes so far and the previous owner never had it running and cannot provide any information as to if the car has modern valves or not. I run my 1958 Chevy on unleaded gas with no problem as American cars were designed to use lead free gas as that's what was used here then. Thanks for any information you can provide.
Bob

Lead free petrol is fine for Morris Minors providing you don't thrash around the highways, just drive steadily and you won't have any problems.

Of more concern is your octane rating, we run on 95 octane over here, your pumps seem to be 91 octane max. You may have to retard the timing

I use the additive just for my piece of mind ,it's cheap enough ,other call it snake oil etc
each to their own

Additive is cheap AND provides an octane boost. Trust me the difference with running additive and not is noticeable.

Bob, you may like to take the advice oft proffered here, set the inlet valves to 12 thou and exhausts to 15.
This will help on the use of unleaded fuel, my 1098 runs as sweet as a nut on unleaded or with additive with those settings.

Thank you all for the advice, I will try t he additive as most have suggested and check the valve clearence when time allows.

Don't waste money on silly additives....... And don't worry about octane boost on a standard engine. This only matters if you raise the compression ratio - which is a great idea, but until you do so - standard pump fuel will be fine IF you do the valve gaps as mentioned above, and check/reset every 3000 miles.........

It's cheap for piece of mind

Roy is correct you don't need anything only minor adjustments so why buy something you don't need

More importantly, the octane isn't an issue. British gas gives the RON rating, the USA uses a different formula. 95 in Britain (indeed Europe) is closer to the US version of 90. I bet the octane was lower when the car was designed as well...

This is once again a confusing issue of differing US measurements and standards. What about all those old V-8's with 10.5:1 comp. ratios or more??

Midengineracer, does that mean that petrol with a 97 Octane rating here is the sort of fuel in the US that N. Korea will be powering their rockets with?

The 918 was certainly designed to run on POOL petrol...... I doubt these old V8s had 10.5 CR - more likely 7 !!!