1930 Buick Coupe fuel question

[FLYINGPEACH]

My old friend has just pruchased a 1930 buick coupe which has been in The United Kingdom since 1990.

Could anyone help regarding best fuel to use?

He doesn't even know if it is leaded or unleaded so is there any way in which you can see if it has been converted.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks

Dean

UK

[Guest rbl2]

Unleaded should be just fine. I use it in my 26 Chevy.

[Restorer32]

Leaded fuel was not available in 1930. The cheapest gas he can purchase now will be far better than the best available in 1930. Same with lubricating oils.

[Rusty_OToole]

Some people are adding kerosene to regular gas for cars that old.

They were made to run on 50 or 60 octane gas. The cheapest regular today is 80 something.

Users report easier starting, smoother and cooler running, more power and better mileage.

One owner of a 32 Buick told me he used to mix 1 part kerosene (paraffin) with 3 parts gas (petrol). He ran on this mixture for thousands of miles, pulling a trailer and it proved out well.

Others have suggested 1 part paraffin to 6 parts petrol.

By the way as a rule of thumb the octane of your gas should look like the compression ratio of your engine.

For example today I bought some 87 octane regular. This would be fine for a car with 8.5:1 compression. At the same pump I could have bought 94 octane, suitable for a high performance car with 9.5:1 compression.

Your old Buick probably had about 5:1 compression and was made to run on 50 to 60 octane gas.

Lead was not even introduced until 1928 and for years was known as "premium" or "ethyl". It was only put into the most expensive blends. Regular gas didn't have any lead in it. Even the "ethyl" gas had very little.

The real heavily leaded gas was not put on the market until about 1955. This was when Detroit started to introduce super high performance engines with 10:1 compression ratios and gas companies brought out super premium blends with 100 octane.

In the late 50s even a cheap 6 cylinder "cooking" Ford engine had 8.5:1 compression which would have been strictly for racing just a few years earlier.

At the time, regular gas was 88 octane premium was 98 and super premium was 103.

This is when car makers started making engines with cheap valves and no valve seats. It is also when we started having trouble with buildup of grey or white deposits in the combustion chambers from all the additives.

But for the typical pre 1955 engine today's gas is fine. Only in the era of 1955 to 1970 did they depend on the heavily leaded stuff.

[Guest]

I always use the lowest octane that I can buy. As an experiment I have mixed eight gallons of regular gas with two gallons of diesel. My Pontiac runs great on this. It will also run on a gallon of "good home brew" (white lightning or what ever you call your 100 over proof alcohol and one gallon of kerosine [kind of expensive though].

[Guest rbl2]

I use only regular fuel in my 26 and have no problems at all.

I also vaguely remember my uncle, a mechanic who started his carreer in the late 1920's, saying something about being able to add kerosene to the fuel of early cars.

[Mark Shaw]

My dad, now 83 years old, ran his 31 Buick on Kerosene to save his fuel rations during WW2.

Buicks and a few other cars of that era had louvers in front of the radiator that were opened and closed by a thermostat. My dad disconnected the thermostat and hooked up a wire into the cab so he could manually open & close the louvers.

Kerosene produces lots of white smoke when it burns at lower temperatures. So he would start the car on gasoline and switch to kerosene when the engine got hot enough. He could manually adjust the operating temperature with the louvers.

He tells a funny story of getting into a dance hall for free by first laying down a smoke screen so the guy taking entrance money couldn't see him sneak down a side road to the back of the dance hall for free.