>The 80 octane fuel you refer to would be the regular and awful pool dross
>with a good splosh of TEL, likely its the corrosion aspect the engines
>couldn't handle, not the octane rating as such.
>
>At the time remember these nimonic alloy steels were the preserve of
>cutting-edge aero engines not found in army chuggers, the Battle of Britain
>was fought with Merlins running on 80 octane AVGAS !
>
>Richard
>Southampton - England
>
>
Interesting since if you look at the original pre-war Piper Cub
Aronca Chief, ect aircraft owners manuals they all state that if
the 80 octane aviation fuel is not available then "tractor gas"
read automotive pump gas was an acceptable alternative..
So what happened between the BOB and latter in the war since the merlins
that were stuffed into P-51 required 145 octane"purple"
gas ? Both 145 purple and red 80 octane aviation gas were
dropped somewhere around the mid 70's leaving only 100 Low lead
blue left. Really upset the warbird crowd in that they all had to
drop the power setting from 54 - 56 Hg on take off down to a max
of about 44 Hg.. Lost lots of HP that way, but better to loose the
HP than detonate the head off the motor ..
Bob B
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 03 2000 - 20:29:51 PST