Hardened valve seats?

[Ian Grace]

As you will have sen from the home page, Walter Watson has re-joined the Register and has a technical question which i promised to air on the forum for him. Here is an extract from his e-mail of earlier today:

"The old chestnut concerning hardened valve seats. I intend using this car as much as is possible for touring and the annual mileage will be reasonably high. My gut feeling is just to use additives. Anyway, once I have rejoined--maybe you will favour me with the perceived wisdom on this thorny one. I should perhaps mention that the vendor is recommending a cylinder head skim before remounting it to the block so that it will be going to the machine shop anyway."

What does the team think?

[chris lambert]

Not too sure how to link to it, but there is another thread on Petrol here in which the subject of hardened valve seats is discussed. I just entered 'hardened valve' into the search box in the trhc - alternatively find it on page 2 of the Technical Index - the thread is entitled 'Petrol'.

[Ronald]

We had hardened seats fitted in our head when it was refurbed, so we can simply use pump unleaded, although to be honest i might use super unleaded when we use it as i think the extra octane will help slightly...... every little helps eh!!

[Toby]

Alternatively look up "tetraboost", it's lead in a bottle and you can adjust the octane with it, as it is lead I use it every 3rd fill up as lead will stay on the valves for a while, no problems so far and vintage race teams use it too!

[halbe]

I also use Tetraboost !
It works really well with the 98 octane fuel I use in the Aston.

Regards,
Halbe

[Toby]

Not bad with tonic, ice and a slice too! (only kidding!)