Vintage Minor Register

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?

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'.

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!!

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!

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

Regards,
Halbe

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