Avgas

Slammin,
do you know which outlets currently have ULP instead of Avgas. One of the vehicles in our group is going to have to carry enough ULP to get from Marla to Sandfire Flat! If we knew of some ULP in betweensomewhere it would certainly help.

Bob as I said just ring ahead. All I know is SW Tanami is at the moment unleaded, buuut a tanker for all I know may rock up tomorrow.

Good Luck.

Eric
I'm sorry to say but Avgas is nothing like kero. Your probably confused with Avtur or Jet A1 which it is also called. This is similar to kero and used in turbine engines. It definitely will not work in a petrol powered vehicle but does work in diesels. Some oil should be added to lubricate the pump though. Avgas is used in aircraft engines for two main reasons. 1) Being of a high octane rating it reduces the possibitities of detonation. This is especially important with aircraft piston engines because they run at high manifold pressures. A cars engine on the other hand when cruising along isn't under nearly the same amount of load.
2) It is far less volatile than automotive fuel and so at low atmospheric pressures such as when at high altitudes it wont release its vapour or boil as readily.
Avgas doesn't have high levels of oil in it at all. It does have high levels of lead in it to give it a high octane rating in the form of tetra ethyl lead(TEL). Aircraft piston engines don't have particularly high compression ratios at all.

Spot on nugget on the Jet A1 issue.

However, with Avgas, yes it has an high octane rating, it is probably cleaner than standard petrol (eg no impurities), but you can run it in unleaded car with no dmamge to the engine (it will actually make it perform better & more fuel effieicent). It can damage the cat converter by kind of melting the inards, from what I understand that process takes a fair while. No harm in the short term.

To say no harm to the converter, and I stand corrected here, but I understand all the cat converer does is convert the exhaust gases from carbon monoxide to another form of gas. So it really won't harm "the car" if you run Avgas.

The high octane will destroy a low compression engine in the long term. Hence the advise of 50/50 by Big Petrol company.

What happens to your cat converter is that the lead in the Avgas poisons the catalist which reacts the dangerous gasses in the exhaust to less harmful ones. The catalist material is the metal Platinium, which when exposed to hyrdocarbons, O2 and heat breaks down the hydrocarbons into water (H2O) and carbon dioxide gas (CO2)with its self being used.The lead in the fuel bonds with the Platinium and destroys it, making your cat useless, and your vehicle a noxious gas emitter. This can cause you to fail rego checks etc.

Nick

I am not suggesting that anyone should be breaking the law, however in Victoria we do not have annual roadworthy's.

I have taken a number of cars to get roadworthy's pre-registration, and I have NEVER seen any of the places check the emissions from the exhaust, in fact I can confidently say that it isn't included as part of the roadworthy's in Victoria.

In my earlier statements I kept saying "in the short term", and that is what I meant.