Reduced-Lead Requirement : Vintage-Car Owners Blast Ruling
Owners of old and classic cars, already hard-pressed to find parts and high-octane fuel for their machines, said Tuesday that the federal government’s decision to cut maximum lead levels in gasoline more than 90% by Jan. 1 will make their vehicles even more costly to maintain.
“I just don’t like the idea at all,” said Paul Yont, secretary of the Polo, Ill.-based International Edsel Club. “We’re going to have to redo the engines and see if we can change the valve system to put in harder seats. That gets rather expensive,” added Yont, whose 915 club members own and restore the Edsel, which was manufactured by Ford Motor Co. between 1957 and 1959.
Monday’s ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency, generally endorsed by the oil industry, the American Automobile Assn. and environmentalists, requires refiners to cut the lead content in gasoline from the current 1.1 grams per gallon to 0.1 grams next January. An interim standard of 0.5 grams will take effect in July.
Leaded gasoline is required in many cars, trucks, farm equipment and boats manufactured before 1971, according to the EPA. About 13.4 million of the nation’s 123 million registered cars and trucks were built before 1971, and therefore have engines that may need the lubricating properties of lead in order to prevent valve damage, according to the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn. in Detroit. Valves in those cars were made of a softer metal that deteriorates more rapidly without leaded gasoline.
After 1971, manufacturers began phasing in anti-pollution equipment and, since 1975, virtually all cars have used catalytic converters to reduce pollutants. Those cars must run on unleaded fuel.
Three Options Given
Owners of vintage cars, who had sent more than 2,500 letters last year protesting the proposed rule, in recent weeks have busied themselves investigating ways to minimize the effect of using reduced-lead gasoline in their cars. The search is particularly acute in California, where mild weather helps keep many older cars on the road much longer than in harsher climates.
Owners say they are faced with three options: drive less to reduce the wear and tear of the lower lead content, have their engines rebuilt with harder valve seats or buy gasoline additives, some of which boost the amount of lead in gasoline.
“We’ve talked about it in our club quite a bit,” said Leonard Urlik, president of the Southern California Region of the Classic Car Club of America, whose 4,300 members collect and restore luxury automobiles made between 1925 and 1948. “There’s a lot of debate about how much damage unleaded gas will cause (in old cars) but the literature is divided on the question,” he added. Some members have opted to drive less while others have modified their engines, said Urlik, who owns a 1930 Cord, a 1936 Auburn and a 1932 Packard.
However, some of the more mechanically inclined motorists pooh-pooh the hand wringing over the new EPA regulations.
“It’s not going to present quite as much problem as most people think,” said Gary Richards, a mechanic at Keyston Ford in Norwalk who drives his 1969 Ford Fairlane from his Riverside home to work every day. “I’ve tried unleaded gas in my car and it performs OK.” Of course, Richards added, it helps that “I’m a mechanic and I know the ins and outs of the car.”
EPA spokeswoman Martha Casey said the agency is sympathetic to those owners who aren’t as mechanically sophisticated as Richards and are trying to hang onto a car that uses leaded gas.
“We are very concerned about that,” said Casey. “We do want to very carefully examine the issue of how older cars and farm machinery might fare under a total ban. It could be that manganese, phosphates or other additives could be used.”
She added that the EPA, which also regulates lead additives for gasoline, might consider making such additives available to owners of cars that need lead to operate properly.
But a spokesman for the McLean, Va.-based American Automobile Assn. said the organization is concerned that tightening regulations any further would mean that “the needs of drivers still using leaded gasoline would not be met.”
Meanwhile, some companies, such as STP Corp. in Boca Raton, Fla., are expecting the EPA decision to boost the $150-million-a-year gasoline additive market.
“We feel the overall market for gas additives is going to improve a lot as people try to keep their cars running” under the new rules, said Bob Small, a marketing executive at STP, which claims that its gasoline additive helps clean a car’s fuel system.
