115
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
115 points (98.3% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7205 readers
264 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Old airplane engine designs were created assuming leaded fuel, and the slight reduction in horsepower associated with pre-2022 unleaded fuels was a problem for them. So the phaseout is just getting started, with it happening in only a handful of airports to date
But leaded gas in cars was banned in '96. Why has it taken them 27 years to begin phasing things out for airplanes?
Because all those old cars are now off the road or running gutless on unleaded fuel.
But you can’t just run an airplane “slower” or it falls out of the sky.
On the other hand, mmwave radio issues are in these exact same planes, so maybe we should just admit that they’re no longer safe to fly.
Also airplanes live longer and the rich dudes who own them tend to be conservative.
They may also be brain dead from lead exposure.
There was also an argument for valve seat protection afforded by lead gas, but they should eat the cost of engine rebuilds and be forced to comply. Especially as many of those planes are for hobby anyway.
And IIRC, the lead contributed to long term reliability of the engine too, something you definitely want to have in a single-engine plane. You don't want to switch fuels and end up with Cessna's falling out of the sky.
That's a myth.
Only sort of; the engines were designed so that the additives were important to combustion performance. Of course, the solution isn’t to keep using leaded fuel, but to rebuild the engine to be more reliable AND not depend on the additives.
Running an old engine with modern fuel will definitely cause it to fail.
It's only important for increasing octane. You would have to reduce the performance of the engine on order to prevent knocking.