1954 ETHYL GASOLINE CHARACTERISTICS & PRODUCTION ANIMATED FILM

[Music] [Applause] [Music] we've all heard a lot of quality claims about different gasolines so many in fact that people can't help wondering just how important they are the fact is that most of those gasoline claims are very important practically every one of them is based on years of research by oil companies and automotive engineers there are certain basic qualities of gasoline however that determine whether or not it is really a good motor fuel and that's what I'm here for to give you an accurate up-to-date picture of exactly how gasoline characteristics affect engine driving power in order to get a better understanding of why gasoline characteristics mean so much to motorists let's begin by taking a look at the main steps in gasoline production gasoline is made from crude oil and sometimes natural gas which is pumped from deep in the earth from the oil fields the petroleum is pipeline to the refineries where it is refined in order to produce gasoline fuel oil lubricants and other products scientific research on the properties of petroleum and on the fuel requirements of engines has led to many new developments including new methods for obtaining gasoline from crude oil there are a number of different processes used to make the components of gasoline from the infinite variety of hydrocarbon compounds contained in crude petroleum today four of the most important ones are straight-run distillation thermal cracking catalytic cracking and catalytic reforming the reasons for using these different processes are no one of them could possibly produce enough gasoline today and each one of them produces gasoline with somewhat different characteristics but no one of these gasolines can satisfy all the requirements of modern automobile engines there for gasoline manufacturers blend the products of these different processes in order to make high-quality fuels in sufficient quantity by helping refiners make better use of each barrel of petroleum such complex processes help conserve our natural resources - we've been talking about where gasoline comes from now let's talk a little about where it goes here stick your head under the hood with me and we'll see with this engine just how the different characteristics of gasoline actually affect engine performance naturally you're pretty familiar with the four basic steps in the operating cycle of an automobile engine here's number one the fuel intake stroke as the piston goes down a mixture of fuel and air is sucked into the combustion chamber through the open intake valve number two is the compression stroke the intake valve is closed now and the piston is coming up forcing the gasoline and air mixture into a smaller and smaller space and here's the power stroke the spark plug fires the fuel burns and the piston is forced down by the rapidly expanding gases and last is the exhaust stroke the hot burned gases are pushed out the open exhaust valve as the piston Rises when it reaches the top it's all ready to begin all over again sucking in more fuel now the way gasoline's are made the characteristics they have determine what they do once they're inside that engine take the characteristic of volatility as a case in point volatility means how readily something evaporates you probably know it but surprisingly few people realize that the fuel air car burns is not just the liquid gasoline that goes into the tank liquid gasoline must be vaporized and mixed with the right proportion of air before it'll burn inside an engine and that of course is what the carburetor is for mixing gasoline with air in the right ratio it also is one of the reasons why volatility is such an important characteristic of gasoline but there's more to it than that in a sense an automobile engine is like a fireplace the fuels they both use must have several different properties in order to burn properly for example no one his right mind would try to light a fire with coal it's too hard to get started on the other hand it would be just as silly to try to make a lasting fire of paper alone we use paper for lighting wood for fast warm-up and coal if we want it to put out a lot of continuous heat in a sense it's the same with gasoline the part of petroleum that becomes gasoline contains hydrocarbon molecules that evaporate over a wide range of temperatures as the motor fuel experts put it gasoline contains many different fractions since automobile engines are required to operate over a wide range of temperatures they need fuel containing many such different fractions the light hydrocarbons like the paper in the fireplace are needed for cold starts on the other hand the heavier molecules like the wood and the coal produce somewhat more heat and are necessary for acceleration power and mileage engines you might say just don't like their gasoline straight they prefer a balanced blend that has what it takes for all the condition a car's likely to be up against cold weather starts hot were their punishment high speed cruising or heavy work on tough grades by the way there are a couple of possible pitfalls in this problem of volatility that you may have encountered your own experience one of them is that old headache vapor lock ever see a fella have this kind of trouble on a hot day when it had been running just fine a few minutes before that was probably vapor lock it's caused by some of the light fractions of gasoline evaporating in the fuel line before they even reach the carburetor when this happens the bubble of gasoline vapor blocks the line so the fuel pump can't get enough gasoline to the engine but how in the world people naturally wonder can they make gasoline so that will not be a lock in the summer and still start a cold motor in the winter well the answer is gasoline czar carefully adjusted for each season the gasoline that's sold in the winter is a different mixture of petroleum fractions from the gasoline sold in the summer even though both of them come from the very same pump if that weren't done motorists would continually be having trouble with either starting or vapor lock incidentally refiners make a similar adjustment for the different parts of the country lure volatility in the south higher volatility in the north the other pitfall in connection with volatility is crankcase dilution this can happen when parts of the gasoline with too high and evaporating temperature are drawn into the cylinder in a liquid state instead of burning this gasoline runs down the cylinder walls and mixes in with the oil in the crankcase thinning it out the answer to crankcase dilution and all other volatility problems is what gasoline manufacturers call balanced volatility by blending together just the gasoline fractions they want in just the amounts they want the manufacturers have been able to meet every one of these tough requirements as a matter of fact most of the fuel you find on the road today is made to give you easy starting quick warm-up powerful steady driving and at the same time avoid vapor lock and crankcase dilution another problem that's been brought well under control is trouble with impurities sometimes gum deposits and other impurities caused sticky valves choked up manifolds and carburetor difficulties you can see here how a sticky of intake valve would cut your engine performance the valve doesn't quite close as a result some of the fuel air charged leaks away during compression and power is lost as the burning gases escape during the power stroke today however gasoline manufacturers have refining perfected to the point where the fuel they sell is well within the specified limits on impurities now I'd like to tell you about the most important quality of gasoline when it comes to engine performance that's its antiknock value the antiknock value of gasoline is the characteristic in its makeup that controls fuel knock in an automobile engine just to emphasize the harmful effects that fuel knock has on engine performance let's make a test run up that hill with some low grade gasoline in the tank you do the driving all set let's roll once we're on the hill slow down to about 10 miles an hour and then make her pull the grade in high gear hold the accelerator right on the floor okay here we are on the hill now give her the gun here that feeler lose power no don't let up on the accelerator and don't shift into second just keep her fully okay you can part right here now that we've seen what engine knock does let's take another look under the hood and check what causes it look in the combustion chamber again at the compression and power strokes I showed you these before but this time I'm going to ask you to stretch your imagination a little bit to see exactly what happens when the fuel and air mixture burns in the combustion chamber I'd like to begin by putting a coil spring inside that cylinder on top of the piston that piston does the same thing to the coil spring that it does to the fuel mixture only you can see it better with this spring there's the piston coming up on the compression see how that spring is compressed naturally the tighter the spring is squeezed the bigger the push it'll give the piston on the down stroke that's why high compression engines give more power now let's look at the same thing as it really happens with the fuel and air mixture being compressed then ignited by the spark plug at just the right instant and forcing the piston down as the burning gases expand notice that I said burning not exploding that's another common misconception many people have about automobile engines they think the gasoline vapor just explodes all at once actually it does something very different here is a slow-motion close-up of what really happens after that spark plug fires see how the flame spreads across the chamber it all happens in a split fraction of a second but it's still a gradual burning not a sudden explosion this is the way engine fuel should burn because it's the most efficient way to push a piston that's a fact pistons must be pushed the trouble is that when fuel not occurs the Pistons don't get a smooth powerful push they get a sudden slack that comes so fast and end so quickly but they can't put it to good use now here's a slow-motion close-up of combustion under knocking conditions see how the burning starts out evenly like it did before as more of the fuel burns it expands and squeezes the remaining fuel even tighter but watch this time there's a terrific explosion which sets up a of uneven shockwaves in the cylinder that's the inside story of a knock it's caused by higher temperatures and pressures on a fuel that can't take them without exploding when it happens drivers often feel it should let up on the gas or shift into second gear just like you did back on the hill besides wasting power knocking throws away fuel energy in the form of waste heat which explains why fuel not can cause overheating continuous overheating leads to shorter engine life more repair bills how can fuel not be prevented mechanics know that it can be eliminated by simply retarding the spark on the engine it's been done plenty of times it works because with the spark the fuel isn't put under so much pressure while it burns which reduces the tendency of the fuel to knock and it also reduces the engine's chance of delivering the driving power it was designed to develop fortunately there's no need to sacrifice power in order to avoid fuel not just pick the right fuel a fuel with high antiknock value high antiknock rating in gasoline is important in more ways than one for example there's pre ignition a problem that can give quite a bit of trouble in some engines but don't blame the engines they're designed and built to really get the road out from under you the trouble comes when these jobs get fouled up in low speed start and stop city tracking this kind of driving causes a buildup of carbon deposits in the combustion chamber of these engines these deposits may get red-hot and set off the new fuel error charge this too early ignition of fuel causes detonation which the motors can't tell from ordinary fuel not in a sense of pre igniting engine is working against itself this fight between the pre ignited fuel and the rising piston causes loss of power and poor gas mileage there are two ways to lick the pre ignition problem one of them is by putting a special additive in the gasoline which prevents these carbonaceous deposits and the cylinders from becoming incandescent and causing pre-ignition anothers by using a fuel with sufficiently high octane rating so that the fuel air charge will not knock even one pre ignited by glowing just as it resists the high temperature and pressures that cause fuel not in other words it's again a question of picking the right fuel now don't get me wrong most all the fuels for sale today are good fuels in fact they all actually produce practically the same amount of heat energy when they burn but that's not the way an automobile driver measures power all the fuel energy in the world won't do the driver any good unless it's converted into driving power and you know as well as we do what happens to driving power when an engine starts to knock but we just saw that on our little spin up the hill and it can happen under any kind of heavy pull so for top engine performance and long engine life the answer is high octane gasoline it's a scientifically proved fuel fact the higher the octane number of a gasoline the greater its ability to resist knocking under high temperatures and pressures that's why gasoline manufacturers even with their excellent modern refining methods add tetraethyl lead in order to meet the requirements of today's engines ethyl antiknock compounds the octane number of gasoline and makes it possible for motorists to get the maximum driving power out of their fuel that's true whether you're interested in quicker acceleration for a safer passing steady high speed traveling mountain climbing or load hauling it also applies whether you're driving a sports car or a semi-trailer whether the engine under your hood is 10 days or 10 years old as a matter of fact it's particularly important to use only high octane gasoline in the new high-compression high-performance engines in today's cars you saw it with a coil spring high compression ratios can give you more driving power than the lower ratios and the old engines because they put the fuel mixture under high pressure and that's the very reason today's engines require high octane gasoline you can't get that driving power without high octane it all adds up to this no matter what else you may want in a gasoline for top engine performance you need a fuel that has a well balanced volatility is free from harmful impurities and above all has a high octane rating these are the main qualities to look for in selecting automotive gasoline [Music] [Applause]