Octane Rating of Canadian WWII vehicles

[Dan Martel]

In researching why, during the Normandy campaign, the British Army received 1,400 trucks (Austin K5's) that were not operable and had to be scrapped, I found myself enmeshed in the minutiae of octane ratings, compression ratios and the difference between American and British made engines. Which leads me to my question about Canadian manufactured trucks.

As Canada was supplying trucks and cars to the British Army as well as to the Canadians in Britain from the beginning of the war, and the British Army was using low octane fuel up till 1943 exclusively, were the aforementioned vehicles that arrived in Britain early in the war operating on British Army low octane fuel or North American high octane?

And, if low octane, when did Canadian manufacturers change over to high octane engines?

Thanks for any help,
Dan.

[Lynn Eades]

As a start point I believe a Jeep built in April 1942 has 68 minimum octane on its data plate.
When you ask about manufacturers changing over to high octane engines. I would suggest that all that would have happened was that they altered the ignition timing specs?

[Dan Martel]

Originally Posted by Lynn Eades

As a start point I believe a Jeep built in April 1942 has 68 minimum octane on its data plate.
When you ask about manufacturers changing over to high octane engines. I would suggest that all that would have happened was that they altered the ignition timing specs?

I'll have to defer to you on the technical aspects. It's all beyond my ken, but I know that the British Army had to change over to North American octane rated gas when the Lee and Sherman tanks began to arrive in the Western Desert. The Army had to borrow high octane aviation gasoline from the RAF to fuel them.

Cheers,
Dan.

[Lynn Eades]

Hi Dan, While looking for the answerI found this:
"That process would make a crucial difference in mid-1940 when the Royal Air Force started filling its Spitfires and Hurricanes with the 100-octane gasoline imported from the United States instead of the 87-octane gasoline it had formerly used."
And this:

Abstract
Modern automobiles and fuels were shaped heavily by the development of the octane number tests. These tests were developed between 1929 and 1932 to quantify a fuel’s anti-knock performance in spark-ignition engines. Since knock imposes limits on the maximum engine compression ratio, which correlates to engine performance, the anti-knock property of a fuel is a crucial design constraint. Prior to the development of the octane number tests, engines were designed to run at very low compression ratios to avoid knock, significantly limiting their performance. The octane number tests created standards that allowed for better engine development and advancements in fuel technology. Engines could now be designed to handle a specific octane number of fuel allowing for increased performance. The demand for better performing engines resulted in an increase in the average fuel octane number from 50 to 75 during this period, with the Great Depression and World War II setting the stage for this advancement. These advancements in fuel technology played a crucial role in the survival of the American automobile industry during the Great Depression, the Allied success in World War II, in addition to creating the ‘American obsession’ with powerful automobiles. This paper provides an overview of knock, a historical summary on the development of the octane number tests, the corresponding advancements in fuel technology, and the implications of these advancements on American society.

[Lynn Eades]

And then I found this from Doug Greville's site: In the text, it explains how the octane rating is arrived at.

DOUG'S 'HEAVY METAL' GALLERY


T A N K S C A R R I E R S G U N S A R M O U R E D C A R S


Octane rating of modern petrol and will it affect your old engine? (Ver 2)



Will it or won't it?

In this article, Richard Notton, who makes a sub-hobby out of the technicalities of fuels and oils discusses the issues regarding this topic. What follows is a combination of several different email discussions all roled into one article with the most recent being a response after Tony Gull posted a query on the "Military Vehicles Mailing List" in February 2001.
The usual warnings and cautions apply to relying on any information in this article - do so at your own risk.

Article begins

Back in the 1930's Mr F R Banks of the Associated Ethyl Company brewed the horrendous fuel for the winning Schnieder S6 with its fledgling Merlin, this was some noisome stuff made of Romanian petrol, acetone and huge amounts of TEL, something approaching 1mg/gallon; I think current leaded petrol is something like 0.015mg/gallon. I have spoken to the chief scientist at, as it is now, the Associated Octel Co. about leaded fuel and got a lot of interesting data.

The Battle of Britain was fought on 80 octane stuff and there was always a need for more grunt especially with the advent of the FW 190, we knew of Yank 100 octane but it didn't perform that well since the level of aromatics are important; ultimately a common spec was agreed for 100 octane aviation spirit using Caribbean petrol and a gob of TEL, the first shipment arrived in the tanker Bunker Hill and a large reference quantity was removed for the chemical "library", this stuff was and still is, known as "Bunker Hill 100". The purpose of TEL and why reference samples are important comes later in this discussion.

The only way soluble lead, TEL (Tetra Ethyl Lead) gets into gasoline is by man adding it, any lead compound in current US or UK pump fuel would be below measurable limits and would destroy the standard CAT in short order having you fail a smog test and me the MoT.

TEL works by burning to lead oxide and forming a reflective heat shield around the burning mixture stopping the rest of the charge from simply going bang. TEL itself does nothing for the valve seats, in fact its a problem as it chokes the cylinders and shorts spark plugs but such are the gains that something had to be found to alleviate the problem. Initially ethylene dibromide was used, but proved expensive and subsequently a chlorine eliminator was almost universally adopted, after combustion the lead oxide reacts with the eliminator to make a white crystalline salt which for the bromide eliminator melts at 370 deg C and with chlorine 500 deg C, a lot lower than the melting point of the original lead oxide at some 900 deg C. Its this melted liquid salt that lubricates the valve seats and eats the stems away, it also appears as the grey/white deposit in exhaust pipes and the streaks down aircraft cowlings or over the wings although largely not seen now with regular cleaning and 100LL but very evident in WWII photographs. The other deduction is that as no problems with exhaust seats were apparent, no one went looking for a non-existent problem so specific engine powers climbed steadily and the lead salts went about their job unknown, that is, until the TEL was removed. . . . . . . . . . . . Note, soluble lead (TEL) is totally, utterly different from metallic lead, the exhaust lead salts (halides) are not absorbed by the human body, do not destroy brain cells and are water soluble. A significant point that politicians, greenies and other do-gooders would not or could not understand. Chemistry often does this of course, eg., NaCl, sodium chloride. Sodium is a quite nasty and poisionous stuff, so is chlorine; sodium chloride as a compound is of course table salt.

> Re the 70-80 Octane fuel recipe...I got replies but none were conclusive.
> Dr Deuce came closest by infering HO fuel will cause trouble. So what are
> people running in their WW2 engines?
>
> I dont want to detonate my excellent 270 by running 92 Octane.

You cannot damage the engine by using a higher octane than is needed, you just do not realise all the _potential_ power.

Octane ratings tell you very little about how the fuel actually performs, it is a realative measurement indicator of the performance in the single cylinder, variable compression, laboratory test engine (CFR engine) (that bears little or no resemblance to any automotive engine). This is a weird lab test engine with variable compression, its title is a "Co-operative Fuels Research engine" known simply as a CFR.

Using the sample fuel the engine is adjusted until knocking occurs, then a test fuel of iso-octane (cetane I think) which is highly knock resistant is used with n-heptane which has a rating of about 10 and can be considered the zero reference because it always knocks; by increasing the ratio of cetane to n-heptane the point of knocking is again reached and the rating for the fuel is then the ratio of the two, ie., 20% n-heptane to 80% iso-octane would be called 80 Octane. By this means you cannot get numbers above 100 so after this figure the last two digits represent the ratio of TEL added.

TEL was added in America initially to boost radial aero engines in the 20's for (successful) carrier take-offs by allowing a useful power boost of the then typical 75 oct AVGAS.

> Interesting since if you look at the original pre-war Piper Cub
> Aronca Chief, ect aircraft owners manuals they all state that if
> the 80 octane aviation fuel is not available then "tractor gas"
> read automotive pump gas was an acceptable alternative..

That might be so for the US at the time.

> So what happened between the BOB and latter in the war since the merlins
> that were stuffed into P-51 required 145 octane"purple"
> gas ? Both 145 purple and red 80 octane aviation gas were
> dropped somewhere around the mid 70's leaving only 100 Low lead
> blue left. Really upset the warbird crowd in that they all had to
> drop the power setting from 54 - 56 Hg on take off down to a max
> of about 44 Hg.. Lost lots of HP that way, but better to loose the
> HP than detonate the head off the motor ..
>

Britain at the time was introducing 100 oct AVGAS having found that simply dumping more TEL into the gas allowed higher boost pressures and therefore power, simply open the throttle more.

The problem was desperate shortage of the stuff so US imports were arranged, however clerks are not chemists and the simple octane statement falls far short of the full definition since the aromatics in gas have a marked effect on performance. The initial US 100 oct AVGAS performed no better than the 80 oct at the time until the chemists realised the very different hydrocarbon structures produced from the two different sources of original crude base stock.

Once this was defined equivalent fuel could be formulated with the initial batch arriving in the tanker "Bunker Hill" and reference samples still available to this day are known as Bunker Hill 100.

The 145 oct you refer to means a refined gasoline to 100 oct with some 45 milligrams of TEL per gallon added, enough to have an army of high-pressure greenies turn red with rage. . . . . . . . . .

Warbird racing is peculiar to the US where you have a more amenable FAA and the infrastructure/demand to provide new-manufacture approved spares, Merlins and Griffons are cosseted here to keep them flying by lightening the airframe of guns and armour together with operation at zero boost typically, thereby the effective sea level naturally aspirated power is maintained at altitude and the use of 100LL is not a drawback.

What it doesn't tell you is the make up of aromatics and lead (if used) that contribute to this octane rating, these things can have a drastic effect on the real engine.

Almost invariably horror stories of damaged engines are incorrectly attributed to octane ratings, high octane unleaded being used in an engine that must have a valve seat lubricator, without a current, proven lead substitute being added or, more obtusely and a documented WWII occurrence, high lead (so high octane) fuels being used in MVs causing corrosion of the valve stem and valve failure. In this instance the octane rating is always blamed but has nothing to do with it at all, the seats are fine getting high doses of melted lead salts but the stems, not being of a compatible steel alloy like 21-4N steels, just corrode away fast and loose their heads with drastic results.

I would advise against using paraffin (kerosene)(depending on continent) as an octane reducer, it will not volatilise and will simply wash the oil off the cylinder walls and then contaminate the lube oil, better to use a heptane fraction which is a cheap industrial solvent very similar to unleaded petrol (gas)
(Doug - I wonder if this is what we know as "Shellite" and "White Spirit" in Australia?)
and has an octane rating of about 10, one pint to a gallon of 95 octane fuel will reduce it to 85 octane but its not really needed except in special cases like pre-war, air cooled, side-valve (L head) motor cycle engines.

If you need a lead substitute additive for exhaust valve seat protection (note, up to a nominal 3000 rpm lead is never necessary) do choose carefully, many products are around that contain manganese. These are very effective at lubricating the valve seats but are unstable and form a filter blocking sludge. Soluble iron such as ferrocene is better than lead for seat protection but forms red iron oxide, otherwise known as Jeweller's Rouge which is decidedly unfriendly for the bores and pistons.

Bear in mind that unleaded of today, compared with early WWII unleaded, has the benefit of some 60 years of R&D, the lead-free octane improvers currently widely used in pump fuel and advanced refining processes now leave no combustion residues and so the valves have an easier life anyway.

It was commonplace to de-carbonise/valve grind engines pre and post war every few thousand miles both to remove the deposits built up owing to poor refining and catch seat recession before it became a problem, this is now unnecessary.

Many thanks to Richard.

Thanks to Doug.

[Tony Smith]

Another point to consider is the physical design of Automotive engines.

Britain was lumbered from the introduction of internal combustion vehicles with the peculiar notion of "Taxable Horsepower" or RAC Hp. This meant that a certain car or truck was taxed annually for the road based on it's "taxable" Hp. But this figure bore no resemblance to the actual horsepower of the engine!

Taxable Horsepower was a notional value derived solely from the total area of the piston crowns. It was not concerned with the stroke or the total capacity of the engine, and certainly not the output of the engine. So two comparable 4 cyl engines, one of a bore of 3" and a stroke of 3" (cap of 85ci or 1.4l), and another with a bore of 3" and a stroke of 3 1/2" (cap of 99ci or 1.62l) would both have an identical "Taxable Hp" of 14.4Hp. But plainly the 3.5" stroke would be a larger capacity and make more actual power and torque.

So the tendency for British motor manufacturers was to design engines of an "Undersquare" design where the Stroke was proportionately longer than the Bore. This was an inherently inefficient restriction to best design practise (a point that was not evident to the UK Govt, who continued to encourage inefficient products for far too long!). The US auto industry was not hampered by this inefficiency, and refined engine designs to produce better Hp/ci ratios from "Square" (ie equal Bore/Stroke) and "Oversquare" (Bore larger than Stroke) engines that were able to achieve higher RPMs, and therefore more power.

However, the stroke of an engine directly relates to the speed of the piston as it moves up and down the bore as the crank rotates. As the piston in a short stroke motor does not move far in 1 revolution, it's speed is lower. A long stroke piston, in that same 1 revolution the piston moves a further distance, the piston speed is higher. Material properties of the pistons, (initially steel or iron, later aluminum), lubricants and ring material all contributed to what the actual maximum speed of those pistons could be, but for any material, the short stroke engine was ALWAYS capable of higher Rpms than the long stroke engine.

The one benefit of of the slower speeds imposed on long stroke engines is that the compressed fuel mixture had longer time to burn as the piston travelled down the bore. Low Octane fuel is a slower burning fuel and works best in a long stroke engine. In fact, the US move to find Higher Octane fuels was a direct result of their development of oversquare engine designs. A higher rpm engine has less time to burn the fuel mixture, and a higher CR was needed to increase burn time within a much shorter duration "Power Stroke", and this in turn required a higher Octane rating of fuel. Conversely, using quick burning High Octane fuel in a long stroke motor results in lower power output as the fuel has completed burning well before the piston has completed the Power Stroke.

[Lynn Eades]

In saying all that, for Dan's benefit, The relatively low compression ratios of most war time engines was in the area of 5 or 6 to 1. This in most cases would have been pretty forgiving except that (as per Tony's post) most British vehicles had a very low power to weight ratio.(iets say a conservative approach to horse power)
Nowadays Dan, most European and Asian built cars are running about a 10 to1 compression ratio (often, on top of which goes a turbo)
It's all about volumetric efficiency which means stuffing as much as you possibly can, down the hole (the air fuel mix, that is)
I hope this all makes sense and I am sorry I've not yet found any info on the standard octane ratings of British fuel, during WWII.

[Alastair Thomas]

After the war was over, my Father mounted an expedition to visit Ain Dalla. This uninhabited oasis is NE of Farafra oasis to the East of the Great Sand Sea. It was a jumping off base for the LRDG and there were reputed to be stores dumps still there. And so it proved. There were boxes of flimseys and some jerry cans. Some of the flimseys still had petrol in them and my Father drove back to Cairo on it in his Jeep, some 370 miles. When he got the chance he sent a sample to the Shell offices and they analysed it for him. They pronounced it to be 53 octane and "should not be used in a motor vehicle"!
Having said that he also fitted a second fuel tank to his Jeep and would run on paraffin when the Police were not in evidence.
We still have his desert equipment including his bubble sextant and Cole sun compass. In a burst of enthusiasm I have just finished making a small batch of replica Bagnold sun compasses.
Alastair
F60S
Lynx I MkIII*

[Lynn Eades]

I love the (9.00?) x 16 sand tyre on the jeep. Does that equal low range starts?

53 octane. That is pretty low. Had all the petrol evaporated leaving the bunker oil?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Read the Imperial Oil Review, Summer 1944 for an article on "100 octane aviation gasoline - The story behind the develpment of the fuel that helped to give the United Nations air superiority over Germany"

http://wartimecanada.ca/document/wor...ew-summer-1944

[Tony Smith]

Agreed. Like Lynn, the only references I can find on this subject seem to point to only wartime US aviation fuel being a higher Octane than British production.

It seems that US motor fuel was just as low as Britain's until the Post-War years

[Dan Martel]

I originally read about this on the "Axis History Forum" under the thread "Unserviceable Lorries - Jul - Sep 44." It runs to 26 pages in total.

On post #12 it reads:

Something ELSE happened over the summer of 1944 that might have led to heating issues on particular motors...

The octane rating of Pool Petrol rose! During the war the octane rating of "Pool" went down as low as 67 octane, but in the summer of 1944 what would have been coming out of the pump at PLUTO in Normandy apparently rose to around 80 octane.

The nearest we were able to get to a breakdown of such magnitude was the engine failure of countless British Trucks following the introduction of Higher octane MT80 fuel. British Engines were not designed for operation on 80 octane petrol and as a result those of certain makes and types (we do not know which) developed severe burning of the valves. Changes were made to exhaust valves and guides for operation on leaded fuel and new engines were provided with valves made from an alloy steel containing 20 (Vs, 8) percent of chromium to lengthen engine life between overhauls.

In fact...it's entirely possible that in an engine designed for very low octane "Pool"....the range of adjustment in its magneto ignition system (it was WWII...) MAY simply not have allowed the ignition timing in the K5's new engine to actually be advanced enough to cope with what was - after all - a 20% rise in octane rating...and the heating problems that caused - within the design parameters of the original engine 8O ...

Warning, if you start reading this thread, it will suck you in to all 26 pages before you know it.

Cheers,
Dan.

[Lynn Eades]

Dan, as the octane rating goes up, the flame front travels faster and so, the ignition timing requires retarding. (not advancing)This allows the piston to reach t.d.c. before the pressure on the piston builds too much.
I'm surprised that Richard F. hasn't chimed in because I faintly recall a discussion about Bedfords and Morris's that had piston problems and I don't recall the reason.

[Keith Brooker]

Found this info from my copy of Supplies and Transport Voll 2, i can put more info from the REME Vol 2 Technical if you want more.
Keith

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Lynn Eades

I'm surprised that Richard F. hasn't chimed in because I faintly recall a discussion about Bedfords and Morris's that had piston problems and I don't recall the reason.

Hi Lynn,
This subject came up before, I think on HMVF forum, which I participated in. Also on an Axis form, I have lost the links now. The lorries of concern were a batch of Austin K5 4x4 in NW Europe campaign which were having engine problems, apparently with excess bore wear.. The discussions on Axis forum were with non-technical people as I recall (I could only read that forum), but from my research I found that there were a batch of Austin K5's which were supplied for wading, at a guess for unloading from sea transport. These had a special waterproof brake servo. What I did find out from Austin manuals was that the bores were given a greater piston clearance, my guess is that when the engine was warmed up on the landing craft, then plunged into cold water the rapid chill could seize the engine, but of course later on the extra clearance would then mean oil consumption and low compression. If REME were not aware of this they would automatically think that the engines were faulty.
To quote the K5 manual;
"piston skirt clearance has been increased from .0025"-.0028" to .004"-.0045" to make engines with new pistons immediately suitable for wading through water without fear of seizure. Pistons with the original smaller clearance can be used for engines of vehicles which it is known will not be called upon for wading".

Regarding the change to leaded petrol, it was the deposits on valve stems that caused problems and many British manuals gave information on combating the problem, with mods to valve guides, increased valve clearances and alterations to ignition timing. I have quite a bit of tech info on this but am short of time at present.

regards, Richard