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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, December 05, 2007 at 14:01:12 :
In Reply to: Increasing the MPG posted by jack cain on Wednesday, December 05, 2007 at 12:39:12 :
You obviously know more about this than I do, but isn't 87 octane gas even way better than what those motors were designed for? My old copy of Kent shows "motor" gasoline as 69 octane, "premium" as 76, and "aviation" as 75. 87 is better than anything available back in 1940, which tells me there should be some room to increase the compression ratio of a flat-head without it knocking even on modern regular gas.
But what we really care about isn't so much the efficiency of the engine, but the MPG of the whole truck, so things like lighter gear oil or using a cheaper fuel (propane) might also be worthwhile. I haven't tried a propane system, but I understand there's a reasonably simple conversion kit available and you can also run higher compression with propane.
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