Leaded fuel additive?

[ChaChi]

I was recently reading through the LTD manual and it says to run leaded gas. While I realize the sled runs fine on plain old premium fuel, I can't help but wonder would running leaded fuel additives increase top end life, bearing life?

I also know why leaded gas is no longer used in vehicles, and even the additives I don't think contain lead anymore...

Any comments, questions, thoughts etc are welcome!

Cheers

[jimvw57]

The newer non leaded gas has additives that will work in place of the lead so using it shouldn't be a problem. Stay away from gas that has ethanol or oxygenated additives as that could mess up some of the fuel system components over time.

Years back, the claim was that leaded gas was for lubricating the valves. A 2 cycle snowmobile doesn't have any valves.....

[Checkmarks]

Lead acts as a lubricant and helps in prevention of detonation.  A person could run a lower octane fuel with leaded fuel.

[Mister ED]

Lead acts as a lubricant and helps in prevention of detonation.  A person could run a lower octane fuel with leaded fuel.

Its really only a lubricant (of sorts) to the valves, as Jim mentioned. It helped tp prevent the valves from stiking to the head. The phase out of lead ... resulted in the introduction of hardened valve seats (which also helped to minimize the valve from sticking to the seat). No matter though, since these sleds don't have valves.

Tetraethyl lead also raised the octane in whatever fuel it was blended (I think that was what checkmarks was trying to say?). That was the original reason it was added to all grades of gasoline ... to raise the octane rating. Back in the day, premium gas used to be referred to as "ethyl" (tetraethyl lead)