Leaded Fuel In Windom?

[steve smith]

:( I am running a 92 Windom here in Zimbebwe, fuel is a major headache (amongst other things) and unleaded petrol is only available in adjoining countries, although I have been able to import my own fuel I would like to consider converting to leaded.... The removal of the cat converter seems to be a fairly straight-forward bit of plumbing, but I am concerned about the Lambda sensor on the ex manifold..... if I leave in situ it will shortly become defective due to lead deposits ( I think) and fail to send correct voltage reading to the ecu. I am told that this will lead to the engine running rich and later maybe rough.

Can I disconnect the lab sensor, and adjust the ecu ? Any comment and advice gratefully rec;d

steve Bulawayo

[TheNissanMan]

If you remove the CAT would it not be possible to find a new ECU system for the vehicle to change the way the engine works. I don't think that running Leaded should make too much difference to the running of the car.

When unleaded cars first hit the market over here it was suggested that every fifth tank should be leaded anyway to keep the engine running properly. I would have thought that by running leaded petrol you shouldn't be doing to much damage to the engine.

Mind you probably wrong so will wait and see othe other opinions posted....

[cal]

Hello Steve,

If you just disconnect the lambda (O2) sensor, ECU will detect that as an error (open circuit) and the engine management light will come on. At the same time, the ECU will run in emergency mode, which runs on set parameters rather than variably adjusting the ECU settings according to the feedback from each sensors, in other words does not run as efficiently as it should.

I think you can remove the CAT alright and that will make the car run much efficiently, and gives the benefit of giving much better fuel consumption. However, when it comes to O2 sensor, whether it will torelate the leaded petrol I am unsure. I used to live in Kenya one time and we had a Daihatsu Charade Jap spec and that had a CAT and run on leaded for over 3 years without any problems before we sold it. However, that was a carb vehicle and not a modern EFI...

I would say, if it is an occasional leaded use, the O2 should not suffer but in the long term I am unsure.

You are right that when the O2 sensor becomes faulty, the engine will run rough.

Sorry for not being any further help.