lowbuckrats
Well-known member
I've noticed differences in my cars, past and present, that the ones with HEI(meaning hotter,better spark) have more tolerance to todays gas than do the old points set-ups that are currently in my Pontiac and my 55 wagon. I never have the stalling out problems, misfiring occassional rough running, with my current El camino or my old 71 that I had converted to HEI. Both my Pontiac and my 55 have ran like crap since I brought them out of storage this year. I put marine grade Stabil in both when stored. Now I believe that my Pontiac prolly could use new points and plugs, but the 55 is all fresh and occassionally does the same thing. With vehicles that I have had HEI's in I have never had any of these kind of problems (My past 3 trucks and my old 39 buick all with SBC's for example). I'm just wondering if there is a correlation with the problems I am experiencing and the quality of spark? It seems that way to me. Now, I have looked on the Web for answers and have found no definitive conclusions, but my guess is with ethanol having lower BTU's that it needs hotter spark to burn better, but I dont think that there has been any real studies to his fact. The newer computer based cars with FI seem to have more tolerance to ethanol because they can adjust. What do you guys think about this? [S