Advance Ignition Fair
Regarding the proud owner of the Mercedes-Benz 180E in your magazine who complains about a lack of performance… he does not seem to know what he is ta lk ing about.
Here’s t he sk inny: Advance t he ignition timing by changing t he resistor under t he air-cleaner from five-degrees BTDC to 11-degrees BTDC. Mercedes k new that a lot of owners would not spend the money to use t he higher octane f uel required for t his advanced
“MY FAVOURITE COP CAR, A VK CHARGER”
engine. `Ninet y-t wo octane was good enough for my might y FJ Holden, so it is good enough for these Euros’, seemed to be the prevailing attitude at t he time.
So, Benz retarded t he ig nit ion for Austra lia. But high-octane f uel is not a lways available in t he bush I hear you say. Well, add some octane booster. Fi xed.
Prof Goodfuel, Email
HMM, INTERESTING info there, Professor. Back in the day, Australia’s lack of 98-octane fuel kept us out of the game when it came to a lot of tasty cars that might otherwise have made it here. And I can well imagine a company like Mercedes-Benz taking a conservative stance on the issue and winding a few degrees of ignition advance out of an engine to make it live on 92-octane juice. I’ve seen plenty of high-stepping petrol engines grind to a slow and horrible death through the owner refusing to spend the extra few cents a litre on fuel with a decent octane-rating.
But can it really be as simple as changing a resistor conveniently placed under the air-cleaner? Mind you, stranger things have happened. And I’ll bet every 180E owner is, right now, heading for the shed to check under the air-box. So for them, I’ll ask the million-dollar question: What’s the standard resistor and what one does a chap or chapette need to liberate each and every one of the 180E’s rampaging stallions? Assuming they’re prepared to buy the high-octane fuel, of course.
The other reason this is so believable is that a very similar set of circumstances occurred a few decades ago in terms of diesel fuel. Australian diesel was chockers with sulphur and brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz simply refused to sell their diesel models here as the sky-high sulphur levels would have killed the engines. Then a few years ago, the Australian Standard for diesel fuel was changed to force something like a ten-fold reduction in sulphur content. And that’s when we started to see all those hot-shot turbo-diesels moving into showrooms and on to the roads.