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Qn: I am thinking of changing all my fluid for the 1st time( except EO)....ie, coolant, autotrans, brake, EO with engine flush, power steering fluid . Anyone suggest otherwise or additional servicing. Car is light modded 2L TC car nearing 50,000km, 4 year old. 1st time keeping car this old but loving it every moment....

i came across this interesting article on Leaded petrol, sulphur and catalytic converters while searching for answers on our sulphur content in local petrols. Side note: apparently i think singapore is still using EURO 2 standards for petrol vehicles while it has implemented EURO 4 standards for diesel vehicles. http://www.bmwclubs.co.za/articles/unleaded.html Unleaded petrol has been a major topic of discussion and movers in the fuel industry are pushing us to more and more use of this product. Unfortunately, few members of the motoring public really seem to understand what unleaded petrol is and why it is used. Information is fed to us almost exclusively by advertisements from fuel companies, and little to no public education has taken place. Having become interested in the correct answers to such questions as "Should I be using unleaded petrol?" and "Is it safe to use leaded petrol in my modern vehicle?", a little research has uncovered some startling facts. WHY HIGHER OCTANES? Before one can really understand what is going on, a little history and background is required. Octane is a severely misunderstood property of petrol - many motorists and motorcyclists believe that higher octane petrol is "stronger" in some way. This couldn't be further from the truth. The higher the engine operating temperature, the more efficiently the fuel/air mixture is burnt. Modern engines run at very higher temperatures, most especially in the case of high performance engines. The trouble is that the operating temperature is higher than the flash point of ordinary petrol - all this means is that the fuel/air mixture ignites when entering the cylinder, rather than waiting for the spark to ignite it. As you can imagine, this is very bad. Known as "pinging", this can blow holes in pistons and even cause engine blocks to explode. To overcome this problem, the petrol used in these engines must be made "less likely to burn". This is achieved by adding certain things to the petrol. Lead is typically used, as it is cheap, common, effective and relatively harmless. Yes, we know that lead can be poisonous, more about that later. WHY UNLEADED? The commonly held belief, encouraged by fuel companies and governments, is that we use unleaded petrol because lead is toxic and therefore harmful to the environment and our children. This is utterly untrue! Lead is known to be toxic, yes, when it is absorbed into the body. There is no evidence at all that lead is absorbed by breathing in fume-laden air. Lead is absorbed into the body by ingestion (swallowing) and direct contact. Lead lined water pipes, lead in cooking pot alloys, pewter decanters and rubbing up against lead based paints are all culprits. Studies have shown that the move to unleaded petrol has had no effect at all on the amounts of lead detected in the blood streams of children who live in big cities. Furthermore, the lead particles in the exhaust of a motor vehicle are so heavy that they tend to fall to the ground within a few metres. From here they can indeed enter the water table and thus pose a threat, but the amounts are very low indeed. The real culprit is sulphur. Petrol is made by refining crude oil, and crude oil contains large amounts of such nasty things as sulphur. Removing the sulphur from crude oil while making petrol is difficult and therefore expensive. The extreme amounts of smog observed in such cities as Los Angeles, especially during the seventies, is often put down to increased numbers of cars, but the truth is that the petrol used was less well refined due to rising costs. Sulphur leads, as mentioned, to smog, as well as acid rain, lung disease, athsma and related nasties. It also smells bad. So what to do? Removing the sulphur from petrol is expensive and would drive up the price of petrol, already high due to the fuel crisis. Some genius came up with a very clever and sneaky solution. Why not get the motorists to pay for the removal of the sulphur, AFTER it has been sold to them? THE SCAM It was discovered that the sulphur, as well as other nasty compounds like nitrous oxides, could be removed from exhaust gases or made harmless by passing them through a catalytic converter. These converters are expensive, being made largely of platinum. The beauty of the idea, however, is that the motorist pays for the equipment when he buys a new vehicle, and pays to run the equipment by using part of the energy produced by his engine to force the exhaust gases through it. So, in a nutshell, the fuel companies sell us dirty fuel and we pay to clean up once we have used it. But there's a catch. (There's always a catch). Catalytic converters don't work in the presence of lead. Worse, once exhaust gases containing lead have passed through the converter, it doesn't work at all. Lead 'poisons" catalytic converters, and renders them useless. So what to do? Stop using lead in petrol, of course. But this is not as simple as it sounds. We still have to raise the octane, remember? So the fuel companies do a lot of research into what can be used instead of lead to raise octanes. Several answers are found. A coctail of organic compounds including large amounts of benzene and related "aromatics" is found to be effective. So is manganese and various other heavy metals. The big problem, however, is that benzene and its relations are highly toxic and carcinogenic (cause cancer). Also, little is known about the long term effects of manganese and other heavy metals on the body, as they have not been nearly as well researched as lead. Workers in the fuel industry are warned to be very careful about skin contact and breathing fumes from unleaded petrols, as it is known to be far more dangerous than leaded petrol. Of course, one wonders if our petrol jockeys are warned about the dangers? Luckily, the same catalytic converter effectively removes the benzene and other nasties from the exhaust gases. So everything works out fine then, you say? Unfortunately not. WHEN CONVERTERS DON'T CONVERT What you're not being told is that catalytic converters don't work until they reach their operating temperature. This is about 400 degrees C, and is reached after about 10-15 minutes after starting the engine. So your car or bike is emitting large amounts of sulphur, nitrous oxides, benzine and other nasty things while your vehicle idles in the driveway and while you drive out of your suburb. What they're also not telling you is that no catalytic converter lasts more than about 50 000km. This means it should be replaced at least every 50 000km. Funny how this is not part of a standard 50 000km service. Perhaps the fact that they cost in excess of R5 000 each is a factor. Finally, remember that lead poisons catalytic converters. This means that if you have EVER used even a few litres of leaded petrol in the vehicle, you no longer have a catalytic converter. You just have a big heavy lump of gunge blocking your exhaust.