Will 100LL really stop in 2029/2030?

Bob Noel said:
Then Congresscritters can say it wasn't a federal mandate that killed 100LL
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I don’t think it would bother them in the least to say a federal mandate killed 100LL; in fact, they’d champion it and take credit for eliminating lead from the environment “for the children.”
 
Did Gami have anything to say about their "fuel" at airventure?
 
i wonder if I could use the GAMI fuel as a tire prep for asphalt sprint kart racing…
 
While it may be fun to belittle George Braly's work, he has created something no one else has - an unleaded fuel that will work in every gasoline-powered piston engine airplane.
While imperfect, it is the singular option at the moment. That's an accomplishment.
If not worthy of praise, perhaps his efforts are undeserving of ridicule.
 
737steve said:
While it may be fun to belittle George Braly's work, he has created something no one else has - an unleaded fuel that will work in every gasoline-powered piston engine airplane.
While imperfect, it is the singular option at the moment. That's an accomplishment.
If not worthy of praise, perhaps his efforts are undeserving of ridicule.
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Agreed, but he does invite it. George and GAMI have done some outstanding work, but rather than directly addressing the concerns of their potential customers they make light of them. George seems to have poor judgement when it comes to deciding whether to make love or war, and he pizzes off people that he needs as allies.
 
George is a business guy. There’s no participation trophy in business. Hard to win if the product doesn’t work.

So yes, he’s made progress. But the product isn’t there, and he seems to not be interested in addressing the concerns and changing the formula, etc. Emotion over business sense I guess.
 
737steve said:
While it may be fun to belittle George Braly's work, he has created something no one else has - an unleaded fuel that will work in every gasoline-powered piston engine airplane.
While imperfect, it is the singular option at the moment. That's an accomplishment.
If not worthy of praise, perhaps his efforts are undeserving of ridicule.
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Define "work." Does it burn in engines? Yes. Does it rip up the fuel system serving that engine? Also yes.
 
I wonder if the GAMI 100 can be modified or if they need to start again? IE - a product that must have chemical XYZ will never work because XYZ will always attach paint, etc.
 
737steve said:
While it may be fun to belittle George Braly's work, he has created something no one else has - an unleaded fuel that will work in every gasoline-powered piston engine airplane.
While imperfect, it is the singular option at the moment. That's an accomplishment.
If not worthy of praise, perhaps his efforts are undeserving of ridicule.
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Personally, I was hoping both 100R and G100UL would succeed. Strong competition in the unleaded 100‑octane market would be ideal, and it could help prevent a situation where a private equity group acquires the rights and imposes a significant price premium.

At this point, I’m optimistic about the prospects for 100R and UL100E.
 
MackMooney said:
Personally, I was hoping both 100R and G100UL would succeed.
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Except Swift is telling us the two can't be mixed. That might just be a marketing ploy, and I'd love to see someone test some mixtures, but if the two really can't be mixed then only one can exist in the marketplace. Imagine what it would be like driving cross country if you couldn't put gas in your car from Shell, BP, Chevron, or whatever station is along your route.

I think Swift is going to have a problem with their 100R in high compression engines. If they weren't worried about it, they would have tested and published results already. It's not a concern for me personally (the O360 in my baby Beech will run on anything this side of Jack Daniel's), but FBOs are only going to carry one avgas so it will have to work in all engines.
 
Half Fast said:
Except Swift is telling us the two can't be mixed. That might just be a marketing ploy, and I'd love to see someone test some mixtures, but if the two really can't be mixed then only one can exist in the marketplace. Imagine what it would be like driving cross country if you couldn't put gas in your car from Shell, BP, Chevron, or whatever station is along your route.

I think Swift is going to have a problem with their 100R in high compression engines. If they weren't worried about it, they would have tested and published results already. It's not a concern for me personally (the O360 in my baby Beech will run on anything this side of Jack Daniel's), but FBOs are only going to carry one avgas so it will have to work in all engines.
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if i was swift i wouldn't want that stuff mixxed with my brew either, enough problems of their own.
 
MackMooney said:
if i was swift i wouldn't want that stuff mixxed with my brew either, enough problems of their own.
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I understand Swift's reasoning, but I question the wisdom of the FAA in approving two incompatible fuels and allowing both in the marketplace. Rest assured, they WILL get mixed, sooner or later.
 
WDD said:
George is a business guy. There’s no participation trophy in business.
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Actually, George is an engineer (Aerospace). If he did have more business acumen (ability to lie) he would probably be more successful.
OTOH, he is also a lawyer, so he should have learned that ability to lie by now.

As to George ****ing people off by not addressing the complaints, you can often **** people off by telling the truth. The truth is that airplanes often leak fuel. Most of those that reported leaks after switching already showed signs of prior leakage, or probably would have developed leaks if they had not switched. But "probably" is hard to prove or quantify. I had a fuel bladder leak in my bonanza a few years ago. I dealt with it. I think 60 years on a fuel bladder is a good deal.

G100UL works in my engine. If it stains my paint, I'll deal or live with that. It mixes with 100ll. That is extremely important to any fuel transition. Do any of the other potential fuels make that claim?
 
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Half Fast said:
I understand Swift's reasoning, but I question the wisdom of the FAA in approving two incompatible fuels and allowing both in the marketplace. Rest assured, they WILL get mixed, sooner or later.
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I don't believe swift posted about not mixing until G100UL started having issues, previously, i think they mentioned being fungible with approved aviation fuels
 
JOhnH said:
Actually, George is an engineer (Aerospace). If he did have more business accumen (ability to lie) he would probably be more successful.
OTOH, he is also a lawyer, so he should have learned that ability to lie by now.

As to George ****ing people off by not addressing the complaints, you can often **** people off by telling the truth. The truth is that airplanes often leak fuel. Most of those that reported leaks after switching already showed signs of prior leakage, or probably would have developed leaks if they had not switched. But "probably" is hard to prove or quantify. I had a fuel bladder leak in my bonanza a few years ago. I dealt with it. I think 60 years on a fuel bladder is a good deal.

G100UL works in my engine. If it stains my paint, I'll deal or live with that. It mixes with 100ll. That is extremely important to any fuel transition. Do any of the other potential fuels make that claim?
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Swift 100R mixes fine with 100LL. They have an old timey airplane (can't remember the model) that is currently running 80/20 100R/100LL.
 
Half Fast said:
Except Swift is telling us the two can't be mixed. That might just be a marketing ploy, and I'd love to see someone test some mixtures, but if the two really can't be mixed then only one can exist in the marketplace. Imagine what it would be like driving cross country if you couldn't put gas in your car from Shell, BP, Chevron, or whatever station is along your route.

I think Swift is going to have a problem with their 100R in high compression engines. If they weren't worried about it, they would have tested and published results already. It's not a concern for me personally (the O360 in my baby Beech will run on anything this side of Jack Daniel's), but FBOs are only going to carry one avgas so it will have to work in all engines.
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From what I could tell, they aren't worried at all. They have 7 big bores up next for testing, including multiple turbo'd variants. I wish I had taken a picture of the slide that showed their testing plan.

A guy sitting near me was also grumbling about all the small engines being done and not the big ones. Well the easiest and fastest way to get data is to put the fuel in a flight school fleet. Guess what they fly? 172s. There's a school in St Louis running nothing but 100R and seeing zero problems. So that then allows them to go to the next step. That's where they are at. Getting past the initial step also allows them to stop making 94UL and only have to produce one fuel going forward.
 
G100UL went through and passed, extensive materials compatibility testing supervised by the FAA. It clearly works from a detonation standpoint in every engine with pistons. Having said that, there are also issues in the field, so it's unclear what the real deal is. I doubt it is as bad as many without first hand experience have said, but at the same time there are clearly issues in the field.
George Braly, in addition to being an engineer is also a lawyer. What he's not is a marketing expert, nor a PR specialist. In saying that, I'm not suggesting there is a "spin" that will make it all OK. But lots of product launches have hiccups and while the engineers may fix the products, they generally aren't great at changing minds with the general public.
He really needs to partner up with someone that can guide him through this, address the chemistry if needed and move forward. At this point G100UL is going nowhere. I do think it's a better answer than the competing ones, but it will never get a meaningful market share by sticking with the current plan, whatever that is.
 
JOhnH said:
If he did have more business accumen (ability to lie) he would probably be more successful.
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George was also an attorney. Pretty sure that ability is a prerequisite.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
See link for engines coming up:

avweb.com

Swift Plans Seven-Engine 100R Testing at FAA Technical Center

100R evaluation at FAA Technical Center will focus on higher-compression Continental and Lycoming engines.
avweb.com avweb.com

Continental
IO-550D
TSIO-520-VB
O-470-U
W670-6N

Lycoming models include
IO-540-K1A5
TIO-540-J2B
TIO-540-AJ1A.
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I'm very much interested in the results of this, especially the IO-540-K1A5 as it's pretty darn close to my IO-540-k1g5d. If this stuff works with no modification or a timing tweak that won't make any real world difference I know which horse I'm backing between 100R and G100UL.


Hang 4 said:
G100UL went through and passed, extensive materials compatibility testing supervised by the FAA. It clearly works from a detonation standpoint in every engine with pistons. Having said that, there are also issues in the field, so it's unclear what the real deal is. I doubt it is as bad as many without first hand experience have said, but at the same time there are clearly issues in the field.
George Braly, in addition to being an engineer is also a lawyer. What he's not is a marketing expert, nor a PR specialist. In saying that, I'm not suggesting there is a "spin" that will make it all OK. But lots of product launches have hiccups and while the engineers may fix the products, they generally aren't great at changing minds with the general public.
He really needs to partner up with someone that can guide him through this, address the chemistry if needed and move forward. At this point G100UL is going nowhere. I do think it's a better answer than the competing ones, but it will never get a meaningful market share by sticking with the current plan, whatever that is.
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It's not at all unusual for something that works well in testing conditions to end up having major problems under real world conditions. I find it entirely believable that both sides are being entirely honest about their findings and opinions on the matter. That said, GAMI is really dropping the ball by not addressing it constructively.
 
WDD said:
George is a business guy. There’s no participation trophy in business. Hard to win if the product doesn’t work.

So yes, he’s made progress. But the product isn’t there, and he seems to not be interested in addressing the concerns and changing the formula, etc. Emotion over business sense I guess.
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Actually, he is an engineer. If he was a businessman, the product would have been at your nearest FBO by now.
 
Racerx said:
George was also an attorney. Pretty sure that ability is a prerequisite.
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Did you not even read my second line?

JOhnH said:
Actually, George is an engineer (Aerospace). If he did have more business acumen (ability to lie) he would probably be more successful.
OTOH, he is also a lawyer, so he should have learned that ability to lie by now.
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cowman said:
It's not at all unusual for something that works well in testing conditions to end up having major problems under real world conditions.
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Bingo. I was involved with a lot of new product development. The testing always had real world in home testing that followed the in house bench top tests. You always found something, and sometimes it was enough to kill the product that you swore was a big hit.
 
Half Fast said:
Except Swift is telling us the two can't be mixed. That might just be a marketing ploy, and I'd love to see someone test some mixtures, but if the two really can't be mixed then only one can exist in the marketplace.
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Well, if the issue is that a mixture of Swift 100UL and G100 takes the paint off the plane, then naturally that's a problem... ;)

George is his own worst enemy. Kind of like Elon Musk (not that he's in the same class as Musk), at first his rebel attitude was refreshing, but it gets grating.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Define "work." Does it burn in engines? Yes. Does it rip up the fuel system serving that engine? Also yes.
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I don't think that's a fair characterization. Braley has been running g100ul in his personal SR22 for 15 years. All of the issues I've seen have been leaks of tanks or quick drains. I CAN believe that there might be an issue with older tank sealant that didn't appear in his plane, which is a 2007 model, although I would think that would've been covered in the 10 years of testing that was done with the FAA.

It is possible (likely?) that the Xylene (iirc?) they using as an octane booster is a more "slippery" molecule that exposes leaks that will still hold 100LL. I used to have a '78 Honda Goldwing. I put Mobil 1 into it once and it started leaking from every seam. Switched back to conventional oil and they all dried up again.

Speaking of slippery....I'm not backing Swift under any circumstances. If ETBE winds up being the solution, I sincerely hope that the Lyondell entry is the "winner". Further, there's a lot of assumptions being made that ETBE won't have nasty side effects of its own. Also not being discussed is cost.

I'd be curious to know what the warbird community is thinking on this. G100UL is supposed to have enough knock resistance that warbirds could be run at their original power ratings. Does that matter though? Without all the bombs and ammo, do they have enough excess power that they could stand the further reduction that 100R will likely require? Can they afford to get boutique fuels, so the unleaded issue doesn't matter to them? I suppose it's going to if they want to travel cross country at all.
 
Jim K said:
I'd be curious to know what the warbird community is thinking on this. G100UL is supposed to have enough knock resistance that warbirds could be run at their original power ratings. Does that matter though? Without all the bombs and ammo, do they have enough excess power that they could stand the further reduction that 100R will likely require? Can they afford to get boutique fuels, so the unleaded issue doesn't matter to them? I suppose it's going to if they want to travel cross country at all.
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The warbirds flew on anything from 90 to 150 octane, depending, with power charts engineered to multiple fuels. Does G1000UL have the octane to run like 150 octane? Regardless, warbird motors are stupid expensive and <unlimited racers excepted> most warbird owners don't push the boundaries because it gets expensive to wear out bearings and break things...
 
One war bird guy with an A 26 told me all the war birds run on 100 LL. Not much else to choose from, and it works. And they aren’t ever going to run it with the boost they did during the war when they had 150 whatnot octane.
 
Jim K said:
I don't think that's a fair characterization. Braley has been running g100ul in his personal SR22 for 15 years. All of the issues I've seen have been leaks of tanks or quick drains. I CAN believe that there might be an issue with older tank sealant that didn't appear in his plane, which is a 2007 model, although I would think that would've been covered in the 10 years of testing that was done with the FAA.

It is possible (likely?) that the Xylene (iirc?) they using as an octane booster is a more "slippery" molecule that exposes leaks that will still hold 100LL. I used to have a '78 Honda Goldwing. I put Mobil 1 into it once and it started leaking from every seam. Switched back to conventional oil and they all dried up again.

Speaking of slippery....I'm not backing Swift under any circumstances. If ETBE winds up being the solution, I sincerely hope that the Lyondell entry is the "winner". Further, there's a lot of assumptions being made that ETBE won't have nasty side effects of its own. Also not being discussed is cost.

I'd be curious to know what the warbird community is thinking on this. G100UL is supposed to have enough knock resistance that warbirds could be run at their original power ratings. Does that matter though? Without all the bombs and ammo, do they have enough excess power that they could stand the further reduction that 100R will likely require? Can they afford to get boutique fuels, so the unleaded issue doesn't matter to them? I suppose it's going to if they want to travel cross country at all.
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Swift claims it's the m-toluidine that is the issue with g100ul
 
I didn’t know M toluidine was this toxic. Hope it isn’t as toxic as lead.

——————————————
The chemical is highly toxic and can cause severe poisoning through inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption.[1]
    • Health Effects: Exposure causes methemoglobinemia (leading to cyanosis/blue discoloration), anemia, hematuria (blood in the urine), eye irritation, and skin dermatitis. [1, 2]
    • Handling Precautions: Safe handling requires appropriate protective clothing, goggles, and respiratory equipment. Contaminated clothing must be removed immediately. [1, 2]
 
WDD said:
I didn’t know M toluidine was this toxic. Hope it isn’t as toxic as lead.

——————————————
The chemical is highly toxic and can cause severe poisoning through inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption.[1]
    • Health Effects: Exposure causes methemoglobinemia (leading to cyanosis/blue discoloration), anemia, hematuria (blood in the urine), eye irritation, and skin dermatitis. [1, 2]
    • Handling Precautions: Safe handling requires appropriate protective clothing, goggles, and respiratory equipment. Contaminated clothing must be removed immediately. [1, 2]
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The objective of EAGLE is the elimination of lead, not the reduction of toxicity. Don’t move the goalposts.
:devil:
 
Half Fast said:
The objective of EAGLE is the elimination of lead, not the reduction of toxicity. Don’t move the goalposts.
:devil:
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So….. getting rid of lead because it’s toxic and bad by replacing it with something just as bad ….. is an improvement how? And why are we getting rid of lead?
 
The STC path is a loser path.

Swift are nothing but larpers at this point, pretending to be contenders in a serious race. 100R doesn't have any magic brew systemically different from the VP formulation (ETBE). They (VP/Lyondell) have already published the need for timing changes in the first high comp installation they tested, before they even get to the real high compression stuff. Installations which both Swift and Lyondell have purposely procrastinated on for self-evident optics reasons, unless you're the kind of clownshoe predisposed to think the stripper means it when she whispers "i like you, you're different from the other guys" in your ear as she asks for the other $20 bill remaining in your hand.

UL100e is gonna be the eventual winner here, and that's after conceding their octane rating is inferior to G100UL, to the degree it will require modifications for some installations, whereas the latter does not. Is there hope for G100UL? There absolutely could... if they get someone to bankroll them through the EAGLE kabuki. VP managed to get itself a sugar daddy (Lyondell), Gami should too if they wish to make it past the boutique 6th grade science fair level in seriousness, which is what the STC path is. Nobody is going to get FAA backing to national fuel syndication outside of EAGLE, good bad or indifferent. You play to the pieces you're presented with, not the ones you wish you had.
 
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