Leaded petrol

[colin5577]

I have a friend wanting to bring a 2005 750iL to Nigeria. He has asked me to find out if this car will run on leaded petrol, or if anything needs to be done to the car to have it run on leaded.

Anyone know about this, or know someone I could ask?

[M5Player]

I wouldn't have thought it is possible at all - leaded fuel will kill the cats. However i have no experience of how the 2005 750 reacts to having them removed, which would be an option

[colin5577]

I figured the cats would be in trouble, but can they be removed/replaced/left to die quietly?

[M5Player]

They can be removed - easily if someone does a cat replacement pipe for the car. Try speaking to some bmw tuners about it. Otherwise you will have to get some short pipes made up to fill the gaps left by the cats. You can't leave them on and run leaded fuel the car will simply stop running, or if you are unlucky it will die. They act as a filter and effectively get blocked/destroyed by the lead.

[agent006]

He'll have trouble. IIRC there's no such thing as a 2005 750. 745 or 760.

[colin5577]

agent006 said:

He'll have trouble. IIRC there's no such thing as a 2005 750. 745 or 760.

??? True, I should have called it a 750Li instead of a 750iL, but I'm not sure what you mean.

[agent006]

750 was the v12 on the old model. 745 was then the top v8 on the new model with the 760 being the v12. It's only the 2006 cars that have changed to having the v8 badged as 750.

[colin5577]

Perhaps I should have mentioned - this car is LHD and we get things earlier than you guys in RHDland. I have the details for the car here, direct from BMW AG - 4.8 V8 367PS 750Li early 2005. As for the rest, I know. My Father has owned 7s since the late '80s and has a V12 750i at the moment, so I've an idea how it works.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant. Anyone know anything about the leaded issue?

[M3 Mitch]

Well the lead will not only ruin the cats, it will ruin the oxygen sensors as well, not sure how it will run then except poorly. I guess it would be possible to remove the cats and to do something with the DMEs (you have 2) to have them ignore the lambda signal, but even then I wouldn't think the fuel would be all that clean or pure and so you might have trouble with the fuel pump, need to change the fuel filter more often - All told I think there are better cars for you in Africa than this.

The 750 is not the easiest car to work on, unless you plan to service it yourself I don't know who would do it for you in Nigeria - not that I'm any sort of expert on Africa, but in general I would think you wouldn't find people who know this car there.

I'd also expect the car not to perform so well on the rough roads I'd expect there.

I wouldn't think the 750 would work real well in Nigeria.