I recently did a 305 tbi to a stout 350 carb swap in my 88 Trans am and couldn't be happier. My curiosity arose however because with the swap over to carb and the engine itself being as plain as possible with no sensors hooked up except the oil and temp gauges, could I run leaded gasoline. The setup itself is as old school as it gets and was wondering what are the benefits from throwing in a tank of leaded over unleaded if there is any. Any information is appreciated

 

Leaded gasoline will take care of any few remaining IQ points the neighborhood kids may have left in their brains.

Other than that, absolutely no benefit.

 

I'll take that in account lol

 

It'll also take up to $10,000 out of your pocket if you're caught using it on the road.

 

The only leaded fuel available is race and aviation gas. Both are considered high octane. One of the purposes of lead is to resist detonation. If your engine has high enough compression where it needs this higher octane fuel, you probably won't be driving it on the street.

Older engines (pre early 70's) didn't have the hard valve seats that modern engines do. Although unleaded fuel will work with them, without the lead, the seats will wear out quicker.

NASCAR has shown that it's easy to make power with unleaded fuel however when you get into very high compression or huge amounts of boost from a power adder, unleaded fuel still has it's limitations.

If your engine doesn't have detonation from pump gas then the lowest grade without detonation will work just fine. Without a knock sensor, it will be difficult to tell how much detonation the engine is getting. Running a higher octane when you don't need it won't make any more power.