Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth

by Bernie Fineman

  Another thing I knew was that I never wanted to get on the wrong side of him.

  Bill and I work our magic on some real old classics, including a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, immaculate and reputed to be worth a million dollars – no grease marks here, everything is covered up.

  Life was pretty damn good. And did I mention the girls? In England they were so reserved, but in Miami they were really forward. I remember once going out to a bar with the boys from the garage after work and we get chatting to this girl. After a while she said, ‘I’ve never fucked an English guy before.’

  Well, not one to pass up a hint, I said, ‘You won’t be saying that tomorrow night.’ I know, smooth! Talk about an East End boy putting it about, if there’s a generation of short bald Floridians, now you know why!

  The only downside was that I missed my family and friends badly. I talked to mum and dad weekly, but I was homesick and dad wasn’t well, but I had to work. This goes on for twelve months and eventually I told Giancarlo that I needed to have a break, I needed to go home for a few weeks.

  He looked into my eyes and said, ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

  I insisted I was, but he knew. The gent that he was, Giancarlo buys me a flight, one-way, and says keep in touch, you’re always welcome here.

  But I’ve never been back to Miami since.

  So, back to the UK and no job. But what an adventure.

  I spend the next few years doing consultancy work at various garages around North London, going back to what I know, but with me a new adventure is never far away. I was reading a car magazine one day when I saw an advert that took my fancy. It was for a company that had developed technology to allow engines to run on unleaded petrol without the need for conversion. Apparently it was based on technology originally employed in Spitfires in World War II and they were holding a seminar in the West End, so me being fascinated by engines and also being a bit nosey, I decided to go along.

  The seminar was conducted by the three MDs of the company: an automobile engineer called Ted, along with Jonathan – who was an inventor and who had a family connection with the original Spitfire technology – and lastly Anthony. The event was effectively a sales pitch, a way of trying to recruit us as distributors of their technology.

  There were about 150 of us in the hall, most of us mechanics, and of course I knew a few of the guys there. They went through all the history of this stuff and how the process worked by using lead replacements in the fuel.

  It was basically a steel tube with an outlet and an inlet. The idea was, the fuel line was cut, and this device was attached to the cut ends, so that the fuel ran over the tin pellets inside it, which would supply lubricant for the valves, which would normally rely on lead contained in the petrol for this. They told us what their invention did, and how it increased the research octane number of the fuel and stopped it pinking (meaning ‘de-detonating’, which is abnormal combustion within the engine causing incorrect running) by supplying minute amounts of lead into the combustion chamber to stop the valves de-detonating. Normally, running a car whose engine was designed to use leaded fuel on unleaded fuel would of course cause pinking, the only cure being to have the engine ‘converted’, which was a relatively expensive procedure.

  Of course it all sounded fantastic and would be an infinitely cheaper alternative to converting engines to running on unleaded fuel, so could be a great earner for garages. This was the late eighties/early nineties, and about the time legislation was coming in about emissions and people were increasingly conscious about air pollution, and so converting engines from leaded to unleaded petrol was big business. Most engines require lead in order to run, you can feed them with unleaded for a time but soon the lead-starvation will cause pinking, and lack of performance and eventually seize up the engine.

  The sales team were convinced it worked and that it had been tested at MIRA (the Motor Industry Research Association). At the end they invited any questions and of course I put my hand up and asked how much lead was released by these tin pellets. They said they didn’t know. As they carried on talking I got more and more intrigued, because I could see the application and how it could work, but I wasn’t a chemist so I didn’t know what the chemical equation might be of what this tin/lead was doing in the fuel. The more I got into it the more questions I asked and the more I asked the less they realised they knew about their own technology.

  We stopped for a break and while I was sipping on my tea and chatting to some guys I knew, Ted approached me and asked if we could chat afterwards. They told me they really appreciated my questions and that I obviously knew what I was talking about. So we got chatting and I told them about my credentials and the work I’d done on engines. Two and-a-half hours later they said they’d like me to become a consultant for them and do some testing, which I was happy to do.

  This was on the Friday. On the Monday the engineer, Ted, turned up at the garage I was working at and gave me three of these units, each a different size. What I had to do was cut the fuel line on a car and insert one of these tubes (which looked like a long suppository), drive it for a hundred miles and then he told me the car would run on unleaded fuel without a problem.

  So to test that the unit was actually working, and that the test vehicle did not just have an engine running on unleaded fuel – as it is capable of doing anyway for a while – I had to do an emissions test.

  They claimed that this unit could reduce emissions by up to 40 per cent. The first engine I tested was in a Ford Cortina which runs on a ‘98 research’ octane rating. If it runs on a lower octane rating, then you get pinking (also known as knocking).

  So I did as Ted suggested with the Cortina, and after one hundred miles driving I switched over to unleaded fuel. Sure enough it worked as promised. Three hundred miles later I tested the emissions. The carbon monoxide levels had gone down, but the proportion of hydrocarbons (a component of unburnt fuel) had gone up, and there was a bad smell coming from the exhaust.

  Something was wrong.

  I got on the phone to the company, Effects Inc., and asked them some questions which, as per usual, they couldn’t answer. So I told them about a good friend of mine who worked as a chemical engineer at Castrol, and asked if they would mind if he ran some tests on my behalf. This they were happy with, so I cut one of the units in half, emptied the tin pellets out and sent them away to my chemist friend.

  About a week goes by, and my chemist mate phones me up. It turns out that inside the tin pellets there was lead, which was known to be more carcinogenic than hydrocarbons. In his opinion there was insufficient lead being absorbed into the fuel to lubricate the valves, but what lead there was in the pellets created more pollution in the exhaust gases than leaded petrol did. When I told Ted and the team about the findings they were horrified. It meant they had 3,000 units of stock built that were worthless and had to be scrapped.

  They blamed the results on inferior pellets, so they got in touch with another company that could supply them with ones containing purer lead. Problem solved and I’m hero of the month, so they make me their international consultant. Effects Inc. has operations and connections in Canada, Cuba, Central America, places like that and they want me to go over to these places to give talks on what I found.

  Meanwhile, the company is contacted by this Cypriot guy called Milton who is a world expert in CeO2 – cerium oxide, which is basically a powder that comes from brick dust, but a hundred years ago or more this was used in gas mantles because it crackled and burnt with the fuel. What Milton discovered over several years of testing this material in car engines, was that by puffing small amounts of CeO2 into the combustion chamber (the area above the cylinder in which the explosive reaction called combustion takes place) more fuel was burnt with no residue left, which increased power and reduced emissions: a win-win scenario.

  When I heard about Milton’s discovery it sounded very interesting, but the difficulty was getting the correct amount of CeO2 into the combustion cha
mber with the intake. Too much and it nullifies it and it won’t work, too little and you don’t get the benefit, but Milton reckoned that these special jets he’d developed could deliver exactly the right amount.

  However, when I tested the process I found these jets were all either too small or too large, and all the emissions results were going up and down. We were getting more chemical equations coming out of the exhaust than were going in! Also, the increased heat from the spark eventually wore out the spark plugs (these ignite the explosive gases in the combustion chamber).

  So I contacted an engineering company in Portsmouth to make some needle jets in seven different sizes so that I could regulate the amount of CeO2 going into the chamber. Now, cerium oxide is pretty unstable because if it’s anywhere near dampness it turns to a mulch and the jets that we built needed a hole to suck in air. However with the cool air hitting the hot engine it created water droplets because of condensation, which clogged up the jets because of its combination with the CeO2. So it was down to me again to invent a solution, which I did by drawing heat from the exhaust manifold and utilising this.

  All the time I am getting paid a small amount by Effects Inc. as their consultant, but I feel that now, since I am inventing and providing them with solutions, I should be getting more money. We had a meeting and they agreed to increase my monthly fee. Happy days.

  Milton now turns his attention to diesel engines because they’re the greater polluters, but this means completely reinventing the units and that means even more work for me. After a couple of months, though, I notice that my money hasn’t gone into the bank. I call them and they promise it’s on its way, but meantime they need me out in Canada again. This I reluctantly agreed to and I went out there for three weeks.

  A week into the trip my consultancy fee was due but didn’t arrive, so I called Ted, who told me they had a few financial issues which had delayed my payment. I said while I was in Canada this was the only money I was earning and so I needed it. I gave him a piece of my mind, and he promised he’d sort something out. This was on the Friday and come Monday?

  Sure enough, no money.

  Tuesday? No money.

  So I call Ted again and he says he’ll sort it, and to call him back in an hour. So an hour later I call back and there’s no reply. I try Jonathan, no reply either, same thing with Anthony.

  Next I try their home numbers, mobiles, everything. Three hours later I am getting seriously pissed off. Eventually Jonathan answers his phone.

  ‘We got a problem,’ he tells me.

  Oh shit, I think. ‘What problem?’

  ‘We’ve had to leave our offices.’

  ‘So what’s happening with my money?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out when you come back.’

  ‘Fuck that! I’m coming back now.’

  I packed my things and got the next flight I could, arriving back in London the next morning. I got straight into my car and went to the offices, which were indeed locked up. So I went to Ted’s house and he opened the door, looking a bit startled. I told him that I wanted my money.

  ‘Oh, but we can’t,’ Ted admitted, ‘there’s a problem with the company.’

  ‘I don’t want to fucking know,’ I told him. ‘Are these your car keys?’ I asked, plucking the keys out of his hand. ‘Right, I’m taking your car until I get paid.’

  So I walked out of the house, bold as brass, got in his car and drove it round the corner, out of sight, locked it up and took the keys home with me. The next day I got my money in full, but the company was clearly in trouble and I couldn’t be doing with all that shit every month, so I told them never to call me again.

  Meanwhile, out in Canada, they had an associate called Brian who ran Canadian Effects. It was a different company to Effects Inc. so I was still happy to be in touch with him. He had discovered a fluid that was a surface modifier, which does exactly what it says on the tin: it modifies surfaces.

  The principle of it is this: all oil, needed for reducing the friction between moving metal engine parts, breaks down under pressure and can no longer lubricate and cool. But by adding this special fluid it had the effect of increasing the level of pressure oil needed to come under before it broke down. Consequently this would help prevent engines from seizing up because of oil losing its efficacy, a kind of ‘wonder drug’ for oil.

  However my recent experience had taught me that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. Oil generally degrades at a pressure of about 80 lbs per square foot, but sure enough with just a few drops of this ‘snake oil’ the resistance went up to 150 lbs per square foot, an incredible result.

  So I asked Brian if I could have a sample of this magic ‘surface modifier’ fluid.

  A week later it arrives in the post. It looks like runny honey, and has no smell whatsoever. Then I put a few drops into some standard oil and within seconds it is fully mixed with it. In fact it is a very rare thing to find a substance that will integrate with oil perfectly like that, so I’m even more intrigued.

  Now, I’m a mechanic, not a chemist, but I know a man who is a chemist, so I send some of Brian’s sample over to my good friend at Castrol for tests. I took the day off work and went up to Nottingham to see him, and the first thing he does is test it with the two best oils money could buy at that time: the Mobil 1 and Castrol GTX.

  We test it and get to 160 lbs per square foot and it still hasn’t broken down and my guy is mystified. He was sniffing it and looking at it, but obviously I couldn’t let him do a full test of the ingredients because it was top secret, although he did tell me that one of the by-products of the fluids was obtainable from ICI, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world.

  So we knew that part of this blend was produced by ICI, but we didn’t know what the rest of the ingredients were. So this miracle substance is working but I need to look for side-effects. And the one thing we notice is that it’s giving off fumes, even though the equipment lubricated by the oil isn’t seizing up. So we test the fumes and discover that it’s hydrogen chloride, which is dangerous. However, so long as it stayed within the gearbox or whatever mechanism it was added to, it would be OK.

  But for me to put my name to this stuff, I needed to be absolutely sure it was 100 per cent safe to use, so I asked Brian to send me a Material Safety Data Sheet for the product, which would list many of the ingredients in this secret recipe. When I received it I forwarded it straight on to my chemist at Castrol, and he calls me back and tells me it contains chlorinated paraffin, and it must be this that is giving off the hydrogen chloride gas. Chlorinated paraffin is dangerous if it is ‘short chain’, but ‘medium chain’ or ‘long chain’ chlorinated paraffin is OK, so I checked with Brian and he assured me that his product is made with medium and long chain chlorinated paraffin.

  All that seems reasonable but I want to do more practical tests. If it’s having this effect on the oil, what is it doing to the oil seals in an engine, I wondered? I took two oil seals, one brand new and one old one which had hardened and split, and dropped them into this mixture of oil and the ‘snake oil’.

  Much to my amazement, it had no effect on the new seal, which was great. Not only that, but it made the old hardened seal rubbery again – in other words it had brought it back to life. This really was miracle stuff!

  I’ve seen all the additives and wonder drugs for cars over the years and they’ve nearly always been crap. My reasoning is this: if you’ve got a multi-billion pound company like Castrol with teams of developers all over the world and they haven’t managed to find the secret recipe yet, what chance has some small backyard outfit got to do so? But this guy Brian who worked for Canadian Effects… well, he seemed to have done it.

  Next I tried the fluid in gearboxes that were whining, and engines that were noisy, and it did the business. I tried it with transmission oil and it integrated immediately with that too. Every test I did it passed.

  Brian even sent me the results of tests that other
companies had done, including big shipping companies over in Canada. It just so happened that, after Brian had sent me paperwork from one of the companies, I went over to visit a few months later to do some applications for them on their heavy machinery, and in the paperwork I gave them were copies of the test results they’d carried out. They called me up and said that these test results weren’t correct; the tests they’d carried out showed no improvement of performance at all.

  This made me suspicious. But nevertheless every test I did, Brian’s fluid passed with flying colours. This was until one day I got a call from a UK company who had been using this stuff and an engine had virtually seized up, so I went down to Dorset to take a look. They said that the engine had been running noisily and been burning off a bit of oil. So they thought they’d try this ‘snake oil’ they’d heard about, but the engine had seized almost immediately.

  Strangely, this was completely the opposite experience to every test I’d done, so I was baffled. I called Brian and he said he’d get back to me, but he never did, so I decided to do my own investigations. I asked the company in Dorset if I could take away the fluid they’d got, so that I could compare it with the original samples I’d been sent. I noticed that it was a slightly different colour: the old stuff was lighter than the new bottles they were selling. Once again I sent it off to my man at Castrol and he came back to me to say that the new sample contained the dangerous ‘short chain’ chlorinated paraffin – not the medium or long chain chlorinated paraffin that Brian had told me they were using.