Hardened Valve Seats or Not?

The Road Runner 383 had around 10:1 compression ratio, and iron heads. You had to run at least 93 octane in it. I think the Amoco Super-Premium was even higher than that. Perhaps you missed the point of my post: I ran unleaded gas in a high performance engine without hardened valve seats for over 50K miles with no apparent damage.

No I understand your point. I was referring to the OP situation, If he installs the hardened seats now, he won't have to run Lead additive or special fuels.