Sacagawea

I can imagine running gasoline through a nitro engine isn't the best thing for it, but if you were to run gasoline with the 2-stroke engine oil that normal gasoline engines run on like chainsaws or some dirtbikes do you think the engine would at least idle and if you tried running it what would happen, would the engine just cut out and die or would the whole earth explode!

NitroBurner69

dead motor....burn it up quick!

Nitroaddict

No, it would not run. Explode maybe, but not run.

SAVAGEJIM

Gasoline has way more BTUs per unit mass than nitro fuel, and putting such a fuel with a way higher potential energy into our frail littlenitro engines will do nothing short of destroy them. Lets say that you get gasolene to combust in the cylinder: the engery released will likely lift the head off the block and catastrophically destroy the piston and conrod below it.

fat1

here's a test. take a kitty litter pan and fill it with an inch of nitro and throw a lit match on it to see what happens. next, do the same with gas but make sure you have a full blown fire resistant suit on. Gas is way more "explosive" and "powerful" than nitro fuel. Get it?

SManMTB

It will work if you fit an ignition system but it will run way hotter because the gasoline doesn't cool the engine down like methanol does.

How can that be you wonder......
Dip you finger in gasoline and hold it up in the air. Does it feel cold?
Dip another finger in methanol adn do th same. Which finger feels coldest?

The one you dipped in methanol.

Nitroaddict

Methanol isn't cooling the engine - the engines are air cooled, and lubricated by the oil mixed into the fuel.

Methanol feels cold on your finger due to the rapid evaporation in the atmosphere. Same physics as when you sweat.

SManMTB

Exactly, that's why methanol actually helps cool the engine.

madison263

I think someone should try it and upload to you tube. It would be the first! haha

downunder

They'll only run on petrol if converted to spark ignition and there are parts available to do this but it's usually only done on larger aircraft engines. If you could get one to run on petrol then it won't explode or break anything. Petrol has nearly twice as much heat energy as methanol but you only burn half as much each cycle to get the correct mixture so it pretty much evens out. Actually you get a little less power from petrol.

SManMTB is quite correct. Methanol does a lot of the cooling of the engine because it evaporates inside the crankcase and takes an enormous amount of heat from the internal engine parts including the piston. This works so well that even an engine without the huge cooling heads that cars use can be run all day long with no cooling air flow if they're run rich enough. A petrol engine has huge cooling fins because it lacks the internal cooling.

SManMTB

Thank you.

SAVAGEJIM

+1. As the nitro fuel hits ths hot metals inside the crank case, it further evaporates, taking heat with it, as it is atomized and moreover, vaporized into the fuel-air mixture.

SAVAGEJIM

Good point about mentioning that using a fuel with much more BTUs can be compensated for by simply leaning the mixture. Since nitro is a very volitile fuel, much more mass of nitro fuel is needed to relase the same amount of energy. Retuning the nitro engines (assuming a disregard of spark ignition for the moment) to meter in less fuel such that the same amount of energy is relased as what nitro fuel was producing would be a solution.

When I said the head would lift off and the lower end would see damage, I was assuming the same amount of gasoline mass was entering the combustion chamber.

coololdude

you guys brake it down so technical....LOL...I was going for the earth exploding thing....."L"...and if by some chance you got it to fire up on gasoline I don't think you'd want to be standing next to it very long.....gasoline is mean stuff....remember they make bomb out of the stuff....[:@]

ttoks

a good example of the colling effects of nitro and methanol is a top fuel drag car engine, which have no cooling channels in the block for water to flow through to cool them, and no fins for air cooling, they are cooled solely by the nitro-methane/methanol mix, and yet can run a minute and a half without overheating despite the huge amount of energy being converted into heat, roughly (and i mean it when i say roughly) 2/3s of the energy in the fuel get's turned into heat and 1/3ed into mechanical power, that means there is enough energy going out of the exhaust of a drag car to power a large plasma TV for 3 hours (or a 100 watt light bulb for 89 hours, or 4 days), in one minute of running, all cooled by the fuel.

SAVAGEJIM

Oh yeah! Methanol and ethyl fuels are very very popular in racing, but the amount of fuel mass that is dumped just into one cylinder of a top fuel drag racer is astonishing. At idle, if you can see inside the cylinder, it looks like someone is putting a garden hose into the cylinder and spraying the inside. At WOT, it is as if someone is pouring a milk jug of liquid into that cylinder.

ttoks

the fuel to air ratio in some cases can be up to 1:2 by weight (gasoline's optimal value is 14.3:1 by weight), because the top fuel drag cars are allowed to run up to 85% nitro-methane, this allows the engine to run cool (in comparison to a perfect mixture anyway) and still produce more power then can be used, in an average run a top fuel care uses around 22 gallons of fuel for the start up, burn out, reversing back to the start line and the run, which takes about 90 seconds.

digifox

They will not run on pump gas...another reason the High compression in the nitro engine is VERY high and the 87oct gas would burn WAY to hot..


But would a normal nitro engine(land) work with kerosenes,diesel or a straight methanol/oil mix??

SManMTB

The compression ratio is just in the order of 8.5 to 9.5:1 so that's not an issue either. Just add an ignition system and improve the cooling and it will be good.

It will run fine on a straight methanol/oil mix but you need to bump up the compression ratio a bit to make it run good. I used to run a straight mix back in the late 80's. No problems.

sirioed_T-maxx

will they run on diesel mixed with a certain oil

downunder

I've never used nitro in any of my aircraft engines and they all run just fine. I've modded one engine to make the most out of zero nitro (13.5:1 compression) and gained an extra 20%+ HP. We did the same thing to my son's car engine and with zero nitro there's no difference in performance between his and the others using the same engine but 25% nitro.

Sacagawea

So you can run your nitro engine on gasoline with the 2-stroke oil if you have your engine lean enough to where it equals the same amount of energy as the nitro?

digifox

um i dont really know my fuels but


isn't diesel basically oil?

ttoks

no diesel is a byproduct of the production of gasoline, it's less refined, but it isnt just oil, although many diesel engines can run on cooling oil, and if you converted the engine to spark ignition yes you could run it on gasoline, theoretically at least, but you cant with a glow plug because the glow plug doesn't react with gasoline like it does with methanol.

cooptroop123

My Feedback: (2)

so by no nitro do you mean methanol or regular gasoline or what