cutaway

OK, I read a thread from a few years ago and googled all over. This stuff is claimed to be some mutation of castor and apparently Wildcat uses it in their fuels (although their stuff is much to light on oil to use straight).

Is it safe to dose up commercial fuels with this stuff? I've been calling all over south FL looking for it with little luck, so it may just be a pipe dream anyway...

R8893

My Feedback: (20)

I have some I picked up at Toledo a couple years ago. The bottle says castor oil and it is a bright red color as opposed to the yellow of Sig castor. I have not used it yet however.
Chuck

ponda

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Nitro-methane is almost impossible to buy around here except in large quantities...Years ago some of the fuel guys used nitro-benzine in place of the nitro...made your fuel smell like shoe polish, but don't think I saw any damaging results..anyone know of a way to get past the nitro supply problem...one supplier said he couldn't sell it staright anymore since 911...it has to be 50-50 nitro and alcohol....any replies on this ...curious..

wjvail

My Feedback: (3)

It's pricey in pints. I buy it in 55 gallon drums and it's more affordable. I've actually given some though to buying it in drums, repackaging it in gallons and quarts, and sell it here.

http://www.klotzlube.com/storeProdDetails.asp?pi=6

Bill Vail
www.RCScreenProtectors.com

da Rock

Nitrobenzine is supposed to be really bad for your skin. I know a guy who bought the nitro fuel business in the area from the old guy who started it. The old boy was in real trouble with lesions all over everywhere he ever got the stuff on himself.

Some of us tried it back when the old boy was selling it and it was not as easy to use as nitromethane. It certainly didn't win any converts. You often got bad engine runs. We tried it in rat racers and combat planes.

If it were the only nitro available, I still wouldn't mess with it.

da Rock

BTW, degummed castor always worked perfectly back when we were mixing our own stuff. We got the impression from the stuff we tried over the years that what mattered was the degumming. It's a natural product so unless Klotz is adding some magic ingredient, they probably won't have any way to turn it into something other than what it is. And any other that you find will have just as much probability of being perfectly useful.

But advertising sells. So the Klotz name could be worth the price if you plan to repackage and resell.

wjvail

My Feedback: (3)

http://www.brodak.com/shop.php?CategoryID=26

This not Klotz but Sig... Where they get it from I don't know, but I do know they have been selling this for 40+ years.

Bill

wjvail

My Feedback: (3)

We are in complete agreement here. The only thing I could add is that I think I could sell Klotz de-gummed/"fortified" castor for $10.00 a quart + shipping and still make money. Like everything else, it just comes down to whether or not I want to time time out of my precious modeling time to start another business. Hummmm... Fly model airplanes or fill and ship quart/gallon bottles?.?.

Bill

Andrew

Klotz BeNol is available thru [link=http://www.hyperracing.com/browse.asp?id=830&classid=19&catid=1200]HyperRacing[/link] for $10.50 a quart.

SIG AA castor oil is $10.46 a quart.

I've used Klotz BeNol in blending 1/2A fuel for several years. It burns cleanly and the engines seem to run well with good longevity. However, a quart goes a long way so the cost per quart of 1/2A fuel is minimal.

If you're trying to buy locally, check the speed shops. Seminole Power Sports is in Sanford, FL -- they carry BeNol.

hyflo

I have been using Klotz products for seven years (7 to 10 gal of fuel per year) Benol,Tecniplate and Nitro. Engines like Fox, OS Super Tigtre, AeroTiger K&B Veco and McCoy. I'm reporting excellent runs many trophy's and have gone from beginner to expert. I'm calling it good. Scott Dinger

Ralph78

You can still buy Nitromethane. Drag race suppliers have it in 5 gallon and up quantities. Klotz and a few other model suppliers sell it, but the hazardous shipment cost will double your cost per gallon. If you must have it shipped to you, combine with some other users of Nitromethane and have it all sent in the same package, such as 4 x 1 gallons, because the hazardous material shipment cost is the same for 1 gallon or 6 gallons. (That is why the fuel suppliers will only sell you 6 x 1 gallons orders).

STAY AWAY FROM NITROBENZINE. THERE ARE VERY SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS. GOOGLE NITROBENZINE AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.

I'm a Chemical Engineer, and I would not work with Nitrobenzine unless I had a fully equipped Laboratory Safety Fume Hood, Fume Scrubber, special safety gloves etc.

Note: Auto race tracks usually have a fuel supplier on hand to sell racing gasoline and Methanol. Get the name of the supplier from the track office, and take your own 5 gallon containers and buy it directly from the fuel supplier to the track. Local Chemical Supply Houses will stock 99% Methanol in 55 gallon drums. Be prepared for a bit of a hassle because -"Druggers" also have a use for methanol. When buying from Chemical Supplier HousesIt's best to purchase the Methanol through your Model Club, though that is not a problem when buying from the Auto Race Track Suppliers.

Occasionally I use 99+% Methanol in my business, my current cost, as of 11/1/07, $5.10 per gallon 4x55 gallon drums minimum. Five years ago I was paying $1.50 a gallon.

Any good motorcycle shop will stock Benol in pint and 2 quart containers. Benol is used in 2 cycle racing motorcycles. I use it to raise the castor oil and total oil content in the fuels I use in various model engines. I have a number of older Fox, Enya, OS and Cox engines that I always run a fuel that has at least a 20% Oil content, with at least 1/2 of that being Castor Oil.

Regards,

Ralph

Lou Crane

Ralph, not specifically to your post, but just to keep the thread in chronological order...

Several years ago there was a controversy about how castor oil is produced. One side claimed that it is all chemically extracted, using some materials that left either physical or chemical traces in the final oil. The other side. including SIG and KLOTZ users, offered that the traditional way of pressing and filtering did not taint the final oil with unwanted chunks or chemicals. Degumming may involve filtering at higher temperatures, through a finer matrix... Some in here are more expert and may be able to explain it better than I can.

A KLOTZ rep either commented, or was quoted, that KLOTZ does additional filtering of good quality Degummed AA grade castor before it gets their KLOTZ label.

The original problem came up with a CL Combat flier who could not get consistent runs with castor oil fuels in 1/2A engines - and found some foreign matter in the oil that would not pass through the microscopically small orifices needed to run the li'l ones on bladder pressure tanks...

To cutaway:

I'd heard somewhere that Wildcat blended by weight, not volume. The specific gravities (weight per unit volume, compared to the weight of water - standard conditions) of our fuel ingredients are quite different. Both Castor and synth oils specific gravity is about 0.95; Methanol's is around 0.7+, Ether's even lighter (but that's only for diesels), and nitromethane's is about 1.15. So, a given weight of nitro has less volume than the same weight of oil or methanol. By usual - volume blending - methods, we'd have a considerably higher weight of nitro to make up the stated nitro volume percentage.

Ralph78

Lou,

The additional filtration of Castor Oil should have been done at low temperatures, at low temps. there are higher molecular weight fractions that will crystallize out, these crystals could block small passages, and should be filtered out. The extreme pressure additives to Castor Oil that are added by Klotz and other brands of Castor Oil motorcycle lubricants are fully soluble in Methanol and will not effect needle valve settings.

RE: Weight/Volume. You are correct about the specif gravities, ALL BLENDING OF MODEL FUEL SHOULD BE BY VOLUME! Any company selling model fuel that blends by weight is pulling a SCAM. Model fuel blended by weight will be low in Nitromethane, low in Oil and high in Methanol. As Methanol is the lowest cost ingredient in model fuel you see what the vendor is trying to pull.

Ralph

downunder

The process for extracting castor goes something like this. The beans are first dried then go through a press to squeeze out the majority of the oil (something like 80%?). The crushed beans are then collected and re-pressed which extracts maybe another 10%. That gives the first and second pressings. That oil all goes into settling tanks and filtration which is also part of the de-gumming procedure so you end up with second pressing de-gummed oil before it even leaves the manufacturing plant. The final extraction process can't be done by pressing so chemical extraction is used on what remains in the bean husks. This chemical extraction leaves tiny traces in the oil which apparently is what causes the white flakes in fuel in very cold weather when this oil is mixed with second pressing oil.

As far as mixing fuel by weight, I'd heard that Byron used this method and some have done evaporation tests on Byron fuels which seems to confirm this. Mixing by weight is actually a more accurate way to do it but only if the end result is to give a fuel that's the equivalent to the normal method of volume at a standard temperature. Mixing by weight and using those weights as a percentage with no explanation is both misleading and almost criminal because volume is the standard that's used and understood by all modellers.

Lou Crane

Ralph and Downunder.

Thanks! Greatly clarifies things.

The reason I, personally, had played with blending by weight for my diesel fuels was that fuel/air ratios are stated in weight (mass) measures. I wanted to see what difference there would ssem to be between weight measured and volume measured blends.

Quite noticeable difference in handling! Diesels started and adjusted better with - effectively - 130% to 140% as much ether as would be there at the same percentage by volume. The oil fraction, as oil is the densest of the three (ether, kerosene,oil) ingredients, was down a bit from a volume measured blend, but not noticeably.

The other possible use would be to double-translate the numbers. Figure the weights of the liquids in a useful blend, at normal use temperatures, then use THAT to blend more, whether in an Arizona summer, or a Minot winter. I think thermal expansion is somewhat related to density, and ether is very volatile at common temperatures as well.

Now it makes sense that cold filtering would work for the "Frosty Flakes" we still see occasionally in very cold weather, whether they are high molecular weight natural fractions, or residual treatment chemicals. Glad to hear that the strong chemical extraction relates to what's left after the second pressing. I hope they don't just dump it all together, contaminating what sounds like the cleaner 1st and 2nd pressings...

downunder

Yep, that's why it's more accurate to blend by weight. But suitable blends have all been found by trial and error over the years by mixing by volume because everyone's got some sort of container handy and it's soooooo simple .

Take for instance FAI fuel which is 80/20 methanol/castor by volume (or 4 litres of methanol to 1 litre of oil). If it was mixed by weight then you'd have 4 kg (or pounds, whatever) of methanol and 1 kg of oil. Convert that to volume and (to a close approximation) it'd be 5 litres of methanol to 1 kgm of oil or a volume mix with 16.7% oil which is how it appears that Byron mix their fuels. However, if Byron used weight to get a final result that matched a mix by volume then they'd take 3.2 kg of methanol and mix in 1 kg of oil. That would give a consistent fuel blend no matter what temperature it was mixed at and be what you called the double translation.

From photos I've seen of commercial fuel manufacturer's plants, the bulk methanol etc is stored in huge tanks outside so there'll definitely be some expansion/contraction between winter and summer in which case mixing by weight (using that double translation) ensures a constant blend.

With that "frosty flakes" thing, I think that's an indication that the chemically extracted oil has been blended with the pressed oil. We don't have those extremes of temps here in Oz but a few times I've had fuel in my fridge freezer down to around -10C (14F) with Castrol M and I've never seen any flakes at all. Not that there's anything wrong with the chemically extracted oil other than the flakes could block a filter if anyone is silly enough to go flying in weather like that .

Lou Crane

Right,

Small chunks probably didn't do well in the extremely small NVA passages for 1/2A bladder-pressure-fed combat engines, and that was where our fluster got started. In the ensuing discussion, several raised the possibility that trace remnants of chemicals powerful enough to reduce the crumbs and crusts to usable oil might not be nice to the engines. No facts, numbers, process reviews or anything...

There was also the unmentioned possibility that the engines, almost w/out exception, were not USA manufactured, and were of AAC or ABC construction, which have less tolerance for castor varnish formation. That alone could put a very highly refined and precision-produced engine off song. We recognize that these days, didn't then. The old adage that a few % castor helped stabilize settings for very high performance engines was true for lapped or ringed iron in steel engines, sure enough. But the new metals and fits are a completely different regime, needing a different regimen.

Some people still get very heated when discussing castor-yes or castor-no. Simple factual info doesn't seem to penetrate. You don't fuel a glow engine with kerosene and ether, or a diesel with methanol/nitromethane. The metals and processes for today's state-of-the-art high performance engines may be as vivid a difference. And high performance does not automatically mean extreme RPM and power numbers. There are a few CLPA engines for which the mfrs recommend synthetic oils only, and others who've tried 50/50 synth/castor blends have reported problems until they did as the mfr told them to do in the first place. Then all became sweet...

Jim Thomerson

Lou, one of the places where the castor problem was discussed in some detail, more than once, was in Larry Driskall's Combat column in Fying Models. A couple of years back, he did a comparison of performance of a couple of the popular high performance 1/2a combat engines. As I recall, they turned higher RPM's on all castor fuel as compared to castor/synthetic, or straight synthetic.

Lou Crane

Jim,

I beg to differ, and may have to check Driskill's columns to confirm. He had fuel from one supplier, in SC, and had problems with the all-castor blends, ASIR. As I mentioned, these were modern AAC/ABC engines, which did not need castor to survive. He found that 'congestion' in the NVA was a likely cause, again, ASIR. He contacted his fuel supplier, who explained to him the "universal" practice of powerful chemical solvent extraction of oil from castor beans - not pressing - and thus Larry tried synthetic oils.

The subsequent discussion was based on one fuel supplier's claim that castor beans were no longer pressed, but the oil was extracted by strong chemicals from the first process on. Again, Jim, I may have to dig out these columns to support the impression I got from them.

downunder

That rings a bell. Wasn't it Redmax fuel (or something like that?) who gave out a load of BS about castor?

Jim Thomerson

I perhaps conflated different columns together. The column about needle valve clogging was some years ago, at the time of the Red Max claims. The column with the engine tests was within the last couple of years. I'll see if I can find the latter. My recent magazines are not organized, however.

Lou Crane

OK, Jim,

Glad to be corrected to what is right, as ever. I glance through his columns, but didn't pick that up. If what I heard about KLOTZ doing additional filtration before they 'can' castor is right, it has always been a good oil, and that may help make it better.

Combat and other high-RPM engines flush enough fuel through that they may not heat to the point castor varnishing becomes a serious problem with ABC/AAC/ABN metals, and usually, to get to high RPMs, clearances are carefully developed, any way.

I chose not to name the fuel company, because their fuel is generally pretty good, and those of us who remember the original "discussion" needn't be retold about that. Newer guys satisfied with their fuels don't need to have it dissed, if it works for them. Just my rationalization...

ZAGNUT

My Feedback: (1)

one of our main hobby shops here buys various klotz oils in bulk and repackages them in small quantities for sale. a liter of benol goes for about $12 and less if bought in a 4 liter jug. not super cheap but in a land where everything hobby related can cost twice the going US price i consider it a very good deal and more of a service on their part.



dave