estradajae

Your engines will run just fine on 0% nitro... I have a magnum 46 that does 12500 rpm on MAS 11x6, about 3 gallons on it and it still has the hard pinch on TDC...maybe with nitro it will perform better, but anyway I think I don't need nitro at all..I have a 2500 idle, the engine transitions like charm and never had a fuel related problems.... if you go cheap on fuel...you can use even 18% castor oil... Why I don't use nitro here in my country...we have to import it...methanol gallon is about 4-6 dollars and you can have a litre of castor oil in about 3-4 dollars to..so you mix 5 liters of fuel in about 10 dollars...when a gallon with 5% nitro will cost you here 20 dollars or more. I mix my own fuel anyways...and I have stored a gallon for more than a year and it was like plug and play when I used it again. I always go low on my wallet and I'm still a student...so imagine how this works for me.

estradajae

Methanol as I remember is produced from the fermentation of wood, and then that stuff is then destilled... Not a chemistry guru anyway!

w8ye

My Feedback: (16)

Manufacture of Methanol

Though methanol can be made as noted in the previous post, the majority is made by the following process at oil refineries . . . . .
Methanol is made by a method different from that used in the preparation of the other alcohol. The naphtha fraction from the distillation of crude petroleum, is used as a raw material for the manufacture of methanol. When naphtha is reacted with a high steam ratio, under pressure and at high temperature, synthesis gas of low methane content is obtained. Most of the carbon from the naphtha is converted to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide which can be removed from the gaseous mixture to leave hydrogen of high purity.


1000 degC
C + H2O ==> Carbon Monoxide (CO) + Hydrogen (H2)



When a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the ratio 2:1 is passed over a catalyst (e.g. a mixture of zinc oxide and chromium oxide) under high pressure and at high temperature, methanol is formed.


400 degC
CO + 2H2 ==> Methanol (CH3OH)

Catalytic Oxidation of Methanol
The catalytic oxidation of methanol using platinum wire is of interest as it is used in model aircraft engines to replace the sparking plug arrangement of the conventional petrol engine. The heat of reaction is sufficient to spark the engine.

Houston TX source
http://www.goestores.com/catalog.asp...n&DeptID=81051

L48

Right

blw

My Feedback: (3)

This has been a very good discussion so far. Let's keep it friendly, even if we disagree. I would hate to see this get ugly. How about it guys?

the pope

What about me cobber ? cheers the pope

buzzingb

My Feedback: (2)

Once I decided to mix my own fuel thinking I would save money. I bought methanol for about $3 a gallon, oil bor $10 a quart and no nitro (couldn't get it withou mailordering). The fuel ran like a top in my engine buy if you figure up the ingredients the savings weren't that much. I decided to just spend a couple more dollars and buy preblended fuel with nitro.

estradajae

Yeah, you are right Buzz... I can even see that the prices listed in tower are quite cheap for high quality fuels.... The saving money fact would be according to the country I think, I would be great that in my country nitro was produced, but believe me, I have seen a 375ml bottle of nitro methane at the equivalent cost of 100 dollars...

Another problem is that the shipping cost of the premixed fuel like omega and the others sometimes is prohibitive, being the shipping fees many times the price of the gallon (or 4 gallons as tower sells them for example).

You guys there are in a great advantage...

Turk1

Hi Pope,it seems full ANZACorps assembled here,what a great reunion again.

longdan

I ordered some 0% nitro fuel from 436. Their price on 0% FAI fuel is $22 / gallon + shipping. If you disregard the shipping, this isn't too far off the price stated by Harry Lagman for self-mixed stuff.

I'm keen to give it a go. By all accounts, I won't have any problems.

I fly with the Western Districts Club at Muriwai. Some of the guys mix their own fuel, but as yet, it hasn't become a club-wide thing. Attendance at the WDMAC is kind of sporadic, which makes it harder to hook up with the guys who have the fuel, and I can see it from their point of view of not wanting to share in case something happens to someone elses engine while running the fuel that they mixed.

longdan

Ok, I got the 0% fuel and bench ran it in 3 engines this afternoon - a ASP .25, ST .45 and GMS 47. It ran fine in all engines. Hard to tell if RPM was down as I don't have a tach. It required some re-tuning on all engines to get them running well, but once dialled in, I couldn't tell the difference between the 0% and the 10% nitro fuel that I normally run. And, I didn't have to change any plugs. They all ran fine with whatever plugs were in them. The real test will be this weekend when I flight test them, but I doubt I'll have any problems.

kersplat

I don't want to hijack this thread, but in reply to Longdan and Downunder. Many thanks to the ANZACS. As a Canadian I understand the outstanding brave contribution these men have given in the Battle of Somme. Bravo Zulu.

Alex570

I use Klotz in my Dirt Bike (RM 250), I didn't know the same stuff went into plane fuel. cool

Flyboy Dave

My Feedback: (21)

....yep. If your fuel is red or pink, it probably has Klotz in it.

FBD.

longdan

Anytime

Alex570

My bike likes good ole Klotz Be'Nol. But since I'm not rich it has to deal with generic chainsaw oil, no problems. So would Klotz Be'Nol be a good plane oil?

Flyboy Dave

My Feedback: (21)

.....it's just about the best oil you could use....[sm=thumbup.gif]

FBD.

Harry Lagman

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me!


I must drop by and check them out one day. That field is not too far away from where I live.

stg61abc

Hi Longdan, not a problem at all!!
if you use some european engine like Webra, Rossi, etc, youll find that they run perfectly without nitro, because are more compressed for this purpose. In other makes you could lose some power, but you´ll gain in engine longer life, longer flights and sensibly cheaper fuel buys...

longdan

Cheers stg61abc. The only European engines I have are an Italian made Super Tigre GS45ABC and a little Austrian made HP VT .25 4 stroke. All the others are of Japanese or Chinese origin.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how the little 4 stroke will go on the no-nitro fuel. It had never really entered my thoughts when I decided to change fuels.

I was thinking of playing around with head shims and compression ratios on the 2 strokes to see if there were any gains to be made when running no nitro.

XJet

I've got an HP21VT and it runs just fine on 5% nitro so I suspect it would run just as well on 0%. Make sure you have a healthy dose of castor in your fuel though -- the Aspin rotary valve demands castor for proper sealing and long-life. You'll get very poor performance and a greatly shortened engine-life if you use a fuel with only synthetic oil.

Alex570

How good is Tower Power 10% fuel for oil content?

downunder

I've just checked my GS45 and the compression is actually a fairly low 8.5:1 (or 8.47 if I wanted to get totally accurate ). Taking out the .2mm shim would raise it to near enough 9.1 but that's not enough gain to make much difference. The way that ST's are built (the piston comes to .2mm below the top of the liner) the only way to get a higher compression would be to machine away the inside of the head on both the seating surface and down into the squish band to make the combustion chamber bowl smaller. By my figuring, if you machined .6mm past the squish band then the compression would be very close to 13:1 which is getting into the ideal area for zero nitro. The squish band (which is flat anyway) will then also be the seating area on the liner but, no matter how much you machine off, the smallest squish clearance you can ever get is .2mm (.008" ) which is ideal.