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ORIGINAL: spaceworm

quote:

ORIGINAL: cheezer1222

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ORIGINAL: downunder

As others have said, 12% acetone is far too much. About 3% is the usual recommendation for 2 strokes (5% for 4 strokes) but only in fuels with no nitro. Even then it's only used to give an idle approximately what you'd get with around 5% nitro although it may give slightly easier starting.

Yeah, I must have misunderstood the information when I originally read it. I think I read it as giving the same power as 5% nitro, when really I should have been reading it as giving the same idle characteristics.

As far as the model lube oil goes, will it not mix as long as there is any methanol in the mixture? Because I was thinking I could try a small batch that looks something like this:

25oz Batch
48% methanol
28% gasoline
4% acetone
20% oil (80/20)

My thinking is that, along with the acetone, the gasoline might help the oil to stay mixed in. Is my thinking off on that? I'm not desperate to use the model lube oil. It's just that I had some extra sitting there and I have a couple days before I get my original techniplate in the mail.

You may want to look at the gas-glow forum for running gasoline/glow fuel mixes with a glow plug. They have lots of experience and successes.

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ORIGINAL: spaceworm

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ORIGINAL: spaceworm

quote:

ORIGINAL: cheezer1222

quote:

ORIGINAL: downunder

As others have said, 12% acetone is far too much. About 3% is the usual recommendation for 2 strokes (5% for 4 strokes) but only in fuels with no nitro. Even then it's only used to give an idle approximately what you'd get with around 5% nitro although it may give slightly easier starting.

Yeah, I must have misunderstood the information when I originally read it. I think I read it as giving the same power as 5% nitro, when really I should have been reading it as giving the same idle characteristics.

As far as the model lube oil goes, will it not mix as long as there is any methanol in the mixture? Because I was thinking I could try a small batch that looks something like this:

25oz Batch
48% methanol
28% gasoline
4% acetone
20% oil (80/20)

My thinking is that, along with the acetone, the gasoline might help the oil to stay mixed in. Is my thinking off on that? I'm not desperate to use the model lube oil. It's just that I had some extra sitting there and I have a couple days before I get my original techniplate in the mail.

You may want to look at the gas-glow forum for running gasoline/glow fuel mixes with a glow plug. They have lots of experience and successes.

Sorry! My bad. That forum is for running gas engines with a gas/glow mix to use a glow plug instead of a spark plug. Not your case.

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ORIGINAL: gkamysz

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ORIGINAL: cheezer1222
As far as the model lube oil goes, will it not mix as long as there is any methanol in the mixture? Because I was thinking I could try a small batch that looks something like this:

25oz Batch
48% methanol
28% gasoline
4% acetone
20% oil (80/20)

If you add that much gas the model lube might stay in solution. The trouble is your fuel probably will not work well. Gasoline will further reduce the power output and require even leaner needle settings. The needles will be critical and midrange probably fat.

I'd simply make a batch of methanol - Benol and be done with it.

Greg

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ORIGINAL: cheezer1222
Another question: So that I don't have to dump the 12% acetone batch that I made, can I add gas and run it in my gasser (baja)? Or am I opening up a whole new can of worms? I know in the gasser to glow forum, when it came to mixing methanol, they had talked about the possibility of carb diaphragm swelling, fuel line swelling, etc. I'm not against dumping it, I just think it would be nice not to waste it.

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ORIGINAL: buzzard350

I like your mix of Klotz with Castor- that's what I always do , too. I usually use 3 to 4 parts Klotz to 1 part Castor (Benol is castor oil) partly because castor is cheaper, and partly because it protects the engine better.
The gasoline is completely not what I'd do... Gas is gas, and methanol is methanol, and never the twain shall meet. I'd lose that idea right away. Silicone fuel lines are also not compatible with gasoline.
If you're using this fuel in larger engines, you could cut down on oil mix, too, to say 18% for a .90. Superrtigre recommends using even less for its big glow engines, I think 5% or 10%. It's a little surprising that this makes a noticable increase in power- you got more burnable fuel, and less oil getting in the way.
I've been mixing my own fuel since I was old enough to drive to get the components (40 years) and I must say, I've never heard of using Acetone, but I also don't fly where where it gets below freezing...

All in all, it's pretty simple: Methanol, Nitro, oil, and that's it.

I once read a post by an English guy in a thread on the old rec.models.rc.air newsgroup discussing how water contamination of the fuel affects the performance of the engine. The writer said in his tests he found that the performance of the engine was not greatly affected until the water content was something like 20%...!! So take that into consideration... It almost seems like an easy way to make more fuel for less cost. It's possible that the small quantity of water turns to a larger volume of steam during combustion, and compensates for its lack of heat production to some degree. Sounds a little unlikely, I know.

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ORIGINAL: aspeed

I used to dribble a couple ounces of water in the carb of the cars when they were hot to steamblast the carbon off the valves and top of the pistons every couple of years, but most of my cars are fuel injected now, and I forgot about it too.  I think water injection allows more ignition advance and prevents detonation in cars at least.  I would rather keep it out of my glow fuel.  I heard freezing the fuel that is cloudy with water mixed in, and then running through a coffee filter gets the water out of glow fuel.  I hear lots of things.

Yep.

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ORIGINAL: buzzard350
Well, the finding by the English guy about the water in the fuel at least lets us relax a little when it comes to being obsessive about keeping water out of the fuel- it just doesn't seem to make that much difference.

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ORIGINAL: blw

I just learned that turbines also use water injection. When injected before the compressor section it gives a boost in thrust due to the water injection making the air denser. I never thought about turbines in the driving rain either.

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ORIGINAL: downunder

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ORIGINAL: buzzard350
Well, the finding by the English guy about the water in the fuel at least lets us relax a little when it comes to being obsessive about keeping water out of the fuel- it just doesn't seem to make that much difference.

I don't know how the guy came to that conclusion about 20% water because I did some tests at the field one day by gradually adding some water to the (fresh) fuel, starting the engine and then, if all looked good, I'd fly the plane. At first there was no difference at all until at a certain point the engine suddenly flat refused to even fire except with a prime of fresh fuel and then would stop as soon as the prime ran out. The cause became quickly apparent because all the oil in the fuel had dropped out of solution to the bottom of the tank so the clunk was immersed in oil! The amount of water I'd added to get this to happen was only 4%. I might add that at the critical point the oil instantly fell out of solution.

Further tests at home with heating and cooling samples of fuel showed a straight line graph of the tolerance for water, the colder the fuel the less water was tolerable. Strangely though, I found that a fuel with all castor tolerated more water than an all synthetic oil.