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Fuel Dinosaur -> RE: MORGAN MV and other Morgan fuels (7/7/2012 10:00 PM)
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I believe 30% and certainly 50% castor in 4-stroke engines is far too much castor. I have mixed all my own fuels for my Saito .91 and 170 radial and many older engines for over 50 years now. I am not using more than 4% castor in any of these engines and they are running great, all of them. Some of the commercial 4-stroke fuels have just 2% castor in them. 4-stroke purists will not even burn any castor in their fuels, and use all synthetic oil. I do use 18% total oil (a bit high by current fuel formulations), using Klotz Techniplate (80%) oil containing Benol at 20%. You can run oils of different viscosity, depending on the engine and intended use. I can run them as low as about 15% oil, but at 102 degrees today, I figure oil is a lot cheaper than a new engine. :-) With helicopter fuels, using low viscosity oils, 22-23% works fine at 15-30% nitromethane. 30-50% castor looks like a formulation for 2-stroke engines, not 4-strokes. My general sense of model fuels today is that manufacturers are trying to use less and less oil, sometimes oils of lesser quality and very high nitromethane levels for routine flying, running cars, helicopters and boats. Now racing boats will often use extremely high nitromethane levels, but once again, that is a totally different situation for competition. To be fair to manufacturers, they are having a hard time with regulations, high hazmat charges, product liability, transportation costs, insurance and so forth. I can tell you, I can no longer get methanol by the truck tanker for 60 cents a gallon! SIG Manufacturing still makes some of the best formulations for model fuels in the entire business. Enjoy your modeling.
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