Martin, Greg,

See my addendum in the last post. Throttling is my favourite subject and this has given me some ideas to try. And YES, modern throttles can do wonders,,, you just HAVE to have a way to adjust the idle mixture. Can't understand why the guys that design and make engines can't be convinced of that.

No, I don't think that the castor is being burned but someone mentioned that it has a cetane rating similar to diesel/kero. What does that mean? How does that work? Does that work in our engines? Does it help as it seems to do here? My search for that answer didn't get much except what I found and posted.

Kelly mentions 70 weight, non detergent oil from the FBO for aviation use. This was a tip given to me many years ago that I had forgotten. Good to know and to try but my idea was to find a solution to diesel fuel from local, generally available sources. Hardware, automotive and the like. So far, the oil is the issue as well as the cetane booster. I haven't given up on the MEKP as it was mentioned that some brands are quite diluted so you don't know where you're going. To try will be 10% MEKP on my benchmark .15

And here's where we get insight into the cost of R & D. Imagine the sheer number of permutations of,,, % of the various ingredients, brands, TYPES of oil, types/brands of kero/diesel, types/brands of cetane boosters, types/brands/sizes of engines. The combinations could take us into the thousands. So we try to narrow the experiment down to what we know. Trouble arises there too though, as in, if we KNOW that castor won't blend with kero, we'll never try it and will be held back.

All we can do is poke and prod at the problem with a stick relentlessly until the beast wakes up and talks to us.

And synthetic diesel fuel at cetane 70? Oh boy, THAT I have GOT to try. [X(]