Graham,

When I was talking with Jerrod, I knew there was something I had forgotten to challenge him on and you've nailed it. The plain bushed rods. It reminds me of a local guy, Pete Meyers, who enjoyed tinkering, like me, but his world was quarter scale, and gas burners. He converted an OS four stroke to spark ignition trying to get the hard way, what we get the easy way, IMO. That is, swing a big prop, at a realistic speed, for a big Tiger Moth. He succeeded and the sound and tone was just about exactly scale, (as I recall ) having seen one fly at an airshow some years prior. Pete mixed his own fuel and experimented quite a bit but he blew a couple of rods. He was trying to see how little oil he could get away with. As I recall, he never had any kind of running problems, no excessive wear and tear, down to,,, and I forget how low he got, but at one point he blew a rod so he upped the oil mix a bit from that and became quite happy with the experiment. So yes, it's not the economy, its the rod.

So that may explain why, despite Klotz's own work, why the oil mix in commercial fuel, is at LEAST 10% for cars and up to 18% minimum for aircraft. But apparently they (Klotz) also took an engine and ran it on 150 to one with the Benol and the engine held together for the duration of the experiment. No doubt, in the air and under load for a season, who knows? I may try that someday, just for fun.

Here's a hint. When you have any fuel of any brand and it's an all castor mix or a blend, what colour is it? Either amber or red, in my experience with four brands. Don't know what that really says except that I have a lot of confidence in any fuel dyed red. But green, (not greed) is good too, in my opinion.

The rain came back and didn't let up appreciably so no fun today. [] Maybe tomorrow.