Andy, I agree there is probably something out there that will work. Klotz's Coxoc has me thinking but it costs more than JD ether, so why? The AI temp of kerosene is 205-210 Celcius. Ether is the key ingredient to making it work always and well. I don't know what naphtha the engineering site refers to but some naphthas can be in the same range as gasoline. I think they have a typo because on the link at the bottom for flammable range naphthalene is in that place and and is something different and it does have a high AI temp.

Square one was to replace hard to find 20-25USD per gallon fuel with something that anyone could find and mix. The kerosene/DII/lube blend fits that for me even if I need to warm the engine on regular fuel. I picked up a fueler valve to make this easier.

Greg, by DII do you mean Diesel #2?

Diesel Ignition Improver or cetane booster.

Hi Treven,

Damned metric system, not my forte, too old. [:@] Sorry, your right, I got the two intertwined. [&o]

From here,

http://imartinez.etsin.upm.es/dat1/eCombus.htm

The above link was just found and has some more, in depth, information.

They use Kelvin, but that's not where I got my info. Every time I punch in the search for one fuel or the other, I got different sources and some worked in Celsius and some in Fahrenheit. Stupid of me not to notice. []

From the link,

Kero, 226C 440F 500K
Gas 376C 710F 650K
Naphtha 550C 1022F 832K
Ether 176C 350F 450K

I messed it up pretty badly. The site above doesn't cover naphtha so I took your figure and converted.

But here,

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguide...cognition.html

Naphtha is given an AI temperature of 277C ???

But this is COAL TAR Naphtha. What's the difference between that and plain Naphtha?

From OSHA again,

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguide...cognition.html

This is VM & P Naphtha, Varnish Makers and Printers Naphtha

AI listed as 288C

But from here,

http://www.intox.org/databank/docume...tha/cie806.htm

We have a high flash point naphtha, likely what we're talking about with an AI of 471C

So it looks like I took the first reference I found and used that in my post, along with not noticing the scale,,,,,

The Internet, like any other tool, can be useful but also dangerous as well.

But notice that there are Naphthas that have an AI similar to kerosene. So what? Don't know, but what if that form of Naphtha was tried without ether and we'd have a no ether formula that didn't have throttling issues? Or maybe these Naphthas might be used together with kerosene to give us a blend of useful properties.

Yesterday I picked up a jug of Bardhall additive that is made to revive worn out engines. Helps to seal leaky valves and piston rings. This is a petroleum product and pours, or rather globs, out of the jug far more slowly than even molasses. I added some kero to it and it blended. Then I added some castor, (Benol) and that blended nicely. So I made up a mix by adding the two oils first and then the kero in a 1/3rd ratio. No matter how much I shake it, no blend.

The jug mentioned some kind of polar characteristic and so on speculation that it might behave a little like a vegetable lube, I thought I'd give it a try. Being so thick, maybe only 5% might be needed and we might get a bit more of that power ingredient we want.

About castor. I had a link yesterday, (saved it, can't find it now) that re-affirmed what you're saying about veggie oil as lube. Still, it was interesting trying.

But I'm thinking that with the reduced RPM of diesel, the oil we might use will not be under such stress in that way. Yes, the loads are greater but maybe no matter, for some reason. With the Norvels, on diesel, it appears that the only thing you can hurt is the rod. I haven't given up though. I'm going to do my best to break something else. That hollow wristpin is a likely candidate. [X(]

No rain today but bitterly cold with strong winds. Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, maybe some useful information here.

http://imartinez.etsin.upm.es/default.htm

Andy with the hight AI temps of Naptha I don't see how it willl be helpfull. I found gasoline not to be helpfull because of the high AI.

It still looks like the cheapest most readily availible low AI fuel is kerosene.

I have had such good success with pump diesel that I'm excited to try kerosene. Since I flew on eitherless pump diesel I should try it with kerosene and see how much better it is.

Also it really isn't that expensive to run 5% either. One can of JD starer fluid in 1 gallon will give about 5% either + whatever ignition improvers JD puts in there.

I think a really good mix willl be:

74% Kerosene or 94.4 OZ $3.71

19% oil or 24 OZ $FREE

5% (app.) can of JD either 7 OZ $3.71

2% Amsoil CB or 2.6 OZ $1.66

This mix should run great considering it runs pretty darn good using pump diesel so the kerosene should make it that much better.

Total cost for a gallon $8.66 (CALIFORNIA PRICES ) Easy to make and easy to get the stuff.

For small engines ,if nessasary, it would be easy to put in another can of JD either.

Treven.

Naphtha is a vague class of petroleum distilates. Some sources list gasoline and kerosene are Naphthas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphtha

White gas(Coleman fuel, Shellite) is the form we can get and would be interested in. It does have a low flashpoint and relatively low boiling point. Autoigntion temp is hard to find, but one listing I found put it at 321C.

I too think that a low percentage ether mix may be the final outcome of our experiments. 5% is low enough that it's cheap.

Got about two hours of flight time today on my 5% either Black Brew mix. Still haven't bought any kerosene. I did go by the John Deere dealer and get some starter fluid for future mixes.

I'm going to Los Angels this weekend and am looking forward to flying down there. Those guys get a kick out of my diesel planes. This one leave a nice white contrail which is fun to look at.

I'm going to go by the hippie store and see what kind of fregrance oils they have for candles to ad to my mix.

Treven.

Andy,

That Canadian Tire Diesel Cetane boost is now in stores in Ottawa but I think I will stay away from it. I did manage to find out some more info on the product however. The MSDS PDF is attached.

The manufacter is:

Web site (lots of flash it seems but little substance) http://www.shradercanada.com

Shrader Canada Ltd.
830 Progress Court, Oakville
Ontario, Canada, L6L 6K1
Phone: 905-847-0222
Toll Free: 1-800-201-9486 (in Canada and the U.S.)
Fax: 905-847-5404
E-mail: [email protected]


In case you might want to give them a call or follow up on this particular product.

I have some more thoughts on auto or self ignition temperatures, ignition improvers etc but no time at the moment to post them, sometime this weekend.

This thread has grown very long with lots of tidbits of information. I know I have learned a lot from this exercise. I hope to learn even more.

cheers, Graham in Embrun near Ottawa Canada.

Graham,

Yeah, CT's Cetane booster seems suspect in light of this.

http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov...bl=chem&id=188

I looked into the components of Mineral Spirits and found that the trimethyl stuff was in there already in about the right amounts. I'll elaborate further why I looked into what mineral spirits are.

But notice that this stuff (trimeth) is used in a wide range of products, including its use as an OCTANE booster. ***?, as they say in less polite circles. Don't know. Going to have to revisit the issue. Maybe call the company on Monday. That should prove to be interesting.

Agree to all comments re using at least some ether. But the issue in that, is throttling. The less we have of the ether, the greater the difference between idle and top end as far as optimum compression ratio. Recall that as we idled down, the engine ran with a burble and sometimes didn't accelerate cleanly. Upping the compression at idle smoothed things out but then we find the compression too high for full bore.

So it appeared that as we reduced the cetane number of the mix, as in less ether, compression at idle became inadequate. However, in some mixes, the Amsoil "cetane booster" was upped to 10% and this supposed boost in cetane, made the situation worse. This is contradictory to adding ether to boost cetane.

So it begs the question, are "cetane boosters" like the Amsoil product really boosting the cetane number of the mix? Or, as the above implies, they don't actually do that but operate by being ignition improvers.

To clarify that.

Adding ether makes starting easier and running smoother by raising the cetane number of the overall mix.

Adding diesel ignition improvers do the same but really don't raise the cetane number of the mix but operate by improving ignition in some entirely different fashion.

But note that unlike Amyl nitrate, more than 2% of the Amsoil CB was good,,, didn't hurt, for smoother running.

It appears that with lots of ether to boost the cetane, the ether acted to cool the engine at full bore more than at idle. At idle, the cooling effect of the high ether was less effective (less fuel being processed) and so the cylinder temperature was more constant between full bore and idle and thus didn't require a higher compression ratio at idle.

Using lots of Amsoil "cetane booster" to boost the cetane, didn't have this cooling effect and so, it ran hotter at full bore and required a looser compression setting. At idle, as the engine cooled considerably, the compression needed to be tightened up to get a smooth run.

Using no/low ether, the engine runs hotter at full bore and so, the compression needs to be backed off. At idle, the engine cools considerably and now the compression needs to be tightened up to get a good run.

In the experiment on the .074 where I added considerably more fin area, the effect was to keep the engine cooler at full bore, (because of prop blast) and mimic the action of a high ether mix. Reduced prop blast at idle, allowed the engine to run a bit hotter, and thus the cylinder temperature between full bore and idle was closer, one to the other. And thus, the compression setting required between idle and full bore could be closer to each other allowing for more consistent throttling.

The final solution to no ether mixes may be more cooling fin area along with a mix that mimics the action of the ether. This is why I tried the lacquer thinner in one of my tests. We aren't really wanting to run an all kero mix necessarily but want to eliminate the ether as it's a troublesome, expensive ingredient. A cheaper, more readily available ingredient along with engine design may be the direction we need to go in.

As suggested by Kelly, maybe white gas or an Aliphatic thinner or BBQ lighter fluid will be that ingredient.

Yesterday, we tried most of the above. The results were quite interesting and will be reported on in due course.

BTW, coconut oil remains in suspension in kerosene at below 70F at 30% concentration. !!!! Hmmm. Looks like the fat man is lingering at the stadium. Maybe, as coconut oil is radically different from other SVOs, we have some possibilities here.

Just to stir things up more, Luke, local tinkerer extraordinare, converted his OS .40 to diesel. He's reported smooth running, good power and excellent idle on a mix of 80% kerosene, 10% ether and 10% corn oil straight from the fridge. [sm=50_50.gif] Yeah, I know, but that's what he said.

Just posted to YouTube is a run with no ether OR kerosene but with only Mineral Spirits as the fuel ingredient at 80% with the 20% being castor oil. No DII or cetane booster was used in any of these tests.

At first, an all kero, no boost mix was run to establish settings and to use as a bench mark. On this day, on this engine, the all kero fuel ran pretty well with good idle and transition. This may have been due to the new barrel with the reduced bore. I may make another barrel with an even smaller bore.

Using Mineral Sprits we found that the idle was good and the transition slow but reliable. It also took a little bit for the top end to settle down. Top end was some 500 RPM down from the kero run. Mineral spirits have a similar auto ignition temperature at 230C with kero at 210C so it's not any wonder that it works. A tighter compression was needed for a start and once warmed up, the final CR was a bit tighter than the kero fuel. The needle needed to be taken out a half turn.

Next run was the BBQ lighter fluid. The bottle says that it contains naphtha, hydrotreated heavily. The word contains implies that that is not the only ingredient. The run with this fuel was similar except the best idle I could get was higher by a few hundered RPM. The top end was equal to kerosene at 9.5K. Idle was good but transition was also slow. Full RPM also needed time to settle down. A bit more compression was needed and the needle out again a bit more.

And finally, I ran the Camp fuel. The can simply says, "contains naphtha petroleum". This mix was extremely difficult to get going. It took over half an hour to do that and the run was rough and way low on RPM at only 7K. The compression had to be maxed out a full 3/4 turn tighter. Also, the needle had to be backed off to the point where it was falling out. But the *&^% stuff ran. I can only surmise that there was a lot more naphtha in this mix compared to the BBQ fluid. And that figures, naphtha has an AIT in excess of 450C.

All of these runs were with no additives just to test the realative burnability of the various volatiles compared to kerosene. No reason except curiosity. The problem of course, is that it's hard to get exact information on the precise make up of certain- products on the market. Contains is the operative word. What else is "in there" may be the problem with finding alternate fuels.

So why bother, kerosene is cheap, available and works. Do we NEED ether? It appears not except as it affects throttling.
And, of course as a primer to allow a start on no ether.

Kerosene and cetane boosters will be tried with these other fuels and that might give us a clue at to where we go next.

Interesting information. Yes, knowing what is actually in these products would really help the process. I do think that kerosene is the best solution. Finding that magic additive might improve things.

I'm currently fighting a computer install (Linux Ubuntu 6.06) to run my CNC mill with EMC2. A pain in the tail but I think I just found a solution.

Andy,
Your findings pretty well follow my sumations of previous posts- lots info mixed in this big post , so its nice to see it all getting together.
Your comment on "contains" naptha in products isnt the key to the fuels performance as straight naptha would just need the compression set to suit its cetane, its the "other" stuff that probably modifies the combustion that causes undesireable effects.
I agree with your previous comment on the "cetane" boosters not actually boosting the cetane much but actually are more ignition improvers, giveing an effective cetane boost - but I feel this effective boost is more applicable to full sized diesels, and as such we/you need to do our own tests to find whats what and how they effect the overall combustion in our diesels. The main difference between what they test for is there diesels inject the fuel through the combustion cycle wereas our motors have ALL the fuel in the combustion chamber at the point of ignition, therefor our only control over the combustion is our fuel oil blend. Remember a post were it was noted some 2st oils effected performance- these maybe of use if combustion needs retarding by adding small amounts to the brew.
Maybe a chart with all the test results/effects of fuels additives, oils will help show a patern or direction for a mix.
Keep up the great work, it has many of us following your results.
Stewart

A reminder of my and others comment re the modded vegi oils as lube, we found that reguardless of the ether content our motors were easier to start than with the same mix but with castor, this may be of use were you need higher compression to start then when running, may also help the throttle responce( my tests were with a non throttled motor)
I think the modded vegi oils need consideration in your tests.
Stewart

Andy,

Great work! Were you warming the engines first with regular either mix fuel or did you start them cold on the fuels you tried?

I flew mine on strait diesel W/Amsiol cetane boost but needed to warm it with the propane torch to start it.

I'm intrested to compare staight kerosene and kerosene with cetane boost.

Treven.

Greg, Stewart, Treven,

The testing of various volatiles was an exercise to see what could be learned. What was learned is that the higher the cetane number to start with, the better. Also, it was hoped that some of the other volatiles, despite their shortcomings, might run cooler, mimicking the action of ether on throttling, assuming my conclusions about that are correct.

Today it was found that all the fuels benefited from the addition of ether. And they behaved in a similar fashion except the Camp fuel,, the Naphtha petroleum stuff. Plus, all benefited and behaved similar to kerosene with the addition of Amsoil cetane booster in that the CR had to be reduced considerably as the engine warmed up. As with kero, this was counterproductive to good throttling.

Conclusion,,, kerosene is still king.

And so is castor. The 50 weight Aviation oil was tried with the Mineral spirits and things went south as starting became a problem. Adding ether helped as did the Amsoil. But clearly, the castor was doing something better than the AV oil. Perhaps better compression seal under high heat.

About modified veggie oil. Castor is a veggie oil. Has anyone ventured to do the mods to castor? Why not, and what might we get if we did? Or has all of that been done for us, and then some, by Klotz?

And speaking of veggie oil, I don't think coconuts are vegetables but today, I also ran 80% kerosene and 20% coconut oil. Starting was a little fussy but we had a run in due course. Top end was 9K and idle was reliable at 3.5K. Transition was good. I was hoping that the coconut oil would burn and that we'd get a dry exhaust. It wasn't dry entirely but my unscientific paper towel test implied that we had very little oil coming out of the exhaust.

Next I tried a mix of 50/50 kero and coconut oil. The surprise was that we got an extra 500 RPM at the top. The idle remained 3.5K and transition was good. However, this time, if the idle was left too long, the engine cooled too much and the idle began to suffer. From there, acceleration became quite ragged. Much more oil came out of the engine but as the better RPMs indicate, a lot of the tropical oil must have been burning. Maybe all that hydrogen was doing something good.

Then I tried a 10% castor, 10% coconut, 80% kero mix. Why on earth the combination of oils was worse than either ingredient alone I can only speculate.
Starting, top end, idle,,, all suffered. ???? Damnifino. Got too dark to try ether or Amsoil.

So, one last thing to try with coconut juice and I'll be satisfied to use up the rest to make hash browns.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll also try Luke's special mix.

Treven,

I deliberately refrained from using the heat gun to keep the test pure. All runs were accomplished with a high ether prime and a half dozen or less, prime bursts. I listed the fuels in order of the easiest to start first and as mentioned, last out of the gate was the camp fuel. It appeared to have the most naphtha, was much harder to start.

In all of this, my perfect rod has now got some slop in it. Not much, but it's there when there wasn't any before. I'm speculating that the coconut oil, with a lighter viscosity than castor or Av oil, did not lube as well as I had hoped.

Finally, I'm holding back on trying various kero/alternate fuel blends as I'm waiting for some Amsoil, Sabre synthetic oil. They have to order the stuff, need to wait till someone needs a full case.

" About modified veggie oil. Castor is a veggie oil. Has anyone ventured to do the mods to castor? Why not, and what might we get if we did? Or has all of that been done for us, and then some, by Klotz? "

Andy, Castor is allready highly saturated and hydrogenated so theres not much we can do accept add vitamin E to stabilise it to reduce/stop varnish formation- but it is this varnish that protects under extreme pressure and heat.
I think all Klotz does is heat the oil (to 1/ drive out moisture, 2/ modify the molecule chain to make it mix better with petrolium products), and filter it. maybe add a dye.
Andy your findings with kero is not surpriseing as it has a high cetane and is also low in viscosity , both desireable in our motors for ease of starting and throttling.
Re the modded vegi oils, only a good test will reveal if its up to the task as a lubricant , but reports from some long time users seams to support its use, its lower viscosity to castor should also be beneficial to starting and throttling, in my testing motor temps and noise with the modded Olive oil were similar to castor with the benefit of a cleaner exhaust and easier starting.
Stewart

here's something I found out,fisher plow pump oil for the out side pumps has a flash piont of 246F the warning say's not to use in under the hood pumps. if some kind of hyd.oil. i haven't tryed it yet,but seems like that would work great. the cost is alittle high, $21.00 a gallon.

Stewart,

Thanks for the comments and information.

Yesterday I ran plain corn oil in substitute for castor. The engine ran well and performance was similar to castor in most areas. This stuff is an economy brand and somewhat thinner than Mazola. Both are way thinner than castor. The 50 weight AV oil is similar in viscosity to castor. No doubt one run doesn't tell the tale and burned out engines may be the only thing we get from this trick.

Next up was to retest the Motomaster cetane booster, the trimethylbenzene stuff. Different chemistry and a search showed that it's used in some products as an OCTANE booster.

I first ran an 80 kero 20 castor mix, no ether, no CB. I established the CR and needle setting. Then I added 1% of the trymethyl stuff. Then I did the same with Amsoil, cetane booster,,, octyl nitrate.

Both products behaved exactly the same. I could detect no difference. The more I added of either, from 1% to 2%, the smoother the top end got with more power and with a full half turn out on the compression screw. No difference. I really wanted to also compare MEKP but it started to SNOW. Global warming? HAH!

I did the same test using the 50 weight, no detergent aviation oil. Meme chose, tabarnac.

So my purchase of the Canadian Tire, Motomaster cetane booster will not go to waste. And just for the helluvit, I made a blend of the two products with good result. So there we have it, a good cetane booster, off the shelf. Well, for some of us so inclined. And if we're not fussy about throttling, you don't even need ether. The cetane booster really is all you need.

And today, with it still snowing a bit, I decided to mix up some biodiesel. No, not veggie lube but biodiesel to burn. I thought it was a boil and bubble process and it CAN be if you use waste oil but if you get three litres of Unico Canola/Soy oil for four dollars, there might be some cost advantage. If this works, I'm going to get a half dozen jugs,,, from Zellers.

For a full litre of fuel, you also need a 1/4 litre of methanol and a half teaspoon of sodium hydroxide. That's lye or caustic soda. The methanol was 5 dollars for a litre and the lye some 7 dollars for 6 ounces.

Here's how it's done at home, simply and cheaply.

Use a glass jar with a TIGHT, leak proof lid. MAKE SURE. The jar should be a half litre large. Add 1/4 litre of methanol to the jar and add 1/2 teaspoon of lye. Seal up the jar and shake. If in doubt, do not shake but just let the mix sit for an hour or so. The lye will eventually dissolve, you can help it along by gently stirring occasionally. Make sure that all the lye is dissolved.

Next take a 2 litre soda pop bottle and make sure that it's absolutely rinsed clean from pop and DRY. I set several over the furnace register and in a half hour, all moisture was gone.

Add a full litre of oil to your 2 litre bottle. Pour hot water from the tap into a pail and let the bottle sit in it for ten minutes to warm up the oil. Then add the lye/meth mix to the oil, cap the bottle securely and shake vigorously for 5 seconds. Wait ten minutes and go back and shake again. Repeat this four more times and then let the bottle sit in a warm place overnight.

In the morning, you'll find a browner material has settled to the bottom. The oil on top will be decidedly thinner and still be a bit cloudy. Let it sit for another day and it should clear up. Then carefully pour off the clear oil into another two litre bottle.

The next issue is that there will be soap in the mix and this has to be "washed" out. To do this you gently, carefully, add a half litre of warm water to your Biofuel. Yes, add water. Gently. Then, gently upend the mix back and forth, 15 or twenty times,, gently. You do NOT want to agitate the mix in any way. You want the water to absorb the soap. Gently.

Uncap the bottle, and then with a thumb on the opening, upend it gently and using your thumb as a valve, allow the now settled water to drain off,, as much as you can.

Repeat the preceding but this time, GENTLY upend the bottle 40 times,, gently. Slowly. Drain.

The third time you want to gently shake, yes, this time shake the mix, but do so gently. For a minute. Drain.

The fourth wash is a repeat of #3 but this time shake a little harder,, for a minute. Drain.

The fifth wash should be a vigorous shake. Go for it, give it all you've got for a minute. Drain.

The result will be a cloudy mess but let it sit for a day or so and you should see it all clear up.

The biodiesel I was given to try was made from waste oil and I'm not sure that the wash was done to it.

I'm speculating that I may be able to burn this stuff without having to add a lubricating oil. I'm hoping that adding a cetane booster will be all we need. In its raw form, vegetable oil won't mix with castor, for some reason. I tried corn, safflower and soy oil. If it's needed, maybe biodieseling an oil will allow it to blend with castor. If not, and if I still need a lube, maybe the Av oil will work.

If it doesn't run, I can add kerosene in increments. At one point we may get most of the biodiesel to burn but with just a small bit left behind to lube.

A caveat.

The methanol we are familiar with, but still, handle with care. The lye though, is the really nasty stuff. Wear gloves, goggles and an apron. AND DO THIS OUTSIDE. However, once you add it to the oil, it all gets real safe again. Just don't drink it,, or cook with it.

Hope this isn't too much of a tangent but all of this WAS about a no ether mix and well, I won't be adding ether. I just wanted to tie these loose ends down in this long saga before the winter set in and stopped all the fun and games. Not to mention I might be out of action for a month or so coming up due to family issues.

Bob,

I don't know what plow pump oil is but go to any hardware/automotive store and there are so many volatiles and oils there you can't help but wonder if there's not some kind of magic lurking in the shadows waiting to be discovered. You just never know.

Interesting on the Motomaster Cetane Booster. I would personally stay away from it due to trimethylbenzene's health hazards, but I can get Amsoil off the shelf here.

A flash point of 246F is pretty high. Some two stroke oils are lower than this and kerosene has a flash point of about 100F.

check out the site www.engineering tool box.com and found auto ignition of diffrent kinds of fuels.

Tonight we have some clarification and refinement of the procedures for making Biodiesel fuel. Some random pictures to illustrate. First, an adaptor was made to make the settling and draining of the unwanted materials much easier to do, with less mess.

The second and third picture shows what you get settled out after the lye/meth treatment.

During the washing process, during the latter stages, the settling takes longer as the soap scum gets real heavy. Fourth and fifth pictures.

Six and seven shows the soap scum that the washing takes out.

The finished product is consierably thinner than the original oil, naturally. It's still thicker than a proper, all three, diesel mix but we'll see. Right now it's still cloudy, hopefully another night of settling out will make it less so. However it looks though, I'll try running it tomorrow.

A trip to the Supermarket in the bottled water section revealed some neat, clear plastic jugs from one litre to 5 to 11 litres, all with handy handles. If the fuel works and gives us an advantage, this allows making up gallons at a time. A week's worth of part time work, off and on, could produce four or five gallons for a decent season's flying. Cheap too. If it works.

OK, why am I so obsessed with a no ether fuel? Simple. Five years ago, the price for commercial fuel was 60 dollars a gallon and that was without any shipping charges. Shipping has to be by truck and that's costly. Even when running small engines like 1/2A you can see that that's all you'd run. And even mixing your own restricts you to 1/2A due to the cost of the ether. So I DO want to fly .40 sized airplanes powered by diesel. No way to do that at a reasonable cost.

In the end, I may have to resort to a mechanical solution to the throttling problem when using no ether fuels. Thanks to Kelly, at least I have this one last option. The trick to that though, is to devise a way to adjust both the idle CR and the top end CR independently. Between the two of us we have it on paper. Now it's up to me to make the damn thing.

I'm resisting because it's not the kind of thing that anyone can do for himself. A homemade fuel mix from common materials gives everyone the opportunity to fly diesel at a reasonable price and allows them to find out what a REAL engine can do for their flying creations.

Why is homemade B100 going to be significantly different than commercial B100? MSDS don't even list autoignition temperatures in most cases. Flash point is 160C and boiling point is over 205C. Kerosene's auto ignition temp is 205C. How will B100 be suitable?

Greg,

Can't answer any of your questions yet, but soon, maybe. The Biodiesel I was given was not a commercial product but was made locally from waste oil for personal use by a small fleet operator. I don't know what it was that I ran, quality or otherwise so when I came across the specs on how to make the stuff, I thought I'd give it a try. Just for fun, you know?

Sunny and calm today. Decisions, decisions.

Go flying or run engines?

Arrrgh. [:@]