I have been making my own fuel for many years now and although my personal preferance is not to use Nitro, some of the modern engines just do not perform without it. MDS for example run perfect on 10% Nito but are a lot of rubbish without it.
I heard from some old timers that you can replace nitro with 1/2 the percentage in Shellite / Mobilite (cleaning, cooking stove fuel) it is supposedly less corrosion promoting than nitro, a lot cheaper does the same job- provides more oxygen for a bigger bang!
Unfortunatly I have found nothing to substaciate the argument.

Has anyone tried it or know more about it?

What's the active ingredient?

I believe it is Dinitro phenyl

Nasty stuff. Highly toxic with long term effects like liver disease. Also a low PH of around 4. Thats a fairly strong acid. Nitro is around 6.4 or 6.5, a mild acid milder than vinegar or lemon juice. In fact nitro is not much stronger than castor oil which is also slightly acidic. Don't know how well it burns, but I wouldn't want to handle this stuff. IMO if there was a higher performance fuel than nitro, the unlimited fuel racers would be using it by now.

http://msds.pdc.cornell.edu/msds/msd...34/m216762.htm

i had the very same problem,and the only thing i came up with was to higher the compression ratio and mix fuel with no nitro.
to higher the compression ratio is like a "more nitro simulation"

the results are very similar to a 10% nitro content,if not better.

check this out:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/showthread...hreadid=364302]