Hey Hershal - Octane booster?

[Knighton]

Hi there,

I am interested in a post/reply of yours about raising the octane level of gas. You wrote:

So you want some fuel with a higher
octane without the higher price ? NO PROBLEM ! Go to your local paint or hardware store and buy a gallon of cheap laquer thinner. Then add 6 oz. to every gallon of 92
octane. For every 2.2 ounces it will raise
the octane 2 points. so 6ozs a gallon gets you to about 104 octane. I wouldn't go
past 10 ozs per gallon. Laquer thinner contains tolulene and xylene which boosts octane level of gasoline. It's reasonably safe if you don't get carried away with mixing in too much. Tolulene can be bought
instead of laguer thinner but I would stay away from that. The vapors are heavier than air and can cause one hell of an explosion.
A very good friend of mine is a chemical
engineer. He has formulated all kinds of fuel additives. He does read this forum but has yet to post. Maybe he will chime in here and answer all the technical questions you guys my have. I know he is one of the best engineers that ever worked for AMOCO.
I also remember that there was another discussion in detail about this a year ago on another forum. I don't remember which one but many of the poster claimed that it worked very well. I have tried it and I did notice a huge increase in power.


Sounds interesting and I'd like to try it and have a couple questions for ya.

1. A gallon of laquer thinner is not cheap 'round these parts. $25 CDN per gallon where I am at or approx. $18 USD per gallon. This is a possibility yet I do not know what the ratio of tolulene to xylene. This laquer thinner also has another product in it: MEK, metholkeytone [sp]. Is this MEK desirable?

I can also buy the tolulene and xylene separately each @ $13 CDN per gallon or approx. $9 USD. When mixed together, this gives me 2 gallons of octance boost and works out to approx. $26 for two gallons CDN. Doing the math, this works out to $3.25 per litre. Using 6 oz per gallon will raise the octane rating 6 points.

15 gallon tank = 60 liters approx.

6 oz octane boost per gallon = 90 oz

32 flu oz in a litre means I need 3 litres @ 3.25 per litre or almost $10 per tank.

If I were to use 87 octane gasoline and then add the 3 litres tolulene/xylene octane boost, this would raise the octane to 93 and cost me $10.

However, if I were to just use super unleaded, this would give me 92 octane and only cost me an extra $5-6 more than filling up with the 87 octane.

I guess the only use for this octane booster is to add it to 92 octane gas and not waste my time adding it to 87 octane.

Do you know what the ratio of tolulene to xylene is? 50/50?


Thanks a bunch. So glad you are enjoying your 40. I saw the pics and it looks great. The titainium and black is very sweet indeed.

 

[Hershal Byrd]

Knighton,
Here in the States racing fuel sold at the track is $4.50 to $6.00 U.S. per gallon.
a gallon of laquaer thinner here is about $7.50 for the cheap stuff.
I don't know the ratios other than what I posted. I always use this when I spend the day at the track. I notice a big difference.
I wouldn't mess with pure tolulene. If you ever seen a tolulene fire you wouldn't either. That stuff is really volatile.
I will talk to my friend the Chemist next time I see him and ask for the break down.

Hersh

 

All I can say is wow.

We use MEK, MIBK, Xylene, and a smidge of Tolulene on a daily basis (industrial paint business) and you're braver than I.

Course, now that I think about it, I do clean my hands in MEK, and trying to burn paint is sometimes difficult...

 

[Knighton]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Hershal Byrd:
Knighton,
Here in the States racing fuel sold at the track is $4.50 to $6.00 U.S. per gallon.
a gallon of laquaer thinner here is about $7.50 for the cheap stuff.
I don't know the ratios other than what I posted. I always use this when I spend the day at the track. I notice a big difference.
I wouldn't mess with pure tolulene. If you ever seen a tolulene fire you wouldn't either. That stuff is really volatile.
I will talk to my friend the Chemist next time I see him and ask for the break down.

Hersh

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That would be great Hershal. Thanks!

Meanwhile, I found a few excellent sites on toluene and xylene as octane boosters. One individual did a fair amount of reseach of F1 cards in the 80s and their fuel consisted of 84% toluene and 16% n-heptane. Toluene has an octane rating of 114 and heptane is just a filler to comply with the rules and has a rating of 0.

Here they are:
http://www.elektro.com/~audi/audi/toluene.html
http://www.gmhpclub.com/OCTANE%20BOOSTERS.htm
http://www.vtr.org/maintain/gasoline-octane.html

The first link has the info about the F1 cars.

As far as a ratio of toluene to xylene, I am going to go with 2:1. The toluene is more explosive than the xylene and you get more bang for the buck (what a pun).

My only other question is does it matter if you add these before filling up the tank or after? According to the first link, the user were adding it to the tank before filling up. Even if I did add it to a full tank, the toluene has a higher specific gravity and it thus heavier than gasoline and will therefore, have no problem settling through the gas.

Interestng topic.