fuel cleaners & octane boost additives?

They are all (including gasoline) toxic and carcinogenic, and mixing your own blends likely increases your exposure, making the health risk considerably more. This is one good reason to settle for octane out of a pump, even if it costs more, or to tune your car to run on the octane you're willing to settle for.

MEK - Methyl Ethyl Keytone can enter your bloodstream quite easily through your skin and goes right to your kidneys or liver (can't remember now, maybe both) for an attack.
To think years ago we would go out to the shed and mix a 50% mixture of MEK and Toluene or Toluol and then use one of those simple spray nozzles that you put one hose into the bucket and then hook it to a compressed air hose and spray down the Jet engines and firewalls to clean them before inspection.
That stuff was being atomized and we would inhale not knowing any better and it was great for cleaning your hands after greasing the Landing Gear and Flaps. Probably the only messy and dirty job to be done during aircraft inspections. Never used masks and or gloves. We just didn't know any better at the time.
Of all the chemicals mentioned MEK is now known to be the worst of the bunch.
In my parts cleaning tank at home i now use a combination of Kerosene, Acetone, Toluene and a small amount of MEK. Makes for a very good cleaning solution.
But I now wear those very thick chemical resistant gloves and a good mask when blowing things dry.
Who knows, but maybe exposure to these and other chemicals and also working in the nuke powerplant industry for a while when i was young has contributed to some of my health issues as I've gotten older. Namely some cancer issues.

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Who knows, but maybe exposure to these and other chemicals and also working in the nuke powerplant industry for a while when i was young has contributed to some of my health issues as I've gotten older. Namely some cancer issues.

Sorry to hear about your health issues. Imo, this is not a "maybe", it is a "probably". Cancer has shot up over the past hundred years, partly from smoking, but also I think from the invention and exposure to harmful chemicals. We still don't know exactly how bad some of these fuels and chemicals are for our bodies, and for that reason I just stay away. I don't think masks help for anything beyond sawdust, so I always use a full respirator when working around fine particles or vapors.

since wed the 13 i have the same few gallons of gas with the toluene. it seems that the toluene works best when it is thoroughly mixed. at first when i read this further back in the thread i said ,"but that's impossible? it should all mix together within a mile or 2? but no. the riv drives much better now that its all mixed.acceleration,off line power,and general power output has increased. its almost as if the ecm learned that its new food is better for it and has responded by giving more power. weird.

AA wrote:

I don't think masks help for anything beyond sawdust, so I always use a full respirator when working around fine particles or vapors.

When i said a good mask, I meant a good respirator and change cartridges frequently. And use the correct cartridge for the job at hand.
I have different cartridges for fumes and particulates.

Easy Octane Calculator

With my recent fixation on octane I found a little spreadsheet for calculating the result of mixing different fuels/additives... I cleaned it up and added price comparisons as well:

http://rapidshare.com/users/363VAH

Click a file and then choose Save File, it will download instantly because they are only 11KB each.
They each have the same formulae - I only posted both to illustrate the difference in costs I found when
comparing a racetrack blend to a gas station/toluene blend.

just remember it does dry things out so add alittle love to her m.m.o. !!! lol

Yes, Deekster mentioned a couple pages earlier that you should add a capfull of MMO per gallon of tolu/xylene...

No worries, though - If you download those spreadsheets, you'll see that when I plugged in my local premium & toluene prices, and the 91 & 100-test prices at Sears Point, it's actually $11 cheaper to make a tankful of the same octane with the race gas.

It's just obscene that it still costs 40 percent more for the same octane as back East...

I realized this post is probably more useful in here than in the Cam2 thread...


Easy Octane Calculator

Here is a little spreadsheet for calculating the result of mixing different fuels/additives... both in octane and price:

http://rapidshare.com/users/363VAH

Click a file and then choose Save File.
They each have the same formulae - I only posted both to illustrate the difference in costs I found when comparing a racetrack blend to a gas station/toluene blend, to bring the same 91 octane "Premium" up to 93 octane, here in Northern California.

Acetone boosting gas mileage was tested on Mythbusters, it was busted.

It is a single chemical not a mixture. formula OC(CH3)2
It is sometimes used as a fuel additive, not often or for mileage though.
It is worse on seals, tank, lines, ect then methanol. It is added at about 5-10% for easier cold starting and it has a very high octane( have not every seen the exact number though). It is also used to suppress detonation on methanol motors(octane must be at least over 116). If you look up chemical compatibility not much is compatible with it. It is also an emulsifier, so some people have tried to dissolve oil in water/alcohol injection fluid by adding it.

It would probably cause problems over time if used in amounts high enough to do anything. Only really useful for if using e85 in winter. Even then it may not be worth messing up the seals.

Toluene was used in f-1 for a while. They were limited to 98 motor octane(the m of (M+R)/2) and ingredients found in pump gas. They used 85% toluene with 15% hexane to lower the octane to the limit.

Well this guy drives a black and white and every time he fills up he puts in 4ounces of acetone and he does all in town driving and he gets over a 100 miles to a tank full extra and since he told me about it I have been doing it in mine and it works even with the in town driving and the car starts better and omg the acceleration is awesome, and most of my driving is in town and I got 31.3111111 miles to the gallon, well that is my little secret , how every much gas you put in divide that by 4 and that is how much acetone you put in and then just hang on.

Acetone is a blend of several distallates, and a nice octane booster and has more BTU, that is well known. It's harmless to use.

I prefer to add pure Toluene (a component of Acetone) when I want a little more oomph.

But I suspect now that you are looking to get better gas milage, you drive more efficiently - that's the best way to increase your range!

Something about this just doesn't seem right. I mean if it was that easy and it didn't damage anything or increase emissions wouldn't the big car companies want to take advantadge of it? Especially with all the new CAFE regulations. I've heard of putting rubbing alcohol in the fuel to help get thru emissions, but with all the delicate sensors on these cars I'd be afraid to try that either. Maybe on an old tech carburated v8, but not on anything with an advanced computer. If any of you guys are brave enough to try it I would really like to see some real world numbers to get proof one way or the another

Well this guy that came to my house with an 05 impala and it had 3.4 in it had over 4ook on it and it is all intown driving and I looked at the engine and you could tell it had never been touched and you and I both now that the 3.4 where pigs all they were was a 3.1 with doul overhead cam heads., And since then I have been using it and I also use it in my 07 dodge ram and it has been getting 23 running to car shows and stuff right here in town;

My suspicion is that the components of Acetone somehow fool the O2 sensor into leaning out your mixture, therefore resulting in 'improved' milage.

black shadow wrote:

Well this guy that came to my house with an 05 impala and it had 3.4 in it had over 4ook on it and it is all intown driving and I looked at the engine and you could tell it had never been touched and you and I both now that the 3.4 where pigs all they were was a 3.1 with doul overhead cam heads., And since then I have been using it and I also use it in my 07 dodge ram and it has been getting 23 running to car shows and stuff right here in town;

and your point is...?

Albertj

i added toluene to my premium,and i did notice an improvement in acceleration but my mileage didn't improve dramatically.i did not record any info,but a ,seat of the pants"thing told me that i might have gained a few extra miles.i never fill up past the half tank mark @ $20 bucks a pop.my driving style is consistent,I'm aware of gas prices and don't step on her as much as id like. only thing i can say is ,where i normally fill up at the end of the week,i stretched that into a day or 2 more. make sense?

Well, we can all buy a half-pint of Acetone for our next fill-up, and totally debunk this... If I don't get any dramatic mileage improvement with 3+ gallons of Sears Point racing gas in the tank, I reeeeeeally doubt that a few ounces of acetone is going to do squat.

Well I decided to try Toluene out and see if it did anything for me.I am in Ca. and all we have locally is 91 as far as premium is concerned.I always put it in,but after seeing what dropping plug temp did to reduce KR I wanted to see what effect raising octane would do.I added 1 1/2 gallons of Toluene to around 19 gallons of gas resulting in approx. 93 octane (somewhere around 92.74).All I can say is it was a huge difference.I must have KR up the ass with 91 oct. if bumping it up to 93 restored so much lost power do to what is obviously heavily retarded timing.I am convinced that I need to get on the KR busting program,I'm just not sure how I want to go about it.I know programming is the quickest way,but I still only have a gutted box with K&N,and 605 plugs.I'm thinking about going down to 104's as it is the cheapest thing I can do immediately.I'm in the throttle quite a bit (love this car),so I'm not too worried about fouling the plugs so easily.I also have been thinking about doing an alc. injection.I sent an email to Snow ind. I think that was their name,anyways they have a kit that is computer controlled with high pressure pump and super fine mist nozzle.I know there is concern that injecting before the blower is controversial,but I have not been able to find hard evidence of it being the sole cause for any damage to the vanes.The company said the mist is so fine that it is a non issue basically.It is the large droplets which are produced by lower pressure pumps/bigger nozzle jets that cause these issues apparently.Didn't mean to veer off the octane topic,but it's all relative I suppose.It's all about lowering KR.

Before doing anything else, I would first invest your next dollar into some way of monitoring KR (scanner) if you desire to chase it. For the simple reason that even though you think you have x amount of KR, robbing you of however much power, you can't be certain until you can analyze it real time.

I have some doubts that raising octane 2 points (in theory) would actually reduce knock enough to see real, noticeable power gains with a stock SC pulley. I've scanned dozens of times with 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, and various mixes of race gas up to 100 octane, and can say there is a definite difference - when on the verge of knock (smaller SC pulley). But for a stock pulley, I think you need to do some scanning first to substantiate what your "butt dyno" is telling you. Otherwise you'll be spending money on assumptions, modding blindly.

Once you see how much KR you have on regular 91, and how much remains after using the toluene, we'll have a base from which to test new plugs, methanol injection, and other KR-fighting mods.

With all due respect AA,my but dyno is top notch!! LoL.Seriously though,my car has a VERY slight ping at WOT when on 91 octane (has since I bought it).Changing to 605's nearly eliminated it,but it was still there.With the Toluene it is completely GONE.Not to mention my car pulls extremely hard all the way up to 100mph,whereas before I could feel the timing retard (loss of power)felt as a flat spot when in 3rd gear kickdown at WOT.It is a totally different experience now altogether.Another butt dyno fact is that I could light up the tires for a brief moment before with 91 octane,but not much.It would hook up and grab after a second or two.Now I can damn near spin the tires all the way through 1st gear!! That really surprised me.I totally respect your opinion,but remember this aint my first rodeo when it comes to hot rods by far,so my but dyno has about 23 yrs of experience.I just don't have any familiarity with these particular cars,or hopping up computer controlled cars of any make for that matter.None the less between not feeling the flat spot at WOT anymore,and smoking the tires through nearly all of 1st gear both of which were not the case when running 91 octane, I'd say it's more than fair to say that it made quite a difference in my case.I don't think the Shell premium is truly 91...not at the station I go to anyways.I fully plan on having a way to read KR very soon now after this little experiment...I have no intentions of modding blindly.Since I think ultimately that I'm gonna go with alch. inj. I wanna pick up an Aeroforce gauge rather than a programmer just yet.I figure with the gauge showing me boost/KR etc. I should be able to dial in the alc. to kill KR completely even with a 3.4 pulley.Sound about right to you??

Hmmm... Once again, if the system were operating properly, shouldn't there be NO audible pinging, ever?? It sounds to me like the electronic 'ears' are not doing their job.

As for KR, after my intake, exhaust, thermostat and pulley mods, I have random, fleeting 2-5 degree KR on the 91-octane piss-water, which goes away completely when I blend it up to 93 with racing gas at Sear Point...

You should never have audible pinging. That's bad. Another reason adding toluene will make the butt dyno improvements is that it has a higher BTU than pump gas, so in addition to raising the octane level you are also increasing the amount of energy in your fuel.

I'm talking about a tiny flutter that is barely audible unless I REALLY listen for it.I'm not seeing any codes being thrown...wouldn't I see a code if the sensors were out??Another thing,if my little ping wasn't related to an octane issue why did it go away with the toluene??I'm just gonna have to break down and get a damn scanner bottom line is it's all speculation until I have readings to back it up...I feel like I'm wasting bandwidth at this point.

Well, you probably have valid points on both the code and scanner issues...
I'm just saying that in 5 years on Pelosi-piss, I've never heard a ping.