I know the use of toulene is well known by the turbo and SC guys to riase the octaine rating of fuel, but while looking for a place to find a replacement toyo fz4 tire i somehow stumbled on this.

http://www.lubedev.com/articles/additive.htm

it descibes the use of acetone added to fuel to improve gas milage, not so much by riasing the octaine but rather lowering the fuels surface tension and allowing it vaporize better......its interesting, i am going to give it a try.



Oh and does anyone know where i could pic up a toyo fz4 235/45/18 in NYC w/o having to order it. want to get my rims on tomorrow

 

interesting...but acetone...hmm...dont wanna take the risk.

 

Let us know how your car runs with it. Acetone can be purchased in any hardware store and its cheap. I read that you should mix the acetone in a container and then pour it into the tank. Pure acetone can damage the fuel line.

 

Sounds risky to me for not much return. Just my .02

 

I got the article form a thread on NYCgasprices.com
http://www.newyorkgasprices.com/Foru...age_no=1&FAV=N

looks as though plenty have tried it w/ good results, figure i i will to

 

You guys gotta consider this though, at one time everything was considered risky. Going to unleaded fuel I'm sure was considered a risky move but now thats all you can find. Messing with the air induction system, exhuat system all things that are now popular things were considered risky when they were first invented. With the raising cost of fuel I am not suprised to see more and more new ways to inprove MPG.

 

So even if acetone doesn't damage anything do you really save money? I mean, you have to pay for the acetone as well as gas now. So does the increase in MPG and therefore the decrease in fuel costs outweigh the price of the acetone?

 

110% correct....... You have to add more cost to reduce cost!!!! so it is net wash.. no gain or just minimun.

 

You can buy 1 gal for 15.74 plus tax or shipping if you order via mail. That is 128oz total. The suggested mix to a tank of gas is 3oz. I believe that works out to 37 cents per tank. The claim is that you will see MPG gains of 20-30%. So even if you see 20% on a tank of gas you will be saving money on gas. It cost me 37.00 to fill up so a 20% savings would translate out to about 7.00 per tank after the cost of the acetone. I read that the gas treatments being sold today are mostly acetone and that consumers have been putting it in their cars for a long time without any damage. But I'm not totally convinced. I do remember that I had more power when I recently cleaned my injectors with Techtron. I added 1 big can to about 8 gallons. It was like rocket fuel.

 

Did you happen to read the part where they are trying to "extract electricity from the air?"

 

".......Acetone operates on the unburned portion of the fuel to gain added vaporization and improved combustion efficiency. Acetone further operates like an electron absorber. There are no bad effects whatsoever and every good reason to use acetone in your fuel. The fuel characteristics during combustion remain those of the original fuel. It just burns more completely with insignificant amounts of acetone."


Is that what you are talking about. If it is, its true, and is a good thing. But a bit hard to explaine to someone w/o at least a basic understanding of organic chemistry.

 

From the article: "They suffer from unlimited corporate GREED."

That throws a red flag IMHO. WHenever someone bases information suppression on "corporate greed", it's a huge red herring. It doesn't support their arguement, it just plays on people's emotions and tendency not to trust "the man". As if the 10,000s of people who work for big oil and car companies are all able to keep a secret. yea, right.

Think about it, a modern FI engine burns all its fuel at cruise/closed loop. It's a very clean almost perfect burn. In fact, it's flurting with being too lean (and almost too hot/destructive). There is no way that 10-35% of the gas is not getting burned (what is being claimed that acetone can help recover). If it were burning that rich, you'd have black smoke coming out of your tailpipe.

Oh, and this quote is just a hoot: "The acetone provides that kick with its rapid inherent molecular vibration that prevents fuel from escaping the combustion process and going through unburned."

So its warmed up and stays warmer than the gas?

load of crap.

And what's so great about having an electron absorber (even if acetone was one) for a combustion process?

Acetone is still great at removing nail polish though, I won't dispute that.

 

itdood: You may be indeed right. We will know for sure until an independent lab does a test. I actually submitted the idea to Myth Busters for a show. It's right up their alley. I'm no expert but I do have common sense which may not help me here either. But I think what the acetone is "suppose" to do is allow the gas to be better atomized so the droplets are smaller and more gas can burn more efficiently. I may be off base but I think that is the principle. Anyway, this is an interesting thread. If it worked I would certainly use it. One last thing. Corporations have been making inferior products for a long time because they want to sell more of their products. so saying that the big oil companies want you to burn more gas doesn't send up any flags for me. I agree. It's good business for use to have high mileage cars that burn gas at alarming rates.

 

just got to get my odo/speedometer working so i can keep track of MPG. but i will use it untill then since it says best result occur after 3-4 tanks.Either way i am going to giva it a try. i looked up a bunch of info on it and the science behind it sounds good....

Its not like that thread last week with the little device that clamped onto the fuel hose. that thing was funny, if that thing actualy worked i dont understand why the manufactures were selling dinky little units over the web, rather than winning the nobel prize for redefining the the basic laws of both physics and chemistry as they are known today and making tons of cash from there patent for revolutionizing the petroleum refining industry.

 

since most free radical intermediates are very reactive and have short lifetimes, all the steps in chain reaction sequence must be fast compared with possible competing reactions. This means that atom abstractions and radical additions should be exothermic, or only mildly endothermic. combusion of light chain alkeen's in an engine produces many free radicles, most of which react and exit the combusion chamber as stable producs, the rest will be used up in the cat converter. addition of elctrophile like dimethy ketone (acetone) to the combustion chamber could mop up this fraction that usualy gets evacuated

exothermic = heat production

 

how much mpg does it say it increases?

 

Well, Dr. Roy...I applaud you for going on with this. Hopefully the results are worthwhile and not damaging. Gas is up to 2.70 in NYC! F*ck that!

 

I hope that helps because i am barely getting 200 miles a tank and i always put 93+ oct i dunno wats wronge with my car.

 

To be honest I think this is on the same level as the magnets on the fuel line. It's snake oil, but that's just my humble opinion.

There's an article here of someone who tried it, you have to page down a bit to find it.

http://www.cryptogon.com/2005_03_20_blogarchive.html

Also here

http://digg.com/science/Increase_you..._using_Acetone

 

acetone is a quicker drying compuound. it burns faster and easier than gasoline. i think the fact that it's thinner than gas, aides in combustion somehow.

 

I am a relatively new member of bobistheoilguy.com (BITOG). There are some 8,000 members, many of whom are very knowledgeable and in some cases rather **** about what they use in the way of lubricants, additives etc. I used the search feature and several threads popped up, some of which I perused. The takeaway that I got was:

- acetone has less energy conserving value than gasoline
- some trials have been performed showing that MPG actually suffers
- do not get it on your car paint
- it is a solvent and has the potential to damage fuel system components, many of which are plastic
- it has the potential to damage electric fuel pumps
- why haven't car manufacturers lobbied for the introduction of this product to stimulate SUV sales etc
etc. etc.

Some suggested trials in a lawnmower first. I'll leave it up to you to decide, but I'm not touching this stuff with a 10-foot pole. You would be better to use Lube Control FP at US$33 per gallon from what I gather. I haven't bought any yet but intend to.

www.lubecontrol.com

 

Another factor in improved MPG with acetone was cited to perhaps have coincided with the phasing out of winter gas in April and the resulting 10% fuel economy improvement that comes with non-winter gas, not to mention the warmer weather.

 

Just as an aside, Dr. Roy - as to the tires...the FZ4 has gotten bad reviews from everything I've read. If you're looking for a good A/S tire, go with the Proxes 4.....

 

A couple comments on this article:

Although in some parts it sounds quite authoritative, the author seems to have a few alternate agendas as well, which may or may not be "subliminally" inserted into the article:
1. the whole corporate greed thing ("send a copy of this article to your Senator" etc)
2. He mentions his "ScanGauge" multiple times, and even has a paragraph talking about it. Sounds almost like a low-key salespitch that is disguised NOT to look like one...

As to the "conspiracy theory" that the oil companies are "hiding" the amazing effectiveness of acetone....doesn't really make sense.....Please forgive my lack of chemical knowledge, but isn't acetone a petroleum-based solvent? If so, the end producer is.....the oil companies, isn't it?? (I truthfully do not know, so apologies if I'm way off base).

 

Ethers in general are highly volatile compounds and come in the usual methyl, ethyl, butyl, etc. flavors. Petroleum ether, on the other hand, is the most volatile product produced through catalytic cracking in the process used to make gasoline, jet fuel, kerosine, and other petroleum products. The process is fractional distillation. Fractional distillation involves introducing a gaseous mixture of related compounds, in this case petroleum compounds into a cooling mechanism, in this case a cracking tower. As the gaseous products cool progressively, they liquify earlier or later depending on volatility. By controlling the rate of flow through the cooling mechanism and drawing off the liquid at specific locations along it, it is possible to separate compounds which are otherwise miscible. You can use the same process to separate methyl (wood) alcohol which is poisonous from ethyl (grain) alcohol which is also poisonous, but less so. "Petroleum ether" is the product drawn off from the top of the cracking tower. Reagent grade petroleum ether appears to be significant more volatile than "naptha" which is also drawn off the top of the tower and marketed as Zippo lighter fluid, Coleman fuel, and white gas. Perhaps reagent grade is subjected to a second distillation or perhaps is simply a more narrowly-defined drawoff.

 

No. I stopped reading the article when I got to the part where it said to put acetone into diesel engines. If you know anything about how diesel engines work, you'll know not to do this. That, plus when an article proclaims to be scientific, yet supplies no data other than telling lay people to try it for themselves, I just tune out. It's been a while since I've had chemistry, but I know enough to realize when someone is just stringing together a bunch of jargon in an attempt to dupe the gullible. If they really did stumble across a reproducible scientific discovery, then have them publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. Or do they believe their "research" won't be accepted because all scientific journals have the same agenda as Big Oil? If there is any merit in what they claim, it will come to light eventually. You can not keep that kind of evidence secret. Big Tobacco wasn't able to dupe the public forever. Big Oil won't either.

The note about their device that extracts electricity from air was found off their main page about other miraculous inventions they were developing.

 

well like i said, I am going to try it. my speedometer and odometer are busted so i wont be able to verify any mpg increase or decrease untill i get them fixed which i plan to do soon. but i kept records up to the point i fukced them up so i have a basline to compare.
i went to 99cent store and bought a 16 oz bottle of 100% acetone nailpolish remover went to gas the gas station and put 4oz in the tank and filled up w/ some 93 octane. parked the car and unpluged the neg, battery cable to reset the computer, will hook it up tommorow morning and the experiment begins

1 gallon = 128 fl ounces
18 gallons in a full tank
18 gal x 128 oz/gal = 2304 oz in the tank
4oz acetone/2304 gal gas = .0017% ..concetration of acetone in fuel
at that conc. about the only thing i am sacred of is the acetone getting on my paint as i add it to the tank. and @ $0.25 a tank even the most meager savings in fuel economy pays for the acetone

 

Better bet is to get the 17 Degree timing advance. I picked up 2-3 MPG more after having it done now for a month. I averaged 20-21 city. Now I just did a 23.2 tank average. You could possibly damage o-rings in the injecotrs after a while. Acetone will "take out" moisture in things, such as rubber. Then the rubber becomes brittle and cracks. Best of luck.

 

Dr. Roy: Let us know how it worked out for you.... Very interesting...

 

Acetone is nail polish remover, isn't it?

 

Best way to improve MPG is to keep the car maintained properly and do to weight reduction.

 

Hello... im a newb to this site... the car is now my wife's and regardless of driving, babying it, what have you... the car doesnt get that great of mileage. Any recommendations that might help this out?
We run Chevron 93 Octane in it and only that... dont watn the car to be any louder either.
Whats my best bet? Some type of Air Intake... or changing the exhaust?
Any tips are appreciated...

 

drive slower and on cruise control

 

car doesnt drive over 60 hardly... cruise control whenever possible.

 

er .. do you have an approx 0-60 time? Could be a bad MAF.

 

Cruise is actually part of the problem, (driving too slow and accelerating too slow can also hurt). My right foot gets better results than my cruise control, yours could do the same thing. And what specifically is it that you claim isn't great? Nissans don't get great mileage to start with, however you should be able to get about 24+ mpg on the highway.

 

Make sure that filters are all clean and I would run Seafoam on it... I am getting 24 mpg lately and I figure that's decent for a 2000 GLE.

 

Also check your air pressure in your tires that helps big time

 

Tried the acetone thing a couple of months ago in my wifes 2000 Maxima SE. Made no Noticable difference in gas mileage or performance. She did not know I was doing it so driving habits did not change.

 

Sometimes when going uphills the cruise control needs to be off because it will downshift and waste a lot of fuel. Also every car has it's sweet spot where it gets the best fuel mileage. I know for my altima it's around 50-55mph and it would get 35mpg. The problem is it's different for many cars and you can't drive 50mph in some places. I live in Cali so if i try to drive 50mph on the freeway I will get honked and chased off the freeway. Imagine driving to work on surface streets without stopping, 50 mph, same on freeway. You would spend only a fraction of what you spend now on gas. The problem isn't gas, it's people.