Hi All:

A friend of mine has sent me this very interesting link about adding Acetone to your gas to increase your gas mileage. The guy that wrote the article swears by it. The link is as follows:

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

I would think that acetone is very corrosive and would not do very well with fuel system parts like rubber hoses. I have not tried it so I can not recommend it, but it makes me wonder if it is worth a try with gas prices being so high.

Any techies want to chime in on this?

Aloha,
Eric

__________________
1987 260E Charcoal Grey 157,000 Miles
1987 260E Forest Green 120,000 Miles

I read the first paragraph and that was enough. Another big oil conspiracy theory. Where's the "100 MPG carburetor" we've been promised since the twenties? Well, GM and the oil companies bought the patent and buried it. We all know that!

I can tell you that acetone is a very powerful organic solvent and will attack nearly all organic materials. I would never, ever even remotely consider adding it to the fuel tanks of any of my cars.

There are a lot of organic materials in KE fuel systems. Check out the price of new pumps, accumulators, regulators, fuel distributors, etc.

You can look in any chemistry reference book and get the heating value of acetone and the cost of a gallon at the hardware store. Then compute the BTUs per dollar and compare it to a gallon of gasoline's 120,000 BTUs for about two bucks.

The bottom line is not miles per gallon, but miles per dollar of fuel cost.

Duke

between 1934-1939 Mercedes Benz in their Grand prix cars ( M25, M125, M163, M165 ) used - in a fuel provided by shell - acetone (methyl-alcohol 86.6% nitro-benzole 4.4%, ACETONE 8.8%, sulphuric acid .8% )

Acetone was included in the fuel as a coolant for the valves and piston heads..

thought that was kind of interesting.


Scott

we experimented with increasing power on the drag strip. This was in the mid-fifties before drag racing was as complex as it is now. We would start with aviation gas and go from there. Our additives to make "moon gas" were as follows:

Toluene (available from paint stores),
mineral spirits (or kerosene or diesel fuel) as a cleaning agent,
transmission fluid (or light turbine oil) as a lubricating agent.

To make one gallon of additive:

Toluene 3.1 quarts 100 oz 0.8 gal

Kerosene 0.8 quarts 25 oz 0.2 gal

Trans Fluid 0.1 quarts 3 oz 0.02 gal


My notes indicate that, using the above formula, the following mixes will raise the octane number as follows:

10% mix raises the octane level approximately 2.4%. Accordingly, a 20% mix raises the octane level approximately 4.8%.

Don’t overdo it. A 14% mix will raise 91 octane to a little over 94.

Be sure to check plugs on a regular basis for burning or pitting. In some cases it may be necessary to use a lead additive.

Bear in mind that we did not run this on a continuous basis. We only put in enough to make a couple quarter mile runs. After that, we went back to regular pump gas.

just my $.02 (to an interesting thread),
Wes

Toluene has a very high octane number - about 110 MON. Not sure about it's heating value relative to commercial gasoline, but kerosene and diesel are a bit higher.

Your mix certainly had a high octane rating, so it would have allowed you to advance the timing on a very high compression engine to the peak power value without detonation, and the mix might have had a slightly higher heating value, but the higher octane is probably why it performed better, especially if it let you advance the timing.

Many high compression vintage engines require better than currently available pump octane to operate without detonation. Mixing up to 25 percent 100LL avgas or race gas to commercial pump premium will usually keep them out of detonation, but on a road trip when race gas or avgas may not be readily available, adding a gallon or two of toluene or xylene, commonly available at hardware stores, and mixing it with 10-20 gallons of pump premium when you refuel will usually provide a high enough octane to keep an 11:1 compression ratio Special High Performance Corvette V-8 out of detonation.

Duke