alcohol or water

[kevans]

You should use Alcohol/Water mix for a couple of reasons. One reason is the effects that water has on the combustion process. Water itself has a HUGE octane number and mixed in the right proportions with alcohol can be VERY beneficial. Water also has a "cooling" effect on the combustion charge and cuts down on the "hot-spots" that can cause knocking and lead to detonation.

Another beneifit...and one of the most important IMO...is it is safer. Pure alcohol is VERY flammable and can cause LOTS of problems if it ignites. Mix in the correct amount of water and it is not flammable at atmospheric pressures.

I use 66/33 water/alc ratio...either methanol or denatured. Methanol works a little better but not easy to come by at the local hardware store.

HTH,
Kev

 

[Steve Wood]

Originally posted by HossV6
Sweet car man! Yea, if you go ahead with it, get the denatured (a.k.a.- ethanol). The most powerful stuff is methanol, but it chews up the injection pumps. I'm about to experiment with nitro-methane to see how it turns out Same stuff the top fuel dragsters run, so I hope the GN can take it well. Later...

Remember that model airplane fuel is a methanol base with nitromethane and castor/synthetic oil added.

Typical oil is 16-25% of volume with fuels for smaller engines normally higher in oil. The castor oil fuels leave a real nice varnish behind.

Nitro varies from 5-25% typically with smaller engines often having more and/or racing fuel with more. Nitro easily detonates with heat and or compression.

The bulk of the fuel is methanol.

I suspect at best you will screw up the pump with the methanol and/or gum up the system if you are using other than pure synthetic oil based fuel.

At worse, you will have a lot of detonation due to the nitro and high oil volume.

I would try to get someone else to go first....

 

[HossV6]

Yea, I was thinking about that. Thats why I was going to add a little bit at a time in the mix until I started to get detonation. I'm still running the thrasher (18* I think) so if it detonates with it, I know it won't work. But hey there are a few guys on here running NOS and boost with great results. And I can get pure nitro-methane at the local tracks here, so oil content isn't much of a prob. I'm about 35 min from Darlington Nat'l Dragway. Well, at least I'll know after I try it. Don't you hate it when you get an idea and you can't sleep until you put it to use? Later

 

[1badTTA]

I would definately use the pure nitromethane over the R/C fuel, I would also think about mixing in some water to the mixture to reduce detonation, the nitromethane burns Really easy and will probably lead to detonation in a large enough quantity, but will give huge power gains. This is definately worth trying though, as it has the ability to provide great power gains if it will work. The reason for alcohol over water is that you can run much more alcohol than water without bogging the motor since alcohol burns.