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Technical Octane Boost - which kind?

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by Barsteel, Apr 25, 2015.

  1. Russco
    Joined: Nov 27, 2005
    Posts: 4,327

    Russco
    Member
    from Central IL

    Just out of curiosity did you build the engine yourself? What head gaskets are on it? Is the block decked?( I'm doubting it cause that would wipe out the pad stamp) Any chance it has a too big quench area? It might be suffering from too large a quench area as much as the high compression.
     
  2. Barsteel
    Joined: Oct 15, 2008
    Posts: 732

    Barsteel
    Member
    from Monroe, CT

    Ok, ok, I will make a point of trying a few gallons of race gas...

    Thanks again...

    Chris
     
  3. Barsteel
    Joined: Oct 15, 2008
    Posts: 732

    Barsteel
    Member
    from Monroe, CT

    Russco - I did NOT build the engine myself, so I can't speak to any changes that may or may not have been made, unfortunately.

    Chris
     
  4. OLDSMAN
    Joined: Jul 20, 2006
    Posts: 2,422

    OLDSMAN
    BANNED

    As had been said, octane boosters are snake oil at best, try VP or Sunoco race fuel and see what happens. Good luck pining is not a good thing to have happening
     
  5. Having been down this path, I've also not had any luck with the common boosters. That being said, I would think the additives made by the race gas companies "might" be worth a try.....maybe Torco Accelerator or these guys http://race-gas.com? Haven't tried either yet, pulled that engine out and put it on a stand several years ago. Been thinking about putting it back in though......

    Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
     
  6. Mix my own home brew toluene octane booster for my 113 cubic inch Harley stroker engine with 10-1/2:1 compression ratio. Works great but DO NOT STORE IT in a PLASTIC CONTAINER... Toluene booster is not cheap ass sold over the parts counter snake oil sold in plastic container. That crap does not WORK.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2015
    falcongeorge likes this.
  7. k9racer
    Joined: Jan 20, 2003
    Posts: 3,091

    k9racer
    Member

    As per Dick Splint said use Toluene. It is a main component in Race gas. I buy my Toluene in 5 gal drums.from Sherman Williams paint store. They will ask for a company name so just say _______________ race team or what ever you want to say. I use it for a tire softener in for my circle track cars and a boost for other things around the shop. I own a air boat with a Helecopter engine I use the old tail number to but air craft fuel from a small mom and pop air strip. Always use a steel can and be sure to ground when filling. This is because of low flash point and electro static discharge causing a fire. If you need my old tail number PM me.. I need to add that Toluene is pure 120 octane so do your math 2 gal tol and 8 gal of 93 will yeild around 98 oct. I hope this helps.. Bobby
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2015
    falcongeorge likes this.
  8. You can add a gallon of xylene or toluene solvent both are over 115 octane to a tank full of premium pump. They call it "rocket fuel" in the tuner crowds.
     
  9. pdq67
    Joined: Feb 12, 2007
    Posts: 787

    pdq67
    Member

    1st, no stock, from the factory, 302 Z-28 engine was over 11 to 1. It was the Team Racers T/A engines that were up at 12.5 to 1 so that the old -140 and bigger stock solid lifter cams would work..

    2nd, if you can still buy it, KEMCO 130 Lead Supreme is real TEL. It raises octane by numbers instead of points!

    Like from 87.00 to 94.00, not 87.00 to 87.94!

    If you have good access to it, E85 is good stuff if you have high compression. I think it is good to 13.5 to 14 to 1 CR. BUT you have to be dedicated to using it and also will need to check the ethanol content of it to make sure you are burning true E85..

    Gary, (aka, "GOSFAST" on the Boards) has posted that there are a small dedicated group of racers that use it and they don't know how high of an octane number it can be used for. They supposedly are at or above 17 to 1 BLOWN!!

    We figure that the alcohol -OH radical is breaking off at high temp. and then creating steam and it is the steam that is holding detonation at bay.

    Just a WAG is all but seems right..

    pdq67
     
  10. One quick note for you guys using Toluene, it's REALLY not good for you, and absorbs readily through the skin. Not telling you not to use it, just be safe. A $20.00 pair of chemical protection gloves will do (as long as you use them).
     
  11. indyjps
    Joined: Feb 21, 2007
    Posts: 5,377

    indyjps
    Member

    Damn, I bought a 5 gallon jug of toluene for $3 at an auction. I've been using it to kill weeds, which it does quite well.

    I know how toxic it is, what the hell happens when you burn it, what kind of exhaust fumes does it put out.
     
  12. Have the fumes gotten to you? If you know how toxic it is why are you using so blatantly? It does not become a hazardous material until it leave it original container. Why would anyone be worried about exhaust fumes if you are spraying it around or dumping it on the ground to kill weeds. Do you or your neighbors have well water? Don't know what might be worse killing weeds with Toluene or inhaling exhaust fumes in a closed garage. Don't drink it, take a bath in it, kill weeds with it, put your nose or mouth over any exhaust pipe while a car is running and I suspect you'll be okay.
     
  13. stimpy
    Joined: Apr 16, 2006
    Posts: 3,546

    stimpy

    benzine is one of the by products from burning ,

    as for its use and storage , the stuff is dangerous as it can generate static from pouring and you should make sure it has the antistatic compound in it ( plus the pouring container bonded to the recieving tank , had some guys die here in Chicago when the load line discharged while they were hooking it up , stuff is extremely explosive in vapor form .

    I would buy Vp or Sun racing fuel , you can buy it on line in 5 gallon drums , or 55 gallon drums from a local supplier they have distributors all over the united states , find out what the cam specs are and call the tech lines as they will tell you what you will need , as some of the racing fuels contain no gasoline but are compounds of hydrocarbon solvents ( nascar racing fuel from union oil Nas-111 , was closer to paint solvent than anything ) and require rejetting ( richen up ) and set you straight on what octane you need too , too high can be as bad as too little ( burn too slow )
     
  14. Andamo
    Joined: Jan 10, 2006
    Posts: 523

    Andamo
    Member

    About 10 years ago I was working for a oil/chemical testing lab and we were asked by a unnamed source to test all the over-the-counter octane enhancers we could find. Since they knew I was a gearhead I went around and bought up a can or bottle of any octane booster I could find. The tests were done using Sunoco 93 octane gasoline and the blending instructions on the can/bottle. Bottom line on all the additives is that the octane was increased, but only in tenths and not in full numbers.
     
  15. 56sedandelivery
    Joined: Nov 21, 2006
    Posts: 6,695

    56sedandelivery
    Member Emeritus

    Just do an internet search for, "Homemade Race Gas".They'll give you specific formulas for using toluene or other chemicals. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
     
  16. Andrew Williams
    Joined: Feb 20, 2007
    Posts: 223

    Andrew Williams
    Member

    i tried it before and very little difference. we had a gas shortage because of a storm or something and i had to buy the only gas available. i put 2 bottles in the tank and really no change. just later i filled up with super and back to normal.
     
  17. I actually use Moroso Octane boost if I really need a boost, it comes in gallon cans. It used to be available in 5 gallon cans but I don't know about that any more. You have to be careful if you mix it too hot it will turn your plugs orange.

    Another thought if you are running gasohol is that you really need to rejet. *The rule of thumb on running alcohol is that it takes 3 times the alcohol to run as it does gasoline. So if you are running gasohol in theory and running the same jets you are setting yourself up for a lean condition. There are several things that cause pre-ignition ( pinging), combustion chamber heat, ignition timing too far advanced, and lean conditions are the big three.

    * rule is regarding pure methanol it would apply to gasohol in proportion to the amount of alcohol mixed with the gas.

    Oh I meant to say that some of us run 302s or 301s and don't own Camaros. LOL
     
  18. theHIGHLANDER
    Joined: Jun 3, 2005
    Posts: 10,245

    theHIGHLANDER
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    Well, since it came up, I'm thinking the E-85 thing has merit for just what we're talking about here. Not just the O/P's engine, but some folks here are using some fire breathing engines in their hot rods. E-85 is VERY detonation resistant and not nearly as complicated as running alky in a racer. It requires about 30% more fuel delivery and jetting and all the soft parts need to be proprietary. Accell pumps, fuel pump diaphrams, gaskets, etc. It might also be a good idea to use the lube additives that alky racers run at the track, but maybe not all the time. Mileage suffers 20-25% too, but who cares? In your case I'd think a racing mechanical pump that's good for about 110 GPH or more, then refresh that Holley 780 with all ethanol gaskets and such. Any soft lines will have to be retro-fitted with the newer stuff that's under modern cars and a light scuff with a Scotchbrite should take the shine away for aesthetics. I plan to try this in my 65 GTO if I ever get to it.
     
  19. The problem with E-85 for someone like me is that it is mythical at best and is well on its way out now that the Govt subsidies for making alcohol from corn are on their way out. well that and you cannot get it everywhere (like I said for me it is mythical) so if you plan on leaving town for a day or two you are basically screwed if your motor is tuned for E-85. ;)

    Note:
    This is my daily crap in someone's corn flakes and you my friend were available. No worries you can crap in mine when you get a chance tit for tat you know. :D ;) Everything that highlander said here is correct by the way, if you can get it this is a good way to go.
     
  20. pdq67
    Joined: Feb 12, 2007
    Posts: 787

    pdq67
    Member

    Orange sparkplugs?????

    Might be this stuff used as an octane booster??

    From Wiki........

    Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT or MCMT) is an organomanganese compound with the formula (CH3C5H4)Mn(CO)3. Marketed as a supplement to the gasoline additive

    pdq67
     
  21. dirty old man
    Joined: Feb 2, 2008
    Posts: 8,910

    dirty old man
    Member Emeritus

    Beaner, you are very correct about the myth of E85 availability. Here in my town we had one station that carried E85 a few years ago, and it was subsidized by the Feds for having it available for post office vehicles and other federal vehicles, plus for sale to general public.
    At that time I was gathering up parts for the engine build for my hiboy, and really considered building an engine with the high compression , etc. to utilize it. But this station, across the street from the post office BTW, was in the central business district and took advantage of this to offer folks downtown working service on their cars while @ work, and were only open 9-6 weekdays, meaning no E85 available weekends or evenings, so I decided against it.
    Now that station has no gas pumps at all, is strictly a repair and service shop, and I suspect the post office has either abandoned the E85 deal or has their own pump.
    So, if I had built a 14:1 cr engine, I'd now have to tear it down, buy new pistons, and rebalance!!!!
     
  22. stimpy
    Joined: Apr 16, 2006
    Posts: 3,546

    stimpy

    Post office around here is going CNG on there vehicles or electric CNG is a good alternative but you have to have hardened seats on both sides as its a dry fuel .
     
  23. We originally had one station here and it was boarded up in mid town so we never actually had a station that carried E-85. Even if we did you would have to be strapped to go there and fight your way in and fight your way out. I never could quite figure that one out but I guess Beaner logic is different than others more edumicated than myself.

    My problem when building a car or a bike is that I am always thinking about leaving my neighborhood so race gas and unobtainium are pretty much out of the question for me. I remember back in the day I used to ride my bike across the desert between Phoenix and Blyth, not my best choice but it seemed like it was always ending up that way. Anyway I was about 30 miles short of making it to the gas station so I used to rummage through the trash and find myself a gallon milk jug and balance it until my fuel was down enough to pour it in my tank so I could make it to the next gas station. :eek: A solution but a bigger tank would have been a better solution.

    I said all that to say this, E-85 because your compression is too high is not a viable solution unless you only intend to be around stations that carry it (and for how long?). Same with race gas, if you never intend to get any farther away from home that half a fuel tank good idea but if not then there has to be a better solution.
     
  24. stimpy
    Joined: Apr 16, 2006
    Posts: 3,546

    stimpy

    my buddy when he travels with his O/t h.p. car , he uses a trailer and the trailer has a 36 gallon fuel cell mounted in it for fuel just for that purpose ( has a holley pump to transfer it out ) plus there is no 55 gallon drum sticking up in the wind or drawing attention , as he has gone long distances without seeing the source of fuel he needs , the trailer also makes it nice as he can pack other stuff too .between the 2 tanks he gets about 700 miles . it beats making the ride a trailer queen .

    as for e-85 for one the advertised octane numbers are mostly wrong people say its 106 octane , when I used to deliver fuel to Amoco (BP ) lab here in Chicago ( naperville ) the lab rats said its 101 octane ( mon/ron) which is still better than 93 which is all you can get around here , and the one guy who was with them for many years said the way the labeled gas back in the 60s was like the HP ratings of cars ( not the SAE method ) they only had the highest octane number , not the Ron/Mon standard they use today , so a 103 octane gas was actually 95-98 , it was still higher but it was from the TEL . you can get some unleaded gasses at the pump today in that range they have MMT in them and your plugs turn a reddish orange from it . and it was $5.25 a gallon last time I checked and the nice thing was it was mixture ready , no rejetting needed .
     
  25. I have E85 stations all around me. Valero carries it, which I used with a rental car while my OT Malibu was in the body shop. Back in the day with the stock cars, we'd just drive up to the local airport's Shell truck and fill up a couple of 5-gallon cans of 100LL. Smelled as good as CAM2. We also had a little station that sold just CAM2. He would open up in the evenings Thursday to Sunday and all the fast cars around would be at the pump.
     
  26. What they told us in the '70s was that they went from an Octane rating to a Ctane rating so that they could get higher numbers from a less potent formula. Both of those are way out of my realm of expertise/understanding, and it could have just been someone blowing smoke to keep us off of the real problems that we faced. ;)

    I run pump gas in my bike granted it prefers premium but I have put mid grade in it in pinch and some stuff called rocker fuel that they sell at the bike shop and is easy to carry.

    My small block is 11.5:1 with aluminum heads and it runs fine on premium in the heat of the summer and can run on mid grade if the outside air temps are below 30 degrees. But the engine runs cool and that helps.
     
  27. mrconcdid
    Joined: Aug 31, 2010
    Posts: 1,156

    mrconcdid
    Member
    from Florida

    The traditional answer is 3 moth balls and a full tank of Sunoco.
    Godspeed
    MrC.
     
  28. Wow, don't even know where I come down on the e85 debate. I guess I'm more pro than con e85, but I also fear it's going to go away due to both the involvment of the government, and the loss of government support. As usual, once the government got involved, it was doomed. The problem is, corn is NOT the idea substance to make e85 out of. That was our wonderful politicians input to the process. Many non-edible and edible plant waste materials can be used to produce e85 (Sugar Cane, Sawgrass, potatoes, etc.... since our sugar cane industry died a long time ago due to cheap imports, Sawgrass probably would have been one of the better choices per biomass), but that wouldn't subsidize the farmers. Corn was actually a piss poor choice to produce e85 from, because it's use as an alternative fuel affects food prices, national exports, etc.... The second problem is supply and demand, a roughly 25% decrease in fuel economy is about average when using e85, therefore a 25% cheaper price at the pump is necessary to break even. e85 demand has not been sufficient to produce this greater than 25% discount from regular gas prices, and never will be under the current marketing demands. Brazil has pretty much kicked are little butt's on implementing e85 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil) As far as it's use as a hot rod fuel, personal experience says, it depends. We did an experiment on this several years ago, and ran an engine in a daily driven hot rod on e85 for 2 years (13-1 compression, 650 Hp, 434 ci. small block 1963 Corvette), and overall, other than fuel costs it was very successful (and really, compared to race gas, it was even cost efficient.). None of the terrible fuel system woes people were bemoaning ever popped up, the fuel tank and steel lines were stock 1963 Corvette style, but had been replaced with reproduction parts within the last 10 years (same materials, but this did cut down on the amount of varnish build up in the system), the rubber fuel lines were standard early 2000's auto parts store stock (as in e10 safe, but not anything special for e85), fuel pump was a Holley Black (choosen for the GPH rating prior to the e85 experiment, a lucky happenstance), the carb was an off the shelf Holley 850 modified to provide the necessary fuel through out the curve, this was the biggest challenge, as EVERY circuit in the carb eventually got tweaked, looking back, those $850.00 :eek: Quick Fuel Carbs might not be such a bad deal after all..... :rolleyes:. Two years was the duration of the test because that's about all the life these big stroked small blocks have in them (if you honestly drive it virtually every day in normal commuter use) before requiring a rebuild. on the rebuild, the car was reconfigured to run on pump gas, due to cost and availability issues. Now in a weekend / hobby car, it was GREAT! We could run all the advance the engine wanted, couldn't hardly make the Corvette ping, and if it did, it was a very gentle ping, ping, ping, not the who just dropped a can of marbles into my engine death rattle today's pump swill will give you. Still have the engine sitting here on a stand, planning on putting it into my '66 Chevy II Nova SS this time (not a daily driver), but need to beef up the rest of the car to handle the power (them 4 wheel drum brakes and unibody construction aren't gonna cut it anymore! ;)). Availability is getting better, but still spotty because it seems to come and go at various retailers due to the low demand. check here (http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_locations.html-0) for availability (then go check the actual stations to see if they still carry it, how sales are doing, and how committed they are to continuing to carry it). Not sure what you guys definition of mythological is, "looks" like at last reporting there are 5 possible stations within 10 miles of porknbeener (Just saw your second reply, and your right. I'm still going to post this up, but availability outside of our immediate area was one of the main reasons we went back to pump gas. You could put pump gas in it with the e85 tune, but it was FAR from a ideal situation. The two better answers are either more demand (which we as hot rodders are NEVER gonna make up for, or these late model, computer controlled 700 hp monsters (which bring about their own challenges (complicated:eek:, mostly UGLY!;), etc.... I do have one (A 5.7 Hemi in my Plymouth, and it's a good compromise (Love that 18 mpg, and think it's going to get better), but not without it's challenges and NOT HAMB friendly!) a third possible better answer would be if someone could adapt the true flex fuel technology to a hot rod, but that's more computer crap (and it's beyond me!). Dirty old man, not so good for you, 4 within 30 miles, not impossible, but not exactly fun, you would be best off if you bought a 55 gallon drum and kept it in a shed on your property (NOT in your garage! It might burn down one day! Pm me if you want more details on that little fiasco!) Stimpy, looks like you've got it made! Look's like it's ALL over Il....way more stations than here in CA (makes sense from the view of closeness to the midwest, not so much from the view of the green nazi's here in Ca!).

    Kurt (Blownfuel)
     
  29. Blownfuel that was a mouthful for damned sure.

    The deal with ethanol is that it has been a pipe dream since the '70s. Someone talks the Fed into subsidizing the production of ethanol from corn they make ethanol for a while the fed pulls the subsidy and thy quit making it until the fed subsidizes it again. Some of us really don't care and other jump on the band wagon or say that they are.

    This time the big 3 even made vehicles that would run on E-85. I guess that they thought that ethanol was here to stay. Or maybe they had to do that because they were in debt to the Fed. Doesn't really matter end of the day E-85 is a pipe dream.

    Now if someone made affordable methanol that I could roll up to a pump and get about anywhere and everywhere I would be all over it. my missus couldn't ride with me because her lungs are not so good and that crap is pretty damned caustic but I would be all over it anyway. How could anyone pass up an opportunity like that. real go fast booze for you car. Gotta love it.
     
  30. luckythirteenagogo
    Joined: Dec 28, 2012
    Posts: 1,269

    luckythirteenagogo
    Member
    from Selma, NC

    Some Speedway stations by me sell E-85. It burns quicker, but gets you there faster. If nothing else, the ATF allows you to distill I think up to 10,000 gallons of ethanol for fuel a year (farm use only, but people in the city can get the license though). So there's your answer to cheap high octane gas.
     

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