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What do you guys like for a fuel injector/system cleaner
04-19-2005, 03:13 PM
#16
Nordschleife Master
Originally Posted by Danno
"Google adding toulene to gas, to find out how much it takes to effectively raise your octane."
yeah, toluene is 114-octane, so you gotta add about 1/2-gallon per tank to raise overall octane by 1.0 point 91 -> 92 octane.
"What makes you think it's toluene in the injector cleaner that's raising the octane level? You seem to be assuming that adding toluene is the only way to raise octane - not so."
The best octane-boosting compounds are organometallics. These tend to be 2-3x more concentrated per volume than hydrocarbons. But... organometallics adds A LOT of deposits to your engine as they are burnt and concentrated from combustion. Kinda defeats the purpose of a fuel-system cleaner, eh? But organometallics don't have a linear response curve, the first amounts adds the most bump in octane and additional amounts won't increase it as much, you reach diminishing returns quickly.
The thing to remember here is that cleaning your fuel-system will ONLY restore your car to ground-zero, as-new condition, or stock HP. It will NOT give you more power than stock. So if you've added a fuel-cleaner and noticed an improvement of any sort, you're basically just taking your car from 92% back to 99% condition.
yeah, toluene is 114-octane, so you gotta add about 1/2-gallon per tank to raise overall octane by 1.0 point 91 -> 92 octane.
"What makes you think it's toluene in the injector cleaner that's raising the octane level? You seem to be assuming that adding toluene is the only way to raise octane - not so."
The best octane-boosting compounds are organometallics. These tend to be 2-3x more concentrated per volume than hydrocarbons. But... organometallics adds A LOT of deposits to your engine as they are burnt and concentrated from combustion. Kinda defeats the purpose of a fuel-system cleaner, eh? But organometallics don't have a linear response curve, the first amounts adds the most bump in octane and additional amounts won't increase it as much, you reach diminishing returns quickly.
The thing to remember here is that cleaning your fuel-system will ONLY restore your car to ground-zero, as-new condition, or stock HP. It will NOT give you more power than stock. So if you've added a fuel-cleaner and noticed an improvement of any sort, you're basically just taking your car from 92% back to 99% condition.
toulene will kill your fuel system because it drys out rubber like a crazy ****. So I suggest if you are going to add toulene you better be adding alittle "marvel mystery oil" into the mix to keep things from drying out.
Also here is the best way to clean your engine/fuel injectors nothing else comes close.
You need SEAFOAM! So, buy two cans of SEAFOAM and put one in your gas tank. Then take about 5 ounces out of the second can...disconnect a vacumehose... Then start your car up...make sure the hose doesn't go all the way down your cup and you have to rev the engine so that it won't die on you..let the vacuum suck all the seafoam up. When its done sucking it up turn off the car and wait 10 minutes before you re-start...there should be a big cloud of smoke coming out of your tailpipe..don't worry this is normal. The more smoke the more carbon removed.
here is a picture of a volvo that is in the "SEAFOAM" process..
04-20-2005, 04:23 AM
#18
Race Director
"toulene will kill your fuel system because it drys out rubber like a crazy ****. So I suggest if you are going to add toulene you better be adding alittle "marvel mystery oil" into the mix to keep things from drying out."
Uh no, gasoline is already 20% or so toluene. European gasoline can have up to 30% of toluene. The Australians were running on fuel with 60-80% toluene a couple years ago due to the structure of their import tarrifs (toluene cheaper than gas). It's a non-polar aromatic hydrocarbon and is actually less reactive than the other lighter components in gasoline. It's this very stable configuration that gives it its octane-raising ability.
Alcohol on the other hand is a polar molecule with a reactive -OH group. THIS is what leeches out the solvents from your rubber hoses. That's why gasohol has an upper limit to how much acohol it can contain. Even then, older fuel-systems can still be susceptible to drying out hoses. Alcohol is actually a great fuel with tremendous knock-resistance. If we can actually run it in our cars, we'd be able to get 30psi of boost like the Indy cars without any problems...
"90% of the 'octane boosters' found on the shelves contain toulene as the octane raising ingrediant, hence my assumption."
They may contain some toluene as the carrier base, but a couple ounces of toluene won't do a thing to raise your octane, you'll need a gallon or two. The majority of the octane boosting in the over-the-counter octane boosters are organometallics. While the lead-based compounds (TEL-tetraetyl lead) have been outlawed for their environmental impact, they've been replaced with manganese-based compounds that's still quite carcinogenic to humans. It's about 1000x more toxic than the toluene that carries it, so don't spill any on your hands.
The mix of ingredients listed in many OTC octane boosters have distinct functions and they do not carry over when using pure hydrocarbon boosters. The OTC boosters have:
1. organometallic booster, TEL in the old days, the modern ones use MMT compound is used (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl). These organic compounds actually break up and re-condense as solid metal pellets in your combustion chambers. If you do a dyno-run in an enclosed space, and you have no catalytic in place, you can actually capture the pellets being spit out of your tailpipe.
2. organic solvent such as ATF is added. This then cleans off the deposits that the organometallics leave in your engine. Melted pellets of lead/manganese on your exhaust-valves, cylinders, pistons...
3. lubricant such as Marvel Mystery Oil or some other light oil. This provides top-end lubrication to help your rings slide over the metallic deposits in your cylinders...
So stay away from those little bottles of octane-boosters you get at auto-parts places. They give very little benefit for the price and can actually be harmful to your engine.
Read up on fuel-additives and octane boosters on my 951 RacerX website. The GasolinelFAQ has been around for ages and is quite good as well as the DIY octane-boosters.
REFERENCES
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fast Fours Magazine 1999 - Octane Boosters Comparison
The Chemistry of Hydrocarbon Fuels - Harold H. Schobert_ -_ Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.
Automotive Fuels Reference Book - Keith Owen, Trevor Coley - SAE#R151
Mixture Formation in Spark-Ignition Engines - H.P. Lenz - Springer-Verlag
Fuel Injection - Jeff Hartman - Motorbooks International
Lean Combustion in Spark-Ignited Internal Combustion Engines - Germane, Wood, Hess - SAE#831694
An Introduction to Thermal Fluid Engineering - Z. Warhaft - Cambridge University Press
Uh no, gasoline is already 20% or so toluene. European gasoline can have up to 30% of toluene. The Australians were running on fuel with 60-80% toluene a couple years ago due to the structure of their import tarrifs (toluene cheaper than gas). It's a non-polar aromatic hydrocarbon and is actually less reactive than the other lighter components in gasoline. It's this very stable configuration that gives it its octane-raising ability.
Alcohol on the other hand is a polar molecule with a reactive -OH group. THIS is what leeches out the solvents from your rubber hoses. That's why gasohol has an upper limit to how much acohol it can contain. Even then, older fuel-systems can still be susceptible to drying out hoses. Alcohol is actually a great fuel with tremendous knock-resistance. If we can actually run it in our cars, we'd be able to get 30psi of boost like the Indy cars without any problems...
"90% of the 'octane boosters' found on the shelves contain toulene as the octane raising ingrediant, hence my assumption."
They may contain some toluene as the carrier base, but a couple ounces of toluene won't do a thing to raise your octane, you'll need a gallon or two. The majority of the octane boosting in the over-the-counter octane boosters are organometallics. While the lead-based compounds (TEL-tetraetyl lead) have been outlawed for their environmental impact, they've been replaced with manganese-based compounds that's still quite carcinogenic to humans. It's about 1000x more toxic than the toluene that carries it, so don't spill any on your hands.
The mix of ingredients listed in many OTC octane boosters have distinct functions and they do not carry over when using pure hydrocarbon boosters. The OTC boosters have:
1. organometallic booster, TEL in the old days, the modern ones use MMT compound is used (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl). These organic compounds actually break up and re-condense as solid metal pellets in your combustion chambers. If you do a dyno-run in an enclosed space, and you have no catalytic in place, you can actually capture the pellets being spit out of your tailpipe.
2. organic solvent such as ATF is added. This then cleans off the deposits that the organometallics leave in your engine. Melted pellets of lead/manganese on your exhaust-valves, cylinders, pistons...
3. lubricant such as Marvel Mystery Oil or some other light oil. This provides top-end lubrication to help your rings slide over the metallic deposits in your cylinders...
So stay away from those little bottles of octane-boosters you get at auto-parts places. They give very little benefit for the price and can actually be harmful to your engine.
Read up on fuel-additives and octane boosters on my 951 RacerX website. The GasolinelFAQ has been around for ages and is quite good as well as the DIY octane-boosters.
REFERENCES
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fast Fours Magazine 1999 - Octane Boosters Comparison
The Chemistry of Hydrocarbon Fuels - Harold H. Schobert_ -_ Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.
Automotive Fuels Reference Book - Keith Owen, Trevor Coley - SAE#R151
Mixture Formation in Spark-Ignition Engines - H.P. Lenz - Springer-Verlag
Fuel Injection - Jeff Hartman - Motorbooks International
Lean Combustion in Spark-Ignited Internal Combustion Engines - Germane, Wood, Hess - SAE#831694
An Introduction to Thermal Fluid Engineering - Z. Warhaft - Cambridge University Press
Last edited by Danno; 04-20-2005 at 04:46 AM.
04-20-2005, 05:51 PM
#19
Burning Brakes
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Does anyone know about these professional fuel system cleaners that add an additive to the fuel system then draw it through the vacuum line? National tire & Battery offer the service and I have been told it pulls a lot of carbon out of the system.
04-20-2005, 06:34 PM
#20
Race Director
yeah, they're not worth it for what you get. Some of the stuff I tried that actually raised an actual 0.7 octane point was the NOS stuff in the miniature nitrous bottles. Costs about $13.00 per tank to go from 91.0 -> 91.7 octane.
You can do better for less with xylene. At 117-octane, you can get it for about $7 per gal and dump it into a tank to increase AKI from 91.0 to 92.4 octane. Twice the benefits for about 1/2 the price.
As with anything else in life, there's no free lunch here either. If your car is in 99% operational condition with all the components in tip-top shape, you won't get ANY benefits from cleaning out the fuel system or increasing the octane of your fuel. That's because the recommended 89-octane fuel that's listed on teh fuel-door dictates what kinds of compression and ignition-timing that Porsche programs into the chips. If you put in higher octane gas than recommendd, it's just a waste of money because it will still generate the same power output.
In order to take advantage of higher octane, you gotta increase the compression and/or add extra ignition timine.
You can do better for less with xylene. At 117-octane, you can get it for about $7 per gal and dump it into a tank to increase AKI from 91.0 to 92.4 octane. Twice the benefits for about 1/2 the price.
As with anything else in life, there's no free lunch here either. If your car is in 99% operational condition with all the components in tip-top shape, you won't get ANY benefits from cleaning out the fuel system or increasing the octane of your fuel. That's because the recommended 89-octane fuel that's listed on teh fuel-door dictates what kinds of compression and ignition-timing that Porsche programs into the chips. If you put in higher octane gas than recommendd, it's just a waste of money because it will still generate the same power output.
In order to take advantage of higher octane, you gotta increase the compression and/or add extra ignition timine.
04-20-2005, 07:06 PM
#21
Rennlist Member
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Brisbane, Australia (Formerly: Sunnyvale, CA)
Posts: 2,120
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3 Posts
Originally Posted by Danno
As with anything else in life, there's no free lunch here either. If your car is in 99% operational condition with all the components in tip-top shape, you won't get ANY benefits from cleaning out the fuel system or increasing the octane of your fuel. That's because the recommended 89-octane fuel that's listed on teh fuel-door dictates what kinds of compression and ignition-timing that Porsche programs into the chips. If you put in higher octane gas than recommendd, it's just a waste of money because it will still generate the same power output.
In order to take advantage of higher octane, you gotta increase the compression and/or add extra ignition timine.
In order to take advantage of higher octane, you gotta increase the compression and/or add extra ignition timine.
This is all true for cars with fixed timing ignition systems, but our cars have knock sensors, which means that they can run at lower octane fuel, and compensate for pre-detonation by retarding the timing. So you can run 89 octane, but your car will be running at a much less aggressive timing than running 98 octane fuel.
Our cars will run (like crap) on the crappy lower octane stuff, but very much like the premium gas. My S2 handbook specifies 95 RON minimum. I run 98 though, because I can get it at the local gas stations -- and my car is "chipped" (although I'm not sure of the brand), thereby allowing for more aggresive timing than the factory spec.
(Of course, once the ignition has been allowed to max out on the timing settings, increasing octane beyond that level is a waste of time and money.)
-Mark
Last edited by Mark944na86; 04-20-2005 at 07:26 PM.
04-21-2005, 02:37 PM
#23
It is a carb cleaner for marine engines. I used to use a similar product under one of the OMC brands when I had a boat. It was pretty impressive stuff. You would spray a bit in each carb while the engine was running. It made the motor smoke like crazy and you had to work the butterflies to keep the motor from stalling. As you got toward the bottom of the can you would basically flood out the engine until it stalled, then let it sit for about 10 minutes. It would desolve all the crud in the carbs and combustion chamber and when you fired the motor back up it would blow all of that crap out. The first time I used it my old Evinrude 70 blew a big oily black smudge on my back yard. It ran GREAT afterward. But this was on 8 year old two stroke so it was plenty much in desperate need of a good cleaning.
http://stevenbigler.tripod.com/scoutco/id12.html
http://stevenbigler.tripod.com/scoutco/id12.html
