Acetone to Save Gas and $$$$$

nail polish remover ?!!!

I bought it at CVS they have professional nail polish remover 100% acetone. The name brand stuff has aloe or gel in the nail polish remover.

old news

old myth

ruins rubber and plastic parts

don't do it

(I'm a professional auto restorer)

I tried it, but i got no improvement.
I drive a 1300 cc toyota corolla 1989 model

You have to use a very small amount - less than three ounces per ten gallons - too much will lower mileage. You also need to give it a few tank fulls.

It's easy to add too much if you're not careful. I think Mythbusters did this and said it didn't work, but they used too much acetone!

I put my acetone in three ounce airline bottles and dumped it in before I filled, around 15 gallons.

like it said in the earlier gas saving thread, acetone is in Berryman's B-12 Chemtool

dude your car is gonna be fubar if you keep puting acetone in the tank.

acetone is more corrosive then gasoline

And those rubber parts can be O-rings in your fuel system, also tends to wash the oil off your cylinder walls reducing engine life, it's really not worth it. A tune up, tire pressures correct, will probably do better for you over time.

OP,

A topic close to me at the moment.

Our beater, an 89 Volvo normally gets 360mpg a tank, about 23.5 mpg.

Filled up early, only 10.5 gal + 2oz acetone, but by my figuring it's getting 27.75mpg now. Been running smoother on the 40 mile work roundtrip - which is all that car is used for.

It's hard to believe that I got an 18% improvement, between that and filling the tired 2-3psi over max psi.

A gallon of pure Acetone costs me $15.75 + tax ($17). That's worth about 50 tankfuls, so 34 cents a tank - about 1/160th of it costs to fill my tank, for that improvement, so I'll continue based on what I've seen.

I've heard the argument that maybe it's just cleaning out the engine. Bullshit. It's been having problems idling for the past year. Added octane boost multiple times which seemed to help, fuel injector cleaner, all recently.

Replying to myself, preparing for the inevitable rebuttal:

There are easy reasons for the gas mileage going up -- it's 6F hotter here in the past week, and around this time refineries switch to a 'summer blend'.

On the other hand, gas is slightly more expensive in hot weather because of expansion from heat, so we're getting slightly less from the pump.

A little E85 in our Dodge Caravan gave it get-up-and-go.

An interesting acetone article


Acetone In Fuel Said to Increase Mileage
[link to www.pureenergysystems.com]


Alcohol eats away at rubber hoses, in case you weren't aware of it.

So even if acetone ate away at plastic or rubber, which is debatable, it wouldn't be doing anything worse than what the ethanol they're putting in gas is doing already.

From the above article.

Follow-up

From: Louis LaPointe
March 19, 2005

Something that might be added:

In early 2004, a SmartGas reader in New York State filled three bottles with: pure acetone, part acetone/part gasoline and straight gasoline. Into these he placed O-rings, pump diaphragms, plastic fittings, hose parts and other neoprene/n-buna stuff. He duped my experiments from back in the 50s. Months later he told me the pure acetone bottle was slightly darkened and some vinyl parts swelled. Dave had carefully marked all the parts beforehand. He dried the parts to mike them again and noted after six months that the growth was about two-percent to five-percent in the bottles with gasoline, which was well within limits. Almost unnoticeable. He put the stuff back into the respective bottles where it may still be today. Dave has a background in physics and engineering. I suggest testing parts as mentioned above, in 1, 2, 5, and 10 % mixes of gasoline and acetone. This is up to 200 times more concentrated than what we use in real life. No sense being ridiculous.

He believes that everyone should do their own testing and not listen to the prejudiced opinions or words of others. There is way too much misinformation out there.

+1 on that. It will eat any rubber seals in your engine. Usually starting with your fuel injectors. want to save on gas? check out this thread. Thread: Alternative Fuels-Using WATER to convert engine to a hybrid DIY!!

forgot to mention that it will eat up your oil as well. Oil that gets passed your pistons oil rings will be eaten by the acetone and you will start to get premature scars and scoring on the cylinder walls. Take some acetone and stick some rubber in it. Or try to put some motor oil in it.

"forgot to mention that it will eat up your oil as well. Oil that gets passed your pistons oil rings will be eaten by the acetone and you will start to get premature scars and scoring on the cylinder walls. Take some acetone and stick some rubber in it. Or try to put some motor oil in it."

Have you done it Grower




"In early 2004, a SmartGas reader in New York State filled three bottles with: pure acetone, part acetone/part gasoline and straight gasoline. Into these he placed O-rings, pump diaphragms, plastic fittings, hose parts and other neoprene/n-buna stuff. He duped my experiments from back in the 50s. Months later he told me the pure acetone bottle was slightly darkened and some vinyl parts swelled. Dave had carefully marked all the parts beforehand. He dried the parts to mike them again and noted after six months that the growth was about two-percent to five-percent in the bottles with gasoline, which was well within limits. Almost unnoticeable. He put the stuff back into the respective bottles where it may still be today. Dave has a background in physics and engineering. I suggest testing parts as

mentioned above, in 1, 2, 5, and 10 % mixes of gasoline and acetone. This is up to 200 times more concentrated than what we use in real life. No sense being ridiculous.

He believes that everyone should do their own testing and not listen to the prejudiced opinions or words of others. There is way too much misinformation out there."

I haven't

There is already a premeasured amount of acetone in modern fuels anyway. They try to gussy up gas with every filler the EPA wil let them get away with...

Chevron with 'techron'....sure....

I'm not Grower, but I am the pro auto restorer.
We can't soak paint guns in pure acetone or it will destroy the rubber O ring seals. What do you use to clean the rubbery emulsion off silk screens?
Acetone, buddy.

Craps BAD for an engine in the long run.

Go ahead and keep using it if your gut instinct says so. I hope you stumble on to the 'magic formula' that gives you the advantage over everyone else.

I predict we will see an increase in threads like this as more folks try to find the magic 'gas secret' online...

This stage is called 'denial'

...also a river in Egypt....

What about the thread regarding an air/water bottle set up in order to "cheat" the O2 sensor for better mileage? I might do that if I can get a legit system where my mechanic can set it up. For now, I have been cutting my mileage in my vehicles by dropping as much net weight (cargo) as possible and driving at or below the limit. Right now in my utility truck (3/4 ton) that is 50% filled with cargo and I can get between 350 and 400 miles per tank (26 gallons) by applying this method. Yes, you will compromise 15-20 minutes in duration but it is well worth it. Right now it costs me around 100 bucks to fill her and if I drove like every other speed demon, I would be paying twice the price (close to a thousand a month) in fuel! The main point here is to lay off the gas pedal and don't do any sudden acceleration.

What is 'techron' exactly?

Sounds fancy.

You know what WD-40 is?

Ground up fish.

[link to www.gma.org]

This works!! I've been using acetone in my vehicles for about two years now. It makes a difference in fuel economy, and I've experienced no ill affects. I've found that slightly less than 3 oz per 10 gal of gas works best and less is better. If you add more acetone than this your milage will decrease from the formula I've given. One time to use more than 3 oz is when going for a smog check as the extra acetone will give cleaner emissions.

Chevron the only gas I buy unless I put 5$ in to get to a Chevron station. If you have been running a gas like Arco which is one of the worst fuels you can buy, try 3 tankfulls of Chevron and around the 3rd or 4th tank YOU WILL notice a difference for the better in performance and economy.

Then it must have an engine that is designed for multi-fuels and can adjust itself. Known as Flex-fuel I believe.
Alcohol is about 30% less explosive than gasoline, that means 30% less energy. If you run E-85 in a standard fuel engine, you will get less MPG.

Some things that most people don't know about Octane and Gasoline. Try and think of it like the old days of black powder and smokeless gun gunpowder. With black powder you could take a little pile of it, light it with a fuse, big poof like old time flash powder for cameras, highly explosive, less energy. This is like low octane gas, lower octane gas actually explodes easier, faster, under less pressure, so it stores up less energy before it goes kaboom in your engines cylinders making your motor run.

Make a little pile of smokeless powder, it burns slower, it stores up more energy before it goes kaboom, same for higher octane gasoline, it takes more pressure, can be loaded more before it goes kaboom in your engine.

Higher octane or lower octane gas will not really affect your gas mileage. The reason for them is how your engine is designed to take advantage of the octane rating of gasolines, and for some engines the octane is critical. Most higher performance engines need to have higher octane gasoline because they run at higher compression ratios. The muscle cars of old ran some very high compression ratios, some 12 to 1 or higher.

This loaded a lot of energy in that cylinder before the gas exploded, thus giving higher horse power. The octane ratings were high decades ago, so they could do that. If you run too low an octane in an engine that is designed for say 93 octane minimum, what happens is that the fuel air charge explodes before the spark plug actually lights it off just from the high cylinder pressure. This is called pre-ignition, sometimes called "knocking" maybe you remember a car or two that "dieseled" on you once or twice, ran after you turned the engine off, this from the fuel self exploding with no spark required. Pre-ignition is very damaging to your engine, it will destroy internal parts, major parts such as connecting rod bearings.

If your engine is designed for high octane gas, you must run that minimum octane rated gas or risk doing serious damage. If your engine is not designed for it, it gives little to no benefit at all to run fuel with a higher octane than the minimum required because your engine is not designed to take advantage of it.

If I'm not mistaken Toluene is what the gas companies use to boost octane ratings, I know that's what the old muscle car heads use if they need more octane. Those Discount auto octane boosters like "Firepower 104" pretty much do squat. I believe it's somewhere around 1 gallon of Toluene to 15 gallons of gas to raise the octane about 5 or 6 points, makes the difference if you have a high compression/performance engine and there is no high octane gas available.

Hey man im just letting you know as a studying technician.Soon to be ASE certified. If you guys want to put this in your gasoline its fine by me ,just be warned. In the long run you'll be paying me to replace your engine.

As a chemist and car buff, adding acetone to gasoline is no better, and probably worse, than adding STP gas treatment.

Acetone at that level CANNOT reduce the surface tension of gasoline enough to allow for finer droplets to be formed in the piston chamber (one theory) and is not enough added oxygen (Acetone is 27% oxygen, ethanol is 34%) to have any increased burning efficiency (theory #2).

There is no common household chemical being hidden from the public to increase fuel consumption. Trust me, if there was the automotive enthusiast (especially racers) would already be using it successfully with enough data posted all over the internet to prove without doubt it works.

Best bet for fuel mileage is to keep your car properly tuned.

Selected Octane numbers of some hydrocarbons and gasoline additives:

Octane - Octane number -20
Pentane - Octane number 62
2,2,4-Trimethylepentane (isoocatne) - Octane Number 100
Benzene - Octane number 106
Methanol - Octane number 107
Ethanol - Octane number 109
Tertiary-butyl alcohol - Octane number 113
Toluene - Octane number 118

Example of power availablilities:
Heat of combustion of ethanol vs octane
ethanol -1277.37 kJ/L, molar mass 46.069g/mol
octane -5116.4 kJ/L, molar mass 114.23g/mol

energy equates to:
ethanol produces -2.19x10(4) kJ/L
octane produces -3.15x10(4) kJ/L
approximately 50% more energy is released from 1L of octane than from 1L of ethanol

Given the above data, we can surmise that the alcohol-based fuels will burn cleaner but provide less thermal expansion energy for driving your motor vehicles. Perhaps the fact that manufacturers of fuel already add various types of these additives to their products, it could be theorized that adjusting the fuel ratios on your own vehicle may help or hurt your performance/fuel economy depending on how well matched your car is to that specific fuel mixture provided from each supplier.

Perhaps the only way to find out the truth is through experimentation and empirical evidence, the old-fashioned way!

If you wanted to calculate actual milage gains, you would have to restrict the control factors much more closely than "I filled up at Station X, and got Z miles out of the tank", replacing that instead with "I filled up at Station X only, with average outside ambient temperature a constant X degrees for each fill, and drove the car with X percent throttle only" and so on. Anyone got that kind of time for our GLP experiments?

I just added this to my 87 Cadillac: Novak Water Vapor Injector

pic/plans:
[link to blizzard.rwic.und.edu]


link with explanation:
[link to blizzard.rwic.und.edu]

Note:
There is steam coming out of my tailpipe :) looks cool driving down the road

We use a local product called "RxP."

www.rxp.com

My son was able to pass an emissions test on his beater 1991 Park Avenue the second time around after using the RxP. He failed it the first go. The tech was floored when my son came back the next weekend and passed with flying colors.

I use it on my 2003 Chevy Tahoe about every 4 to 6 months. We always use it on long distance trips, too. It cleans the gunk out. I get the same gas mileage now as I did when the Tahoe was new.

Without the RxP, my mileage was heavily impacted by the decline in mileage caused by an ethanol blend.

People don't realize that ethanol reduces mileage per gallon. The gas producers have all of us by the short ones. We are required to use E85 here, and since it's an inefficient fuel we use MORE of it. The gas producers happily skip to the bank.

On the topic of compatabilities:

..from chemical resistance chart (lifted from Cole-Parmer catalog) common trade names were substituted for chemical names

the following are marked "A" on the unleaded gas column:
Delrin, Epoxy, Nylon, Polycarbonate, Ryton, Teflon, Kynar, Nitrile, Hypalon, PCTFE, Viton

of those, we will see which are compatible with actone:
Delrin, Nylon, Ryton, PTFE, PCTFE

As you can see, not all parts will be compatable. Your results may vary of course, particularly since only a small amount of acetone is recommended for usage not full strength application.

Another reference site you can use (especially if you can determine the composition of the types of materials used by your car's manufacturer or if you wish to replace your current system's seals) is McMaster-Carr's database: [link to www.mcmaster.com]

type "o-rings" in the find products box, then click on "About O-ring materials". The accompanying chart provided by the site will detail compatabilities for "gasoline" and "ketones" which describes the group acetone belongs to. Have fun!

Hey here's an idea to save gas...Just drive a fuckin economical car!
I know, what kind of a foolish crazy idea is that.
How is that going to save gas? What was I thinking.