iceman_88

Hey guys,

Just wanted to know if my nitro fuel is stale. I can light it with a match and it catches fire instantly but when I use a glow plug (old and brand new) it does not ignite. Fuel has been stored air tight in the cool, dark and is about 4months old.

Vintageguy

iTrader: (63)

Make sure your ignitor is good (charged).

dmartin

Make sure you're priming your carb with fuel. Keep the ignitor off and push your car down on the starter box while placing your finger over the exhaust pipe stinger. Stop after a few seconds when you hear the rpms go up a little. The other way to prime the carb is to pull the pressure line off of your pipe and blow into the line in order to force fuel into the engine and then reattach the line to the pipe. If your engine does not start after following these steps your ignitor is dead, plug is bad , your starter box isnt spinning fast enough and needs charged or your carb settings are way off. Fuel doesn't usually go bad if its in a sealed container at regular room temperature.

Roelof

Using the ignitor to set the fuel on fire does not work. The fuel itself is not highly flamable but the damp. Using a lighter you will create lots of damp setting it on fire, an ignitor is just to small to create enough damp.

In the enigine it is different, the compression is making the ignition possible.

Gavel

iTrader: (6)

Air tight and in a cool spot, fuel should last a year, easy, i doubt its that

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

The glowplug doesn't get hot enough to ignite the fuel on its own. The fuel mixture also requires vaporizing and mixing with air, then pre-heating by compression, in order to ignite explosively; the glowplug just retains a little extra heat from the previous combustion cycle to push the next batch of fuel mixture over the edge, and it provides a predictable location for the flame-front to start burning.

Have you actually had any problems with the fuel, or are you just curious?

FLDan

You're probably good. I've actually used fuel I had stored for a couple years with no problems. There's no telling how long the stuff sits on a shelf somewhere before you buy it..

mrosique

Before filling the car deposit, you have to shake the bottle of nitro in order to mix the fuel components. I always do it.

Vintageguy

iTrader: (63)

I didn't say use the ignitor to test the fuel. I simply said to make sure the ignitor was good. The chances of the fuel being bad is highly unlikely. Over the many years I have seen people ask "is my fuel bad" when in fact thier fuel is just fine. However, thier ignitor was completely dead.

FirebladeRX7

iTrader: (4)

Check your plug and igniter, I recently ran a newly recommissioned truggy project on 4+ year old O'Donnel fuel just to test it out before buying new fuel, and it ran okay, down on power from the lack of nitro, but the temperatures were fairly consistent (needed a hot glowplug to be happy though). Another thing I've always done is keep that red plastic cap in the bottle. I don't know if it actually helps or not, but I've never had fuel go catastrophically stale as long as I've been doing that.

iceman_88

Hey guys,

Thanks so much for the replies, really appreciate it. To update you the fuel wasn't the problem, the nitro engine had a compression problem. Fixed that and now the engine runs like a dream