RCTecher12

iTrader: (1)

We can chat off-site about that.

NitroVein

We are usually all in to a hobby for different reasons.
Most things on your list are for me enjoyable, but I like the technical part, finding problems and solve them. But I understand that some struggle or just find it a chore.
Mixing a fuel that's on par with most fuels on the market isn't time consuming, far from it, and it isn't rocket science either. Beyond that, well then it gets more tricky, or at least time consuming.

cerberoz

I've used Tornado fuel the last 4 years with good results. Since Jonker (produced Tornado fuel brand) is out of business, i tried different brands and ended up getting my fuel mixed. Good price and great service, normally i run fuel with 10-11% synthetic oil and 1% Rizinus-oil, 25% nitromethane

hairymuffin

iTrader: (105)

SOME brands are not consistent gallon to gallon,one reason mugen went away from Byron’s. I grew up using Byron’s in the 90’s when it was yellow. Not sure how it is now over the past 5 years but I experienced this first hand. YOu see when Adam came to mugen, so did the new fuel. Bryson’s is by far one of the opal pioneers of nitro fuel still standing.

Back in n the 90’s there was a fuel some of the top guys ran, made in Texas,had this sweet smell to it. Was is Speedline?

RCTecher12

iTrader: (1)

The price of pure nitromethane has gone up considerably from last season. It’s about $76/gal now. Looks like I’ll have to find some guys to do a group purchase of a 5gal can for $250 shipped if I can’t find any locally. I’m looking into that currently.

houston

iTrader: (96)

hmmmmmm .... one main reason i have ran byrons for 15yrs is that the fuel is always consistent

if there ever happens to be any issues i just work it out with the owner of byrons and it is sorted out rather quickly


byron fuels is was and has been one of the best fuel mixers ever !!!

closed loop computer controlled mixing...... it doesnt get any better for consistency ..... the price has went up dramatically though .... uggggh

am

I have found Byrons to be very consistent, but, usually there is one container shipped in and we have that for a season here.

what i do not like so much abaout Byrons is, it has a very "violant" powercurve. Makes your engine just BAM and away. Many people think the reasson is the engine/exhaust/glowplug/clutch/gearing when it actually is the fuel... Some of the other fuels araound makes the engine more linear in power, yet you have ALOT of torque and great topspeed. Milage is increased to.

With Labema fuel, i get 30-45 seconds better runtime than i do with Byrons.

Could someone please explain that to me?

Roelof

Probably something to do with the speed of combustion. There is a slight rpm related shifting on the ignition timing due flex and cool down period of the glowplug and over the range the fuel has to work with it. But it is possible that a too fast or to slow combustion can go out of phase with the ignition in certain rpm ranges.

Donat

Hi Guys,
thank you for a lot of valuable information in this thread!
I've read it completely and to be honest I'm starting to think about mixing my own fuel soon. Just need to gain some more knowledge to be more comfortable with putting it through my $500 engine... Would be a shame messing it up which I'm a bit affraid of.

At the moment I have some stock of Nitrolux 25% fuel for my OS - do you have any opinion on that fuel? I've heard that it pretty 'dry'.

I also have a spare Alpha that has been running on Rapicon 25% fuel which was badly reviewed in this thread... I have to use the gallon that I have however... How much castor oil (and what kind of) would you recommend using to make it safer for the engine?


Sorry if these questions are basic.
I'm not new to nitro RC but I'm new to getting familiar with fuel content. I'll appreciate any help

houston

iTrader: (96)

you might wanna put some more synthetic and castor in nitrolux

ive seen the aftermath of the stuff

recommend klotz kl100 .... about 1 oz per gallon

gt racing

let me please try it as we did all this tests some years ago before we started our own fuel company.

nitro racing fuel is made just out of 3 components.
so not soooo much parameters to change.

letīs assume that we have highest quality (pureness) of nitro & methanol and some highest quality oil (in our case we decided to AE3).

we now just change levels of this 3.

fuel 1:
"real" 25% or USA 30% nitro
fuel 2:
20 or even 16% nitro

both driven in 1/8 buggy, the 16% will feel smooth, stable and dialed, easy to tune.
the maxed out one will of course feel snappy, harder to tune, but also stable, more on "on/off" style feeling.

PROBLEM IS in this industry (and i will not go away from this point, as we measured it and proved it):

fuels have "30" and "25" and cool sounding names on their label, BUT are made of poor quality raw materials AND

NOT A SINGLE ONE WE TESTED from random manufacturer had have the printed nitro level in it!
NO ONE, all below, aome way below.
in know thats a huge pill to swallow, but we measured it, and made hundreds of tests.
NO USA fuels were tested, all german or european btw!!

i will not call out names, just some info you have to have in mind when choosing fuel.

buggy test day made, 2 bottles standing there NOT labeled:
1) 30% low oil content (about 10%)
2) 16% slightly higher oil, (about 11%)

9 out of 10 choosing 16% without knowing it, it just feels better overall, cooler, more run time etc...

in ON-road it would be the exact opposite, because they need the power and feel the slight lack of pure power and revs right away.

EXAMPLE #2:

2 exact same leveled fuels, BUT 1 is made out of bad pureness methanol/nitro
and 1 is made out of highest purity available. (earlier post i talked this topic).

high quality fuel will be way better in every line, more run time, stable, smoother, cleaner engine internals of course.

synth. oil only fuels will always be slightly more snappy than fuels with added castor.

and we did nnot talk about changing conditions meaning in specail what fuel works in every temperature from lets say about freezing point in winter races (montpellier last weekend in france) and super hot outside temps. conditions.

huge difference again.
for us, only component here to change is oil.
we figured out that a mix of castor & synth is better overall in special in super hot conditions its more consistent and feels more stable also when climate changes on one day or over the weekend.

hope you all get my points, sorry again english is not my main language.

so guys, as there is no further/deeper rules or controlling from the association or kind like that, there can be anything in your can.
most extreme fuel we measured was named "25" and we found 11% of nitro.
And sorry to say that it was an extremely well used and known fuel in germany by that time.

never try to safe some dollars at fuel when you already spend thousands in equipment.

RCTecher12

iTrader: (1)

Gt Racing - I’d be interested in seeing your test results that you’re speaking of in your post. Can you PM me some info about your fuel tests? Nice write-up BTW. I know some fuels in the USA are guilty of the same problem (cheaped out on Nitro content). It’s nice running a fuel that I know has in it what the can says it has, and it’s super consistent and easy to tune. A good fuel needs to be consistent AND be true to the label. 25% Nitro should be 25% Nitro. By volume.

gt racing

in this case i am sorry to write that, but buggy drivers, even very experienced ones, are easy to trick, because everyone wants an easy to tune, stable fuel.
power is secondary.
on top of that almost no one really knows how a "real, honest 25% nitro content feels and runs, because they dont really know how much nitro they are "really" runnin.

when fuel is exact and real, you can easy run p5 plugs in an OS to smooth things out.
when you only get your OS based engine running ok with P3, you can be 99% sure fuel is garbage.

from manuf. sight, produce fuel with for example 3 or 8% less nitro, safe huge amounts of money because nitro is most expensive and not only no one will notice, they are even going to call you and wish more of that fuel because now it runs cooler, more runtime etc.... funny isnīit?
P3 is "the" plug anyway, no even thinks about using a colder plug.

thats the reason why iīm always go "smh" when they all compare run-times and set-ups of engines and pipes, plugs etc at the track or even worse onlline.

you just canīt compare anything if the systems are not using same fuel.

some customers didnīt quite understand back then and kept using P3, "engine eats a plug every gallon, your fuel is garbage"
"no its actually real 25% nitro, so please use a p4 and/or add shims under the head because p3 is way too hot now."

gt racing

so, i have written A LOT now, but conclusion is actually super easy:
there is no magic, just understand how simple it is.

high purity is a must and this is expensive. so stay away from cheap fuel.
keep car fuel system & filters super clean.
keep cans closed and use them up quickly to keep fuel consistent.
after standing still for some time, ALWAYS mix can before filling fuel bottle.
all in all black coated internals and even black built up on the piston is 100% proof of bad quality fuel (castor).


fuel with castor is way more sensible for cold, hot and sun light in terms of storage and longevity.

NitroVein

If you only used one oil during your tests and that was Aerosynth 3, then I can understand that you came to some of the conclusions that you did. Some of them are wrong and some of them are right.

Fuel with only synthetic oil will Not always be snappier, what the oil is made from has little to do with that.
But some of the conclusions you made earlier is completely dependent on the type of oil you're using.

Do you know why you experienced a more stable fuel with some castor in it? Do you know when it's not?
Do you know why you came to the conclusion that more nitro makes it harder to tune or that it runs hotter?

I agree that most people running offroad doesn't know or even want a fuel with too much nitro, just look a how much people are de-tuning their engines with small carb inserts.

There are bad oils that leave the engine clean, and there are excellent oils that leave them slightly dirty. The engine doesn't see what the human eye does.
There are even racing oils formulated to leave deposits.

So no, sorry but you seem to have made some wrong conclusions based on inadequate information.
But I do agree in that it doesn't need to be difficult, pure components and follow what some engine mfg suggest and it will work as well as most fuels on the market, though how you mix the fuel can have an impact.