RC cars

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when was running RC cars years ago. i thought i wanted to mix my own nitro. so i bought a hydrometer. they are not cheap. and i bought the nitro, methanol, castor oil. mixed like i read by SG. then i saw a kid on YOU TUBE doing the same thing only by volume thinking he was right. he wasnt nice when i told him i thought he was doing it wrong. that was 5 years ago. was i doing it right? i liking asking that Q like that HERE cause i know ill get the right answer.
 
I raced nitro boats through the 90s and early 2000s. everything from 20% to 60% nitro mix. There was a ongoing debate on the amount weight vs volume for nitro that never got settled.

I always mixed by volume and never had an issue.

The densities are not that far off so it is close either way.

Nitro being 1.3g/cc
methanol 1.1g/cc
and castor oil beign 0.95g/cc

you learn the limits be experimentation (lower oil content and increase nitro until the engine starting eating itself.
then back off.

Let not even talk about polypropylene oxide additive which works really well but is poisonous.
 
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Originally Posted By: danez_yoda
Let not even talk about polypropylene oxide additive which works really well but is poisonous.


Interesting....

Also heard about full strength Hydrogen Peroxide as a fuel additive (drugstore stuff is 97% water)
 
thanks for your input. one time on a high level RC car my friend and i was testing top MPH in a distance of 70 ft. we ran 50%, 60%, 70%. MPH was 47, 49, 51 but it was lifting the ft wheels. OH MY.
 
shocked.gif
 
Originally Posted By: red7404
thanks for your input. one time on a high level RC car my friend and i was testing top MPH in a distance of 70 ft. we ran 50%, 60%, 70%. MPH was 47, 49, 51 but it was lifting the ft wheels. OH MY.


Thats the racers endless circle. Increase hp until the car cant take it. Then increase the car to take the hp then increase the hp more. Repeat until you run out of money.

Yup but the bigger gains were from reducing the oil%. Some of the fancy synthetic oils could be run in the single % range and still lube the engine. It was walking a razor blade though. One lean run and you have a block of aluminum for the scrap heap.
 
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I used to mix my own nitro fuels for my cars around 2006 or so. If you use a good quality castor oil (Klotz is what I used) you could easily drop the oil under 10%. I think Mine was running somewhere around 7-8% if I remember right. Castor oil doesn't really burn that well, so it stays intact throughout the process and coats the parts (and also anything downwind of the exhaust pipe) whereas the synthetic based oils burned away so it was easy to run too lean and cause damage. Blue Thunder fuel was notorious for this having a synthetic oil only in it.
 
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