While searching for information on Acetone at work, I found an interesting article about mixing Acetone with gasoline or diesel fuel for better gas mileage, longer engine life, and better performance. Has anybody ever tried this with their daily driver, or maybe even their sandrail or bikes?

It’s a long article but I found it to be pretty interesting.

http://www.lubedev.com/articles/additive.htm

I've tried it in both my GSXR and my V-10 Excursion... Didn't notice any increase worth continuing for...

I've been using it on my diesel truck and Toyota diesel. I'm seeing increases between 5-10%, but not quite what they're claiming. I may not have fine tuned the ratio, who knows.

A good ol’ boy who used to drive diesel semi-trucks said he put Isopropyl alcohol in his tanks to help it run cleaner and such, but I never tried it. This actually sounds like it maight have some merit to it.

According to one of the websites I read, the underlying principle is based on free electrons helping to promote a more efficient burn of the existing fuel.

I really don't understand this chemical reaction well enough to explain it. Or to argue against it either.

I know someone who has used 4oz to every 10gal in his mustang. He has seen a 2-3mpg increase.

Here are some curves that depict the effect of acetone in gas or diesel engines.

Curves A, B and C are for various unspecified gas engines, D is for a diesel engine. This is in ounces of acetone per 10 gal of fuel.

I prefer mixing Propane with my Diesel & Nitrous with my Gas.....

So they are claiming that adding 2oz of acetone to every 10 gals of diesel will net you roughly a 20% increase in mileage? I find that a little difficult to believe -- sounds like a high number to me....but interested in hearing more from people who have done it.

read your PMs Kent.

Come on Copper, tell us all....

Check your PMs Copper

It sounds like some people here have tried it. I'd like to hear from a few more that have tried it as well.

I use to put Acetone with Methanol, almost 30 years ago I had a custom 3 wheeler with a DT 250 Yamaha motor, To run a 2 stroke on Methanol you have to put the same amount of acetone to oil to catalyze it and if you don't it don't run I tried it just to see it don't run very long with out it

It would be interesting to see a chemist's perspective on this.
Be carefull everyone the oil companies might be watching .

I've tried it in my GM diesel. It was worth about 8-13% increase.
I have heard about 20% in a gas engine is normal. It only costs about .21 cents a tankful.

Carl

I'll have to try it with my peanut oil/motor oil mixture...

Speaking of that Jeff, how's that going?

No problems. Peanut oil runs better than motor oil though. I try to keep the motor oil less than 10%. I'll go 30% on the peanut.

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OK. This is the stuff I really like to mess with, so I'll stick my neck out here.

Acetone, (CH3)2CO in general use thermodynamics, will absorb oxygen into
a heavier compound with carbon.
Gasoline, as we all know, has lots of carbon, and there is (hopefully) alot of
oxygen to be had. So, in chemical terms we do have an opportunity to "get" some free O into our equation.
But here's the rub! (CH3)2CO has a very low (in comparison) boiling point, about 128f degrees. C86H14 (good gas) has a boiling point up to 4! times higher. So, it would stand on reason that we could loose a lot of our (CH3)2CO just in the heat losses in the intake stream, As a result, we would have to mix a "bucket-load" of the acetone to keep our supposedly "free" oxygen in some sort of useful gain by proportion in the combustion event. And since the specific gravity of acetone is just a 'tick' heavier than gas, you are going to need a much bigger fuel tank.
BTW, the latent heat of vaporization for acetone is about half that of methanol, which in itself has about half the latency of gasoline, which means to say, that for every ounce burned it takes 4 times the amount of acetone to get the same calorie
release of the same ounce (by volume) of gasoline.
Now if I could just figure out that magnetic bubble thing..............