Good news and bad news here....Since acetone is a solvent it will clean the fuel system as it goes thru, along with softening all rubber and neoprene parts in the fuel system.

In the past we used it as a tire softening agent and as an octane booster. When used as a booster it was about 16 gal AV gas to 1gal acetone.

This was not for a street vehicle, carb not FI, fuel never sat in the lines for more than a day and used under very carefully controlled conditions! Read don't try this at home. It is toxic! See MSDS

Is that enough disclaimers?

sprntpshr

 

Berryman B-12 contains acetone, I would think in small amounts any possible seal swelling, etc. would be unnoticeable. I am sure others contain acetone also.

Gunk fuel injection air intake cleaner contains acetone, to name a couple. Lots use "Proprietary" chemicals, who knows what this is?

Ramjamhemi, can you shed any more light on this subject?

Thanks.

 

I went to Berryman's web site and looked at their MSDS sheets for the octane boost products they sell. I also looked at the fuel injection cleaners as well. Most of the octane boosters did have 5-10% Acetone, and if the container is 11-12oz, than you can expect to see about 1oz of Acetone, which fits some of the data you see flying around about how much to add to your tank of gas. Someone could make the argument that 1oz of Acetone is the perfect amount and all the other chemicals support the Acetone in some way. If that is the case, then anyone should be able to buy B-12 off the shelf, pour it in the tank, and see the ridiculous milage increase claims we see just with Acetone right? In my time on this earth, and when I was younger, I looked for the "horsepower/mpg in a bottle" and tried many of them with usually no measurable result. The ONLY time I saw/felt any kind of benefit was to add octane boost and physically increase the timing advance on a 1970 Camaro I had with a pretty stout engine. I could argue that it worked in this case because the engine had a big carb, a good flowing intake, good aftermarket heads, headers, a H pipe, and good high flow mufflers thru dual exhaust. The engine had untapped potential that the increase in octane and timing released. It is not always the case, but for the most part, increasing horsepower will help with gas milage if you can keep your foot off the accelerator.

Only one of the injection cleaners contained Acetone, and it was for in-rail use.

I know for a fact that just increasing the octane rating of gasoline does not automatically increase power. The engine has to be able to use it. The only way for this to work is if you engine is already on the ragged edge of needing higher octane (as can be the case sometimes with the HEMI engines in the Ram's. The owner's manual itself is even conflicting weither it's acceptable to run 87 octane or go up to 89.) or you tell the engine to increase the timing by using a programmer of some type (SuperChips, Diablo, Hypetech, etc...) have your PCM reflashed, or purchase an aftermarket PCM.

It's been my understanding as well, that you are better off purchasing the correct octane of gas rather than adding a boost. Example, buying 87 octance gas and hoping to push it to 91 or beyond with octane booster. It's probably cheaper to buy the fuel at the octane you want. This of course may not apply for the racers out there with high compression engines and limited access to the good stuff.

In a nutshell, I don't recommend adding anything to your gas except the occasional bottle of fuel system cleaner. Same goes for oil. Buy a good base stock of oil, change it regularly, and leave the "mystery" chemicals on the shelf. Use the money you have saved to buy a new intake, injectors, programmer, headers, high flow cat, high flow muffler, etc... Even changing out fluids in your diff and transfer case to synthetic will help a bit with milage, and provide better protection.

Go check out bobistheiolguy web site for info about oil. I haven't looked, but he may even have discussions about fuel additives. His site is so full of info, it would take me months to read it all and make an educated decision on what's there.

 

read the bottles it also says to use every 3,000 miles

 

Make's an excellant penatrting oil thats for sure.

 

i have been using marvel mystery oil, for about 3 decades. it does good, cause its made to go through a combustion chamber, trans fluid is not. iam not saying you should use it to. its getting hard to find in one gal jugs. dont leave the one gal jugs outside,in cold weather, in winter they will crack and break.

 

I just use Seafoam, or better yet, Chevron Techron. That stuff plain works!

 

My 2 cents,
In my (3.5 year) experiments with PURE Acetone (NOT the stuff from the Hardware store or some Paint Supply) 100% Pure Acetone from the Drug store Nail Polish Isle.
I had done this in our 98 Jeep Cherokee, 03 PT Cruiser, 99 Lincoln Town Car, my 00 Dakota 3.9 SLT.
In my tests in my routine drive to work vehicle (71 miles round trip E/way 5 days a week) IT WORKS.
The final ratio is 5 oz per gallon of regular pump gas.
My preliminary steps to this was:
1. New Bosch Platinum Plus-4 Plugs.
2. New wires cap and rotor except Lincoln where It has COP and I just had ALL 8 coils checked - OK.
3. New K&N Airfilter
4. Oil change and filter with 5w-20 Castrol GTX
5. Had any/all faults (if there were any at all) cleared from Computer. Started fresh.
NO OTHER CHANGES WERE PERFORMED TO ANY OF THESE CARS OTHER THAN ABOVE.
Ran one full tank through the vehicle at the above ratio. Let the 'Puter RE-LEARN (NOT like the guys on MYTH BUSTERS who just dumped it in and drove). Took the below results on the 3rd tank with Acetone. These numbers have remained ever since.
Results:
After tune up, air and oil filter = fresh start
Jeep 4.0 with 80k miles: Initial 21.8 mpg - improved to 24.2 with Acetone.
PT Cruiser 2.5 with 10k miles: Initial 23.3 mpg - improved to 25.1 with Acetone
99 Lincoln 4.6 with 84k miles: Initial 25.0 mpg - improved to 27.9 with Acetone
00 Dakota 3.9 SLT with 198K miles: Initial 21.3 mpg - improved to 23.0 with Acetone
NOTE: The Initial test was with 2 full tanks of regular pump gas. Acetone tests were after (3rd) the 1st 2 tanks of regular pump gas and has been in them (5 oz per gallon) ever since. We sold the PT, but the other rides are still here.
I worked for a Comercial Airline and our Power Plant & Avionics Lab field technicions swear by it too.
Their explanation is that the Acetone breaks up the Surface Tension of the fuel. This is also a Long KNOWN effect with Acetone in Piston Engine Aircraft gasoline.
EX: In one single spray of the fuel injector there may be 1,200 droplets airborn into the Cylinder. Each droplet has so much surface to expose to the combustion process. With Acetone the SAME spray mist will have 2000, but smaller, droplets exposed to the combustion process. This registers a richer reading to the computer and cause it to back off on the amount of fuel required to sustain that particular RPM.
ERGO better Fuel Mileage.
Works for me still.
Another plus is engine oil changes have been increased to every 5000 miles from 3000 in ALL the above vehicles.
The drained oil appears/seems a lot cleaner with the Acetone use.
Another plus is, after a major melt down back in Sept '10 - due to a plugged Rad, in the 98 Cherokee, which now has 156k on it, I installed a reman head and was amazed how extreemly clean the combustion chambers were on the old head.
Terry

 

I don't want this to seem like I'm attacking you. I've read your other posts and you seem like a nice guy. I just see some holes in your science on this issue...

I think your approach to this issue scientifically needs to be improved for you to sell me on acetone working as well as you claim.

I think you changed too many things all at once to claim that it was the acetone that did it. Just changing out the mechanical parts and changing your driving style by itself is enough to see the increases in mpg that you claim.

Since you claim your mpg's have not changed for 3.5 years, I would like to see you stop using the acetone (and changing nothing else) for a couple of months and report those mpg figures as a comparison. I would also like to know average outside temperatures, and if you were burning summer or winter blend gas at the time you logged the data.

I also question your comment about your mileage not changing for the last 3.5 years. My mileage changes about 1-2 mpg with the change in summer to winter blend gasoline.

The only thing that makes some sense to me is that you are using 5oz of acetone per gallon of fuel. You will definitely get an octane increase with that amount. Plus, if you read my previous post (#13) octane increase does not always result in an increase in hp or mpg, only if the engine can utilize it.

I'll use my Dak as an example for the following: if you add 5oz acetone per gallon of fuel, I would need to add 90oz for my 18 gallon tank. Thats 2.8 quarts of acetone for a fill up. I am finding quart size containers of acetone for about $10. So you are telling us that you are adding about $28 worth of acetone per tankful to get the mileage increases you claim? So $28 in acetone gets me an additional 3mpg? well, 3mpg times 18 gallons = 54 extra miles I can travel. 54 miles divided by the 19 mpg my truck gets me 2.8 gallons of gas saved. 2.8 gallons times $2.80 per gallon of gas in my area = $7.84. So if I followed your example, I would spend $28 on acetone to save $7.84!

let me repeat the last statement: So if I followed your example, I would spend $28 on acetone to save $7.84!

Even if my price for acetone is high, acetone in a quart can would need to be $2.80 a can JUST TO BREAK EVEN. I don't think I'm that far off.

Something is really wrong here....

 

The thing about trans fluid in the gas does work, I have even been known to pour trans fluid straight into carbs or throttle bodys to free sticky valves. putting it in the oil has advantages too. the guy that mentioned his dad telling him to put some kerosene in the oil, yes it does help clean up the gunk. and it don't hurt anything. I have on several cars that were very bad drained the oil put a gal, of straight kerosene in the cranckcase. crank it let it Idle for about 10 min. drain change the filter and you will be surprised at how much crap comes out. don't rev. or drive the vehicle with the kerosene in it. kerosene is oily enough to lube the engine at idle, but don't put any load on it. I've been doing both these tricks for 40 yrs. and my dad did it before me. yes they work.