Write up available on my website: http://evo.jedinite.com

Direct link: http://evo.jedinite.com/toluene.html

 

Have you / anyone tried it ? Any feedback good or bad ?

 

have you done this yourself yet?

 

Not yet - haven't been able to find toluene at my local hardware store.

 

I believe someone said that if you can't find Toulene (Because it's common for substance abuse so it's been removed from many places) But to look for Xylene (I believe) It works much the same. I'll have to remember where I read this info (it escapes me at the moment)

Jay

 

original thread here:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...threadid=24533

JBRENNEN Posted:

I've been doing some research into toluene, and its cousin xylene... My findings:

It's hard to find toluene, at least in my region. It's abused as an inhalant, and it's apparently used by some to make methamphetamine, and a lot of stores just don't carry it -- they don't want drug abusers and manufacturers' business.

You can find Xylene, which is very similar chemically. Toluene is methyl benzene, Xylene is di-methyl benzene. Twice the methyl, twice the fun.

Xylene is available at Home Depot in my area, for around $8 a gallon.

Xylene is virtually interchangeable with toluene as an octane booster. In either case, I wouldn't exceed a 1:3 ratio of toluene/xylene to gasoline, even though some will go as high as a 1:2 ratio. The reason is that toluene/xylene doesn't have any lubricants, detergents, or any of the other beneficial gasoline additives.

As far as the "warnings" about xylene's (or toluene's) toxicity, yes, it's toxic and can be dangerous if you're not careful. But it's almost certainly safer than gasoline in almost every way that matters -- less toxic, higher flashpoint (less likely to explode). Toluene and xylene break down into "less harmful" chemicals in sunlight. If you treat toluene/xylene with the respect that you treat gasoline, you'll have no problems.

One last thing -- during the turbo era of Formula 1 in the 1980s, most of the F-1 cars were running a fuel which was about 84% toluene. And they were extracting close to 1500 hp out of a 1.5 liter engine. Obviously, you won't see those results yourself, but give it a try.

Just FYI not sure how it works becuase I haven't tried. Good Luck Everyone!

 

Might want to try looking for that one and let us all know how it works out for you Jedinite!

Jay

 

I gave it a try -- I bought a gallon of Xylene and poured it into my tank. I'm guessing it was about a 10:1 mixture, which should have upped my octane to about 96 octane, since I started with 94 octane.

I didn't do any acceleration, top end, dyno, or other objective measurements of its performance impact...

My general impression was that the car felt the same with the xylene mixture as it did on pump gas. No better, no worse.

I'm not sufficiently motivated to get back-to-back baseline dyno runs on pump gas and then on a gasoline-xylene blend, although that would be interesting.

I found one more thing on the web while researching, which seems to indicate that xylene is a pretty expensive way of increasing octane:

From http://www.auburnextremeracing.com/info/octane/

Note that MMT is a manganese-based octane booster, and TEL is tetraethyl lead. As far as methanol goes, I wouldn't risk putting it in my tank -- it's very nasty stuff, very corrosive.

But something doesn't fit. Unless I'm severely mistaken, I boosted 10 gallons of fuel by two octane units for about $8, which is about 40 cents per unit per gallon, nowhere near $3.25.

 

jbrennen, I think the reason you're not noticing any difference is due to the fact you've already got 94 octane in your car which is sufficient enough for maximum power in the Evo when stock. Especially if you didn't do any WOT runs. If the car's not under boost or suffering from low octane you probably won't notice anything at all. If the car doesn't need it it won't use it you might say. Now since I'm on **** 91 octane, just adding race fuel mix makes a nice difference. Response is crisper and the engine sounds healthy at WOT to redline where as normally it feels like it's chugging towards redline. I think for those that have access to 94 octane don't waste your money. But for us that are deprived of such wonderful things we need the steroids

 

Good point, Evilution. Bumping 94 to 96 is a totally different game than bumping 91 to 93 or 94.

But one thing that people can take from my experience is that I added a gallon of
"paint solvent" into my fuel tank and the car ran fine. If that makes you a bit more likely to try it yourself, go for it.

 

Thanks for the info Jb.. I've never felt so safe as to add paint solvent to my car but definetly nice to know no ill effects!

 

This may sound a little simple but what is the best method to get the xylene in the tank. It is after all a paint cleaner and I'm sure spilage will not be good. Also won't xylene eat up a plastic contatiner or funnel?

 

I used a plastic funnel to pour the xylene from its metal can into a 1 gallon plastic "gas can" -- then I used the gas can to put the stuff in the tank using the normal procedure. The xylene wasn't in the funnel or the plastic gas can long enough to cause any trouble, only a minute or two. I have heard that xylene can damage plastic, but over a period of days or weeks, not minutes.

I did spill some xylene on the ground, and a much smaller amount on the car near the gas cap. The xylene on the ground will evaporate within a day or two, and since the temperature outdoors was well below the flashpoint of xylene, it wasn't at any real risk of catching fire. But I did dump a couple of quarts of water on it to cause it to disperse a little -- it's not soluble in water, but I figured that a larger "oil slick" of xylene in the driveway was better than a small (3-4 inch) "puddle" of concentrated flammable liquid.

The spill onto the car, I also flushed with water, and then wiped repeatedly with non-abrasive paper towels until it was dry to the touch. I didn't see any paint damage. I didn't think of it at the time, but I bet that spraying some WD-40 would probably dissolve the xylene and it would clean right off no problem.

Don't mess with xylene in your garage -- do it outdoors where you don't have ventilation issues.

 

This stuff (Toluene) works amazingly. I used a 20% mix in my WRX with 91 octane...effectively bumping the octane to approximately 95.8. With my utec, I have already added 2 degrees of timing everywhere. No detonation, no hint of detonation. I am going to try to add more low RPM timing to get the car up on the boost sooner. I will push it to the limits.

I would guess that I am running upwards of 320WHP on the dynojet with a rich A:F (10.9:1).

Bottom line...race gas is expensive. So is Toluene when purchased by the gallon.

Also, If you add some atf to the mix...say 40:1 or 50:1, you will handle your lubrication issues.

later,
Andy

 

jbrennen, thanks for the detailed description.

So thinking out loud, it if 'cut' the xylene 1:4 with 93 octane fuel could I then use a 5 gallon plastic gas can? My thinking here is I would like to pre-mix teh fuel before I put it into the car. Secondly, I could make some and add it just for special occasions. (Although the though of storing it in my garage doesn't sound too good.)

Another topic... is with out electronics to control my timing, AF and so forth what is the max octane the ECU will respond to?