Interweb folklore.


Works about as good as the $4.99 reisitors and the "Tornado" air intake.



"A fool and his money are soon parted"

 

No, I wouldn't say that, and I surely wouldn't install a resistor or Tornado since they can do actual harm. One quart of acetone costs less than a gallon of gas and will allow you to test a minimum of 16 tanks of gas. I found an ounce and a quarter seemed to work best initially, but then as time went on, the gains disappeared. That quart can of acetone is also still useful as a solvent if your testing fails to improve your mileage. Not so the resistor or the Tornado. Pour it in the wife's nail polish remover bottle and she'll be happy for months.

I believe acetone has a detergent factor much the same as switching brands of gasoline is antagonistic to certain additives that cause carbon build up. Once it is cleaned up, things stabilise, and the gains disappear as new acetone resistant build up occurs.

Mixing an ounce or two of acetone into 14.5 gallons of gasoline changes the octane rating immeasurably. You would need a blending octane of about 400 to even make a tiny dent in the fuel's overall octane rating with mixing ratios like this. This is also why anyone claiming to significantly alter the octane in a 14+ gallon fuel tank with only a pint or a quart of anything is smoking crack. It just doesn't happen that way.

Finally, if you read real world tests of toluene and xylene, you'll find they don't deliver octane increases in a linear fashion, and both are "dry" fuels so they require some amount of oil added to ensure the fuel pump and the injectors don't seize. Oil has a horribly low octane rating. It's a far simpler and more reliable method to just buy unleaded race gas and mix it with standard pump gas if you need more octane. I've been doing that with my Supra for quite some time with excellent results.