Quote:
Originally Posted by manmanyi
I haven't tested Borpower, but the promises of increased power and reduced friction are interesting. Many additives make great promises, but the real results vary according to the engine and the use. If a serious magazine is talking about it, it might be worth a try. Has anyone here ever tested and seen a difference?
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- Yes. I have!
- There's also a ton of linked peer reviewed, published research in this thread, including running engines.
- Then there's a good number of people who added BA powder to their oil and reported their results in other forums linked here.
I did things somewhat differently:
All the research was about 'How fine can you make the BA powder' to be added to the oil as that kept it in suspension and just worked better.
I deduced/decided that you couldn't get any finer than dissolved.
And that the ideal solvent was in fact water!
IMHO, based on actual personal experimentation the above works unbelievably (apparently!) well.
As the layer/s formed by BA is around 0.5 microns thick, it removes 2 microns of play from bearings and pistons/sleeves, etc.
So I suggested testing on old smokey engines that are about to be rebuilt anyway.
Despite research engines at universities etc running better than new with BA added; the ...er... 'views' stated here (all 2 of them) is that doing so is more likely to result in a small nuclear meltdown with radio active shrapnel headed directly toward the driver's head!
If you'd like to experiment either way; I'm happy to advise manmanyi.
The best DIY @ home method of creating very fine BA power, for the conventional method of testing, that I have found is:
- Fill a coffee grinder with BA and put it in the bottom (coldest) of a freezer for a day or 2. The idea here is to make the (water heavy by it's nature) BA powder as brittle as possible so the grinder can break the particles easily.
- Then you remove the BA filled grinder and immediately run it.
- Then give the dust a moment to settle and open the grinder and let the powder warm up, with the occasional, by hand, stir. This will attract a bit of (the desired) moisture out of the air.
- Then back in the freezer and repeat 3 or 4 times.
- Then add around 10% (by weight/eye) to the however much oil the engine takes.
Although I dissolved much of the above processed powder in boiling water, I went to the trouble of doing this as I oversaturated my solution.
ie: There was more powder than would all dissolve in my 'cup of' hot water.
My method 'kicked in' in around 10-20 km of slow, easy driving (thinner oil till the excess water 'boils' off),
whereas just adding the powder alone takes a lot longer as you are waiting for the engine to produce water, (HC + O2 = H2O + carbon this-n-that) some of which gets past the rings into the oil.
That's 'come back in 1000 km'.
Also; you can't get BA much finer than dissolved!
BA is sold as ant/roach poison at chemist shops here.
If you want to go the conventional method and pay through the nose; MotorSilk is the product name to search.