Acetone. Lets get to the bottom of this
 

I do not care why or how it works I just want to know DOES it really work.

I plan to find out. There are several possibilities here.

First it does nothing I change
Second it does something
Third it does nothing but my car is broken and it tricks it into not being as broken.

First I need to eliminate #1 I am doing that right now. I ran acetone for many tanks (you can see the results in my Fuel Log) this last tank was FULLY no acetone IE less than 1 gallon gas was left with any mixed in acetone. My mileage dropped from 22-25mpg to 19mpg. To me thats pretty conclusive.

So I am going to go 2 more tanks with no acetone and see what happens. Then I am going to put acetone back in and see what happens. They take it off again see what happens. That should pretty clearly confirm or eliminate #1

Second there may be something wrong with my car #3 I have a MIL light on (service engine soon)

Someone suggested that if my o2 sensor failed or something was wrong and my car was in "crawl home" mode it would run really badly. Causing the low fuel economy and it may be that the acetone is fooling the compute into thinking there is no problem and so its not HELPING me by altering the fuel but help me by temp fixing a problem with the car.

How to confirm? find out what the mil light is fix the problem see how this effects economy. That would largely eliminate #3

IF all of this is positive and #2 is still a possibility the next step is to remove the driver from the equation.

I am not sure how well this will work since I will have to do it at idle. I am working on getting access to a dyno to add "strain" to the system since it may have a more measurable impact at speed than at idle. Idle for now is all I can do.

First I will disconnect the alternator and run the car on batteries. This will eliminate the alternator turning on or off at the wrong moment from skewing the results.

Next I will bypass the charcoal canister since I understand it has some fuel in it and there is no way to predict when the computer will decide to use this fuel and skewing the results.

I will disconnect my fuel pump and my fuel line mount a graduated cylinder on a stand fill this with fuel. I will run the car till it is worm normal operating temperature and let it run with enough fuel that I know all the fuel in the system is now this runs test fuel. Once I get the fuel level to the "start" mark I will start a stop watch. When it reaches the DONE mark I will stop the stopwatch. Economy will be seconds or minutes per gallon instead of miles per gallon.

This eliminates weather (I will monitor temperature for a large shift and retest if a large shift occurs) This eliminates road conditions and Wind this Eliminates Driver conditions such as me creating a placebo effect because I know its in there. I could even do a blind study by having someone else fill and mark the tubes and disclose afterwards which was acetone or not but since I will not be driving it this is not relevant.

Either way I am seeing difference so large they can not be ignored by "experimental errors" issues. Its not like I am seeing a 2% increase which can be explained away. I am seeing a 30% increase. Thats pretty hard to explain away. Even if 10% of that is environment and driver thats still a 20% difference.

I want to know for sure where its coming from. The why can come later.

I plan to use this thread to catalog everything I do. I will take notes video and pictures of every step as I do them. I figure the A B A B A Testing will take around 2 months. In that time I will begin work on the graduated cylinder test tank for the experiment.

What do you guys think?

Any information? Any Suggestions? Resources? anyone else done any testing?

I think most of the people who say hogwash are right. With regular fuel. I THINK (can not remember for sure) I remember doing this a decade ago and it having no impact. BUT that was before they starting ruining our fuel with ethanol.

My gut tells me that Acetone is not so much helping the gasoline as it is helping OFFSET the damage that the ethanol does. But there both alcohols right? I just do not know enough about this crap Grrrr :-)

Ok Lets start off. I was using acetone when I started logging my fuel here. It was my second tank with acetone (my first tank here) The tanks previous to these on ecomodder where 17.8mpg to 18.9mpg !!! Needless to say I was annoyed. SO I dropped in the acetone. The very next tank (first in ecomodder) was 21.58 Next tank was similar then it started jumping to 23mpg 24mpg. It dipped to 21 again but I went up into the mountains (hazleton) so 21mpg is pretty impressive for that trip. LOTS of massive hill climbs etc..

My best tank yet 25mpg. NOW I stopped using acetone. The very next tank 19.57 and this was ideal driving. NO city driving issues. Just from work to home to work and back and 1 2.2 mile trip to the pharmacy (it was raining so I did not walk) IE the economy should have been quite high here its my most efficient driving. I only dip lower when I add in other trips (mall shopping movies etc..)

I will run the next 2 tank no acetone as well and see what happens. This afternoon on my way back to work I will fill up again (over 100 miles will have been driven by then) and then to the same again Saturday when I come to work.

When I come to work again next week and fill up I will start introducing the acetone again. I will also start measuring it. (I usually just pour a seat of the pants amount into a funnel. I will do 1.5 ounces per 10 gallons.

My only suggestion to you is to grab a ScanGauge, fill the tank completely without any acetone. Get on a dead-calm road and do 2 runs without acetone. After the 2 runs, add the appropriate acetone mixture to your remaining fuel left and do 2 more runs on the same road immediately after the initial part. Record the MPG averages between the first set and second set of runs and see if there's any difference.

I did it with my acetone revealed video experiment, but I allegedly added 'too much' acetone (as per the dozens of 'you did it wrong' comments left on the video). I'd love to do the experiment again with the 'proper mixture' in my dad's car, but I lost my ScanGauge nearly a year ago.

MythBusters tried acetone and it bombed.

Did the mythbusters do this pre or post ethanol. Remember I also remember it not making much difference a decade ago.

Well a 30% increase in economy (minivan) 12-14% increase in the Club Wagon. Those are numbers that are more than statistical errors I do not care WHAT the mytbusters (one of my favorite shows BTW) came up with.

SOMETHING is going on inside my two engines. NOW maybe its not the acetone. maybe there is something wrong with my cars and they are responding unusually badly to "ethanol" I tested it to my satisfaction that I am 100% sure that the drop in economy came after they added the ethanol. I am not looking to argue that because its resolved to me.

The question is what KIND of drop and is the "fix" a result of the acetone OR the result of a secondary effect of the acetone that would otherwise not effect my car if they were running properly? (one assumption is that maybe my cars are not running right but both of them?)

Scan Gauge is a non starter. I just do not have $150. Its just that simple so its going no where.

Also your test would NOT be accepted by many people regardless of the results because you have no way of seperating road/wind/weather/driver and other "unknown" variables.

The Idle test isolated from any of those conditions WOULD at least satisfy enough of those concerns to warrant review.

My biggest fear is that at "idle" the different will not be pronounced enough for me to definitively measure. I just do not know.

The worst result I could get is an "inconclusive" result.

I mean look at my numbers. I went from 23.69 24.5 and 25.07 mpg to 19.5 JUST by stopping the used of acetone. Short of be offroading my minivan or driving it like a maniac what "unknown attribute" of weather driving or roads could cause such a significant drop in economy.

To me a 6mpg drop or nearly 25% of just too large a figure to be dismissed with oh you changed your driving or the wind was different. If those things could have that kind of an effect my MPG readings across time would also show such wide variations.

I am just trying to find a way to as empirically as possible test this WITHIN my means (IE no scan gauge)

I also can not do them immediately back to back for the tests. it takes time for the fuel already in the system to work its way through before you next batch of fuel will have any impact.

Also I have all the mythbusters episodes do you remember what episode it was? I want to see how they tested it. Might help me out.

It was episode 53.

Forget the scangauge. It lacks the accuracy and the resolution to tell you anything meaningful. Also, it is not a fuel meter, it is an air meter. Someone with injector based instrumentation would be better equipped to carry out such a test.

Do you know of any products which monitor fuel consumption like this Johnny?

That's not my experience using one in controlled conditions. The last series of back-to-back runs I did testing vortex generators had a standard deviation of .6%. I'd call that decent resolution. It's less important that the absolute MPG readings are 100% accurate, as long as the relative differences are consistent.

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However, I would say that tank-to-tank "testing" of acetone is a waste of time. Too many variables involved to draw a conclusion. Despite the ambition, and the title of this thread, you're not going to "get to the bottom of this" on the road.

EDIT: the "idle" method you describe with a graduated cylinder would be more reliable. Don't forget you need to account for fuel return as well (if your van has a fuel return line).

I too, support the Acetone theories. I started with 1mL per gallon as my ratio and saw an immeadiate 4mpg improvement. Since then I have retained the ratio, applied other tips and my mileage keeps increasing. I am at a point now where I will stall mods for a couple of tank fulls just to mess with the acetone ratio to see what my vehicle is comfortable with.

I am also going to introduce it into the 4-runner in a couple of tank fulls to see what a baseline difference it makes.

Bottom line I see it working, whether my vehicles optimum ratio is 10mL per gallon or 30mL per gallon I will know for sure in a couple of weeks.

Having shows like Mythbusters support a theory like adding Acetone to gas is also a liability. While it may work, no one can predict any sort of long term damage due to poor maintenance, misuse, or the dumb public. Consider its corrosive properties if you get it on paint or even plastics for extended periods of time. So they most likely had to appease their public by addressing it, but skewed results to avoid larger problems down the line.

Don't confuse resolution with accuracy. SG only correctly accounts for stoich, no other mixture. Even then, it's flawed. Just because it ends up being pretty close when you fill up doesn't mean that trip averages in certain conditions are accurate. While it can be accurate for external factors like aero drag, it cannot give results for things that affect the quality of combustion, like lean burn and acetone. Because it is an air meter, it can't tell you that you traveled the same distance using less fuel. If you used the same amount of air during that trip, it will report no difference.

The fact that you already believe it works will be detrimental to your cause. You need somebody who doesn't really care, either way.

i dont care either way... but why do you keep claimning that ethanol is damaging??

mechanically ethonal is not damaging, it simply reduces FE. Not the most FE solution to our dependence on oil.

That's true. I missed your point in relation to this thread.

ok, thats what i thought, i have used ethanol for years with no bad side effects, and switching from 10%-20% eth in my jeep (jeep 2) did not harm mpg but ehh thats a whole discussion on its own so i will leave that alone...

Using ethanol brings me down from almost 24 down to 19-21. And if you figure it out, that loss isn't worth the 10 cents a gallon less. Ethanol needs to be cheaper/BTU's before it replaces any part in gasoline (even mixing).

If engines were specifically designed to run on E10 gasoline (higher compression) you wouldn't see much of a loss in mileage. This is probably the way things will go eventually. However, right now manufacturers need to make an engine that can run on both forms of fuel and that is a compromise that costs us mileage.

DPoV what mixture of ethanol are you using?? i had a chrysler T&C (flex fuel) and i ran e85 on it and didnt see that much of a loss (maybe 2mpg), as is any modern vehicle should not see much of a difference on e10.. but if your vehicle is not calibrated for e85 and you try to use it you will have a huge difference because your computer will read the exhaust as being lean and will dump more fuel in to compensate for the perceived lean state.

What if you divide the MAF value by lambda (assuming you have an accurate lambda value)?

Just E10.

I don't know of any off the shelf products. The SuperMID is one, the MPGuino project is another, and I'm developing yet another.

It would work better than the scangauge, but your readings are only as good a your MAF (which may be non-linear at low airflow), and many cars (like mine) don't use MAF. This would be the best way to get readings on carbed cars, but it's still inferior to injector readings.

I got better mileage with E15 blend.

I tried every which way with acetone on 5 different cars no luck. 2 blind test one on my wifes car and the other was the neighbor. Nothing. Once your mileage tops out and your peaked with the FE stop using it and see what happens to your mileage. I'm afraid you will never get to the bottom of it. YMMV (your mileage may very)

Well todays tank was again 19.5mpg Keep in mind the 3 tanks before I stopped using the acetone were all 23.69mpg or higher. the last one was 25.1mpg. MY last two tanks no acetone were both 19.5mpg. (odd I never had them be the same tank to tank before. I may go longer no acetone to get a better baseline)

waiting to hear,,,,what was your mix before ???

Nothing to hear yet. Takes time to eat up miles. Can not afford to just drive for no reason :-) hehe

I was doing it "seat of the pants" ie just dump some down the funnel into the tank. When I switch back to acetone I will measure it this time. but it should be between 1-2 ounces per 10 gallons.

thanks,, thats about what i'm going to try on my truck, more on the first tank to help clean things out :thumbup:

I used acetone and it made my MPG go down about 2 mpg, I was pretty mad, I used it with the no ethanol gas, do you think that was the reason?

I made the mistake of trying to test acetone when the switch to E10 was happening.

My MPG is now all over the place (in over 1 million miles of driving my mpg is pretty rock solid depending on what kind of driving I am doing) now I can never get an even remotely similar reading from week to week.

I think this is due to the ethanol. I got the kit on ebay to measure the ethanol percentage of the gas I buy. Accurate or not it will let me make relative comparisons of one gas station to the next.

Wawa seems pretty consistent %7 ethanol in PA 6% ethanol in NJ while the local no name gas station has over 9% ethanol. So I will avoid them from now on.

My mpg jumps from 14mpg to 20mpg (I used to get a solid 22+mpg every week for 10 years!!)

I tried the acetone and my mpg numbers DID go up (but never back to where they were PRE ethanol)

but I could never REPLICATE the results from week to week. Still massive fluctuations. I would STOP using the ethanol and my mpg would stay the same or GO UP and then it would go back down (I always ignore the tank after stopping since there is still some acetone mix left from the previous fill etc..)

So I gave up on ethanol until I can stabilize my fuel economy from week to week.

I was even looking into REMOVING the ethanol (it really really sucks I am losing 15-24% of my fuel economy) but that has some serious problems (water and lower octane once separated)

It seems like there is a thresh hold I am exceeding. low ethanol and I just get the small expected drop in fuel economy from the lower energy content of the ethanol. but at some point it seems something changes like its getting more ethanol than it can properly burn and the fuel economy plummets.

I have killed 3 fuel pumps and 2 O2 sensors since the E10 switch.

those fraking things are expensive and its really making me mad.

now that I can test the gas I hope to get "consistent" gas and if I can stabilize my mpg maybe I can test the acetone again.

and this effect ALL my vehicles from the 88 cherokee with 4900,00 miles to the 92 Clubwagon (hardest hit by the ethanol) with 180,000 miles to my 96 Voyager with 210,000 miles.

so its not just the older car or one car. My dad also saw a massive drop in mpg with his 98 windstar. 24mpg to 21mpg. (averaged)

If you lost fuel pumps I wouldn't be surprised if it was the acetone. It is a very strong solvent. It's used to thin epoxy and it's the only solvent that does it except lacquer thinner. (lacquer thinner will destroy all your rubber in minutes.)

Better hope there is nothing soluble in your fuel system if you use it.

If you are now running 10% ethanol you can increase your mileage again by advancing your timing. Start with a few degrees at at time until you get knocking under load, then back off a couple of degrees.

Acetone is a moot issue anymore. There is no possible way for the average person to determine if its DOING anything or not. The Ethanol in the fuel screws up the average cars fuel economy to such an extensive and VARIED amount that you will never ever know if an increase is due to acetone or you got lucky and got less ethanol.

My Cherokee used to get 22 city 24 highway reliably and consistantly.

Now I get 21max highway (4% ethanol) but usually 18-19mpg (6-8% ethanol) and as low as 15mpg when I had 11% ethanol

even the SAME gas station has different ethanol content from one tank up to the next tank up. Wawa is pretty constantly 6-8% ethanol so I use them.

but even still I simply NEVER get reliable consistent MPG reading any longer because of the variations in ethanol content so any road test for acetone is meaningless since there is no way to separate the numbers to gain any meaningfull data.

ONE possible way would be for someone to buy say 200 gallons of gasoline from the same place OR mix it all up really well to homogenize it.

Fuel your car off that for at least 3 tank fulls to get rid of any old gas and keep doing that till you get consistently reliable data. THEN start adding the acetone.

200 gallons will give an average car 10 tank fulls. you will need at least 3 to clean out the system another 3 to get reliable consistency.

that leaves 16 tanks left. 4 with acetone 4 without 4 with and 4 without.

See if the data makes sense from there. Otherwise its meaningless information.

I'd be the first to say acetone does nothing for fe. But I'll also say, in the wee concentrations it is suggested to use it, I doubt it'll "dissolve" anything.