paulcornwall

Came acroos this article while looking for a bulk buy on Octane booster, possibly to good to be true but worth a read
Toluene - Octane Booster FAQ

Northern Nick

iTrader: (1)

I have just been reading about this and the only thing I have found against it is it is very aggressive with rubber, i.e. it could dissolve your fuel lines if it is too consentrated.

The amounts needed to raise octane would be rather high also, found this on a website, maybe the one you've been reading

Litres x Octane Rating of Base Fuel + Litres x Octane Ratine of Toluene / Total Litres of Fuel = Octane Rating

(45 * 98) + (5 * 114) / 50 = 99.6 Octane

Toluene is at best £5 a litre as far as i've seen (Thats £25 for 5 litres) and you can buy NF Race formula which if you chuck the whole bottle in to 50litres will increase octane by upto 60 points (104 on 98 fuel) for £15.

Toluene isn't pleasant to deal with either.

silverwrxnor

Have a 200litre Toulene barrel at home, for track usage. My old MY98 JDM STI Type R went on this fuel on track driving, std JDM with ordinary 98octane fuel.

I use 4litres on a 50L tank of fuel. Mix was told by Solberg brothers, wich used this in the early rallycross era.

And you WILL notice the difference, also the butt-o-meter test. Did not notice any problems.

Also heard about the possible rubber defect. Always made sure that the toulene was only in the tank for the day it was used and it is not used for daily driving. Still have 115L left of the barrel.

Botswana WRX

Here in Botswana we can only get 93 RON, I have been using toluene for 5 years at 10 litres per tank with no detrimental effects that I can tell on the rubber or anything else. The math- (93*50=4650)+(121*10=1210)=5860/60= 97.6 RON
In 200 litre drums it should be cheaper than petrol in UK here its about 110 pounds per drum. Its primary use is paint thinner so does not attract fuel tax.

From a health an safety point of view its better than Benzine or Xylene and probably better than petrol which has all of those including toluene in the mix as sold from the pump, but like all petroleum products should be handled with care.

Incidenlaly toluene is 121RON (the 114 refered to is MON) It is slow burning which we want at our under 10,000 rpm speeds and works very well indeed. You may notice a blacker than usual exhaust but that is due to the high carbon molecule count.

Chris

Fangoria

iTrader: (1)

Northern Nick
There is absolutely no way a bottle of NF booster increases the octane rating by 6 points - thats pure fantasy figures - they should be done for the rating on the bottle

I run 99 ron plus full NF Bottle plus 3 litres of methanol in every fill up - I also run 50/50 methanol/water, water injection

Interesting article on Toulene

Only reason I didnt buy it was because it is supposed to be really harmful on skin, eyes, etc - I havent notice any issues with Methanol - Methanol is about 90p a litre from Jennychem and can be mapped to a significant increase in advance over and above using 99 plus full bottle of NF (

My car is a sti5 99 with about 480bhp so these days would be called mildly modified

Botswana WRX

Methanol is more harmful than toluene, Methanol is absorbed though the skin and causes organ failure and insanity in any quantity, the body cannot get rid of it once absorbed, having said that you would need to be exposed for some time for those effects to be seen.
Toluene is also nasty stuff but as I said before its no worse than petrol and provided you dont sniff it on a long term basis and bath in it you will be safer with it than methanol. If you can source it from oil companies it shoul be around the price indicated in my previous post in 200ltr drums, tell you do a lot of painting!!

Northern Nick

iTrader: (1)

I was quoting advert figures there, I reckon that NF is one of the best octane boosters on the market as a lot of top runners use it, its good stuff.

Individual test showed it to increase 95 octane to 99 octane adding 250ml to 50 litres. Our bottles are 300ml and it would depend on how much NF you added to how much fuel, so an increase of 6 points is not unbelievable if you added 300mls to 40 litres?

Toluene is a very good octane booster as is methonal but both reduce the flamability of the fuel where as afaik NF doesn't.

I'm not saying anybody is doing anything wrong or using the wrong stuff but people should use what they feel most comfatable with.

rasonline

Toluene works fine but the rubbers just wear away over time.
Another problem is that the fuel needs to be heated in order to perform optimally. At cold UK winter temps you may find that it doesn't fire properly and may get some detonation.

It is absolutely essential to have a programmable engine management system so you can change timing and fuelling. Simply substituting the fuel won't maximise the fuel. YOu may need to pull timing back a little bit on a few sectors through the rev range.

Botswana temperatures never drop low enough to have any significant effect on the fuel but UK temps will definitely be a factor.

Fuel economy won't be a big issue as raised in one of the posts above.

Check on Welcome - GTR OWNERS CLUB for posts by user kismetcapitan who has been using toluene only on his car, and is boosting 1.95bar with the car and without major issues.

rasonline

the stoichiometry for toluene is different to petrol. It WILL affect the flamability of the mix if you are mixing it with petrol. If you use it as a fuel on its own then you will need to tune accordingly but this is by no means a limiting factor. This is why you need a stand-alone management system to maximise the use of the toluene.