Hillbilly Race Fuel

My good buddy (Bill) sent me an E-mail the other day about an E-mail he received from a friend of ours (Pat) that moved to Arizona a while ago. Pat has a Pantera and had gone to a show and parked next to a guy in an original '65 427 Shelby Cobra. They got to talking and Pat mentioned the cost of race fuel and how expensive it was to drive a performance car. The guy with the Cobra (a retired chemical engineer) said he uses lacquer thinner mixed with 93 octane gas, 2oz to a gallion of gas for the street, and has for a good a while. He claimed that the mixture raises the octane level about 6 points. He said that usually the cheaper the lacquer thinner the more Toluene and Benzene it contains. He also stated that it has never hurt his Cobra in fact, his spark plugs and valves appeared to be cleaner and his gas mileage seemed to increase since he has been running this mixture. He said it was an old 'poor mans' racing fuel and they called it
Hillbilly Race Fuel .

I used my West Virginia gas card yesterday for fuel in my big block car. A gas can and siphon hose.

foxbigblock wrote:I used my West Virginia gas card yesterday for fuel in my big block car. A gas can and siphon hose.

Bring your West Virginia gas card around here and you''ll be runnin' away with an a$$hole full of buckshot, newbie
The post was intended to share some info with some fellow BBF 'bros' that have helped me out a lot.

I heard of this back in early 90's and also adding mothballs to the fuel to increase octane, a friend of mine said he experimented with it using one gallon of fuel in a clear container and said when he tried it that it made some kind of syrup like substance that sank to the bottom of the container. He never ran it because of the idea of the "syrup" going through the fuel system. He did however run the mothball fuel and said it did seem to increase the octane but would add a small bottle of sewing machine oil to each tank of gas because they seemed to take away the lubricity of the gas. He had said he experimented with this when the "new" low octane unleaded fuels came out.

I heard of the moth ball thing a long time ago, also. Pat didn't say if he had tried it yet, but I'm sure he would have told us the results if he had tried it. I thought I would post this, also, to get some opinions from you guys that are 'in the know'. One quart of lacquer thinner costs $15 around here so 2oz per 16 gallons is roughly $1 per gallon. In my case I could run 93 octane in my 11 to 1 466 and take some lacquer thinner to the strip (if this event ever happens, haha) to increase the power.
Any other input would be welcome.

I would try the clear container experiment before even thinking of putting it in my vehicle, a lawnmower I had bought a couple years ago had a clearish gel in the bottom of the tank and through the fuel lines and Carb and the guy that I bought it from said he thought previous owner was trying to experiment with lacquer thinner. Hopefully someone will chime in as I am just going off what I have been told.

I have ran toluene in nitromethane 1 quart to 5 gallons never had any problems other than what too much nitro and 10 head bolts will cause lol . I have heard that mothballs make propolene oxide don't know if its true or not.

I'm not a chemist, I'll stick o the experts on that stuff. Kinda like painters who over thin, and mix brand reducers and such. It's a crapshoot sometimes ou get away with it, sometimes it costs you a lot of time and money.

GT300TD wrote:
I heard of the moth ball thing a long time ago, also. Pat didn't say if he had tried it yet, but I'm sure he would have told us the results if he had tried it. I thought I would post this, also, to get some opinions from you guys that are 'in the know'. One quart of lacquer thinner costs $15 around here so 2oz per 16 gallons is roughly $1 per gallon. In my case I could run 93 octane in my 11 to 1 466 and take some lacquer thinner to the strip (if this event ever happens, haha) to increase the power.
Any other input would be welcome.

I don't know about lacquer thinner, (there are several different chemical blends), but, I doubt that 2 oz. per gallon, (128 oz.), would do much one way or the other at a 64/1 mixture except MAYBE act as a gum cutter.
I do know that a 40/1 mixture, Gasoline/MEK will act as a catalyst for moisture in gasoline and a fuel line gum cutter. ALL the time use though seems not worth it.

rmcomprandy wrote:

GT300TD wrote:
I heard of the moth ball thing a long time ago, also. Pat didn't say if he had tried it yet, but I'm sure he would have told us the results if he had tried it. I thought I would post this, also, to get some opinions from you guys that are 'in the know'. One quart of lacquer thinner costs $15 around here so 2oz per 16 gallons is roughly $1 per gallon. In my case I could run 93 octane in my 11 to 1 466 and take some lacquer thinner to the strip (if this event ever happens, haha) to increase the power.
Any other input would be welcome.

I don't know about lacquer thinner, (there are several different chemical blends), but, I doubt that 2 oz. per gallon, (128 oz.), would do much one way or the other at a 64/1 mixture except MAYBE act as a gum cutter.
I do know that a 40/1 mixture, Gasoline/MEK will act as a catalyst for moisture in gasoline and a fuel line gum cutter. ALL the time use though seems not worth it.

Maybe that's where he gets the 'performance advantage', it's helping to cut the gum from the fuel lines and the carbon from his plugs due to lack of drive time and driving his $200,000 investment too slow when he does drive it