Has anyone on here tried adding acetone to there fuel? Lots of people at my work are saying it improves this and that I wondered what you guys thought before trying it myself.:confused:

I would have thought it would work as a pretty efficient degreaser - we use it on the ROVs

And it'll remove your nail varnish

I put about a gallon of acetone in the tank of an old Austin A35 when I was a teenager. It went like the brown stuff off a shovel for a quarter of a mile and then burnt out the valves. It never did run again

Will knacker your engine mate good style,

And is illegal, since you won't have paid motor fuel duty on it.

So that's 2 reasons:-

1) It may destroy your engine.

2) If Customs and Excise catch you, they can confiscate the car, and you might cop a court fine as well!

i know of a few people that were having a bash at this too. you only put a small amount into your tankfull so its diuted quite a bit.

its just like adding fuel additive and i think you could argue that as a additive would you have to pay duty on it? plus its such a small amount the duty would be pence!!

the theroy is it burns very clean so helps keep cruddy deposits in the intake and combustion system to a minimum therefore imporving performance and MPG.

i dont know how far they took it but early results did show a better mp3 from a tank full (but it was slight enough to be put down to driving conditions imoa) and slight increase in acceleration (poss placebo effect?)

just make sure if you do try it you use pure stuff and wash the filler neck down by topping your fuel tank up after use.

In theory it will increase mpg and power by altering the flame front burning characteristics BUT it will also have a degreasing effect on the cylinder walls, potentially leading to bore wear and its presence in the fuel will not do the rubber seals in the fuel pump/lines any favours. It will also strip any paint from the inside of a metal fuel tank so you may get either paint flakes blocking the filter and/or corrosion of the 'bared' walls of the fuel tank when the tank is only partly full. Plastic fuel tanks may suffer from environmental corrosion cracking caused by the acetone and become brittle.

If anyone wants to test it I have 5Ltrs sitting under my sink at work

Would you not be better off using Methanol instead?

LATE REPLY:)

I just ran across this topic. I'm currently experimenting with acetone myself. The amount one puts in the tank is 0.15%, so really a minute amount. In perspective: 100 ml. would go in a 60-ltr tank.

There are several sites conerning this. There's even a guy who literally soaked engine parts in pure acetone to see what happened and we're talking about much smaller quantities. Pity most here cannot read Dutch, since there's a large topic at TDI Club Nederland :: Home with some long-term experiments going on.

My personal experiences are, that the engine seems to run smoother, there's a bit more power and I notice a slight decrease in fuel-consumption. The Skoda-factory claims 1 ltr. every 18.5 km. I currently do 20 km's. But since I already managed an easy 19.5 km/ltr, I'd say the gain in fuel consumption is minimal in my case.

The theory behind acetone is that it decreases the surface-tension of the fuel, so that it will form smaller drops. This in turn increases the amount being burned, hence a bit more power / fuel economy. It also seems to decrease the amount of soot produced.

This said I might add that I'm still being very cautious. Also, should the fuel consumption not decrease more than so far, I'm going to terminate the experiment. Not enough gains.

Late, but still helpful.

Based on your comments on droplet size, I'd say that you're not increasing the quantity of fuel being burnt, but the speed of combustion, which further increases the already high Brake Mean Effective Pressure of a diesel, and probably helps getting the burn to completion at high revs, or low revs high throttle.

I know it's probably beyond your kit, but it would be intesting to know what effect this has on particulates.