white gas
 

Gents:

Has anyone here tried running straight white gas? With the interest in fuel vaporization and experimenters like Smokey Unic (sp?) having gotten impressive mileage with vaporization setups, and the problems with modern gasoline having some hard-to-evaporate molecular chains, I thought this might be worth trying. Was pre-WW2 gasoline essentially white gas?

Good questions- how much more does white gas cost per gallon than regular gasoline?

Good old Naptha.

What about just running alcohol? It's cheaper.

White gas runs about $6 a gallon to $11 a gallon depending on your source while E85 can run in the $2-3 a gallon range.

How about "shine"?...............:D

Amoco Ultimate used to be white gas, and they advertised it as such (as recently as ~5 years ago). I don't know with all the new formulations if its still white though.

-Jay

That's about as white as it gets, but run it in a car and waste it? I do know that pure grain alcohol will burn a really nice blue flame, but it's a little expensive to run in a car. I remember when Amoco Ultimate was white gas, but I'm not sure whether it still is or not. Isn't BP and Amoco the same thing now? I know around here every station that used to be Amoco is now BP. Amoco used to be owned by Standard Oil years ago.

This question is more of an efficiency persuit than anything else. Cost-wise its much higher than regular gas, and for good reason. I think that white gas was distilled from petrolium.Then came hydrocarbon cracking that permitted about 80% of a barrel of oil to be converted into gasoline, but with a much less pure product as the result. Higher purity= better vaporization? Worth a try I think. Just don't want to damage an engine. Any idea what the octane rating of white gas is?

Coleman Fuel is the most common of white gas and is 50-55 octane. Only additive is a rust inhibitor.

Woah 50-55 octane gasoline, hello Knock City with most of today's gasoline engines compression ratios.

It's actually a great additive to the fuel if you aren't running close to knock all the time.

I could see a $6 gallon of it from Walmart working wonders for someone. I never hear my car knocking so maybe I should buy one and put a gallon of it into my gas tank on my next fill. Should get me from 86 octane down to about 83.5.

knock was my first thought on 55 octane. So, what could be mixed with it to increase it to around 80? First thought is proportional mix of E85 or straight alcohol. Isn't E85 over 100? This being the case then a 50-50 mix might get to around 75.

Yeah, E85 is 105 octane.

Toluene or Xylene could be added as well, IIRC 114 Octane is the rating of those chemicals.

Just so everyone knows, I was only kidding about using "shine" for fuel.

Ok so an upcoming experiment on my "junkyard dog" salvaged 95 civic coupe will be white gas-E85 50/50 mix, soon as I replace the muffler this weekend.
One gallon each into empty tank and drive my usual route to work till it quits. right now it gets 34 mpg in city driving.

The manual for my 1960 Merc700 outboard motor says it requires white gas. I just run premium in it, but worry about ethanol problems. I wouldn't even know where to buy white gas. BTW i swear that thing gets ZERO mpg. lol

I recall back in the '70s, I would occasionally fill up at a station in Twentynine Palms, Calif, when I would be out visiting friends who lived back a couple miles off the paved roads. Had some great parties out there....but I digress...anyway, there was this filling station, and off by itself, away from the main islands, was a gas pump labelled "White Gas". Remember asking my dad about it...he said you could run a Model T on it (IIRC, he said you would have to use regular gas to start, but it would run on the white gas once it was going), but it wouldn't be good for a modern car, except for possibly one with a Wankel rotory engine. Too low octane...ping the engine to death. The rotory supposedly would run even on very low octane fuel. Later on I purchased a '72 RX2, but never had the balls to try the white gas in it. IIRC, it was about 20-25 cents a gallon, when regular gas was about 75 cents a gallon.

by diluting your clean white gas with ethanol to get the octane back aren't we in essence creating the e-10 and e-15 junk we complain about

E85 supposedly contains 85% ethanol - balance regular gas. The E85-white gas blend will be a step in the right direction. Will not be a perfect test but should give an indication of what is possible with a more pure fuel than what we have out of the pump. If I had a good source for grain alcohol that would be the better test. If it knocks like hell I will dilute it with regular gas and forget about it. Or figure out how to play with the timing a bit.....

Until they find a source of ethanol that doesn't use up valuable farmland, I wont use it as a primary fuel source. Only thing I'll use it for is race gas if I ever get my hands on a turbo. ;)