home brew

im planing on blending my own fuel,no problem getting the menthanol,nitro or castor oil from the local race car folks.how many of you do this and whats your procedure...do you go by weight,volume,use a hydrometer,ect ? how about a example of 10% nitro 25% castor for one gallon...we live in r/c country and none of the hobby shops will stock this fuel...thanks,jerry

Back in the olden days, we mixed strictly by volume. Don't know if that was right, just the way we did it.

In today's world, I wouldn't bother. Mail ordering fuel is less hassle than buying components and mixing for us old folks.

The fourth element of fuel is (Oops, WAS!) nitrobenzene, which you can't use today anyway, and was a primary incentive for mixing home brew. It was a teensy percentage, and modifying stock fuels (The early Cox fuels were high nitrobenzene content as I recall) with other fuels was more complicated than starting from scratch.

The nitrobenzene smelled real, real, good! You didn't need to bathe after flying. You could use a good mix as after-shave lotion.

Missle Mist is listed in the Brodak catalog as 17% Nitro Methane, 8% Nitro Ethane, 17% castor and 59% methanol, no Nitro Benzine. I think you misread the Nitro Ethane (wishful thinking?). 8% NB is a LOT, and not very appealing as an aftershave. Duke used NE as it was probably a lot cheaper. One friend tried something like 50% Nitro Ethane and apparently wasn't impressed.
Getting castor oil and nitro to mix is the problem, so you have to add ingredients in the proper order. I never mixed fuel with castor (always used Ucon), but know you have to start with the alcohol, and then add the Nitro or Castor next. Not sure it would matter with only 5%-10% Nitro, but you do NOT want to mix Castor and Nitro and finish off with alcohol. The alky helps the Nitro and Castor mix, which they don't want to do. Is "Blendzol" castor still available? Does it still say "Nitrated"? Doubt it, that was probably Nitro Benzine, which helped castor stay mixed with the Nitro Methane. I always did like Chemistry class, both HS and College. Balancing equations for chemical reactions was the BEST fun ever! Valences? We don't need no steenking valences! Steve

Edit: Nobody homebrews fuel using weight, but rather use volume measurements. Technically, weight would be a bit more accurate due to varying rates of expansion for the fuel components. A quart Pyrex kitchen measuring pitcher is plenty good enough. I may have a couple of graduated cylinders around here someplace, a small one for the small percentage stuff, and the big one for the major components. You can get a plastic one at racing-oriented motorcycle shops for making "premix".

Missile Mist was Fox's Half-A fuel, not suggested for use in 36X engines, because of the below minimum oil content. I used it for my 15 sized engines, and sometimes mixed it with Superfuel for larger engines. How do I know it didn't have enough oil? I got some extremely short lifetimes from some GH Torp cylinder & piston sets from using that fuel.

>I will test some more wed. and use it this week end at the St
>pt. combat meet.

The 36X's needed 24/25% oil, and supposedly "liked" some castor, but my BB versions ran faster on Dickie Ritch's synthetic oil mixes.

Kiwi