We used to reckon on 5000km (just under 4000 miles) per cannister... they were large cannisters however - roughly 4" diameter by about 12" long.... probably lasted longer but we changed them at those intervals.katman wrote:How long do the carbon filters last? In my saltwater tanks, they last less that 2 weeks. I use 3 ounces of Acetone, 3 ounces of Xylene, and 3 ounces of AMSOIL PI (performance improver) per 10 gallons of fuel. I'm very happy with the results!
Fuel only goes thru a little 3/8" fitting when motor running so it seemed to last ok when racing or road work. Combined with a Fuelstar tin catalyst we had an 11:1 340 Mopar than ran a best of 13.9 on avgas (pinged its head off on premium pump gas) get to a best of 13.6 on regular pump gas and no ping.
Those that know how bad a quench clearance there is on Mopar open chamber head motors will know that 11:1 will not work on unleaded pump gas. So to run on REGULAR unleaded and go faster - the customer was impressed. And so were we because we had no idea what we were doing back then - just trying new things - and hanging on to what worked.
In those days tin catalysts were new so nobody was laughing at us. 500,000 units later - fleet operators of Fuelstar are now laughing all the way to the bank as 1 point in mpg can be worth several $000 p.a., but the experts still mass debate over the fact it's not 100% predictable in every possible engine combo....
gee - what if I tried it and it didn't work - oh goodness - could I ever live with myself - for having to take it back and get my money back - oh the shame, the guilt... I tried something and people laughed at me
lighten up people - text books only tell us part of the story
the tin catalyst when it was installed right probably did more than carbon as far as lower octane requirement went - but as far as 1/4 mile time - it was 13.7 on Fuelstar alone, then 13.6 on carbon as well...
obviously more than octane was invovled here or it would have simply just matched the avgas results. To be better than avgas - the treated pump gas had to be better burning... it would be safe to say the avgas used was not the good stuff too - but it would still have been 100 rating.
for a Cuda that had spent a lot of time in practice and tuning to get to consistent 13.9 runs - time after time - to suddenly drop to 13.6 on tall gears and 727 - by simply treating pump gas that it should not have been able to run on - was a great result.
Activated carbon is wonderful stuff - it can attract undesirables to itself at a ratio of 1000 times it's own molecular mass... good for nausea, sucking out poison, stopping the dog from farting... or your wife...
of course - women don't fart -
do they?
us guys don't need it - we're our own walking entertainment pack
doc - thanks.
One thing I would love to try is hydrogen peroxide... I was communicating with 2 Swedish brothers that had this stuff down to an art - and were getting great results at 1 liter per 10,000km of gas of 60% pure peroxide on a 2 liter Saab. Right down to safe materials to use, how to handle, and injectors.
It had huge potential but they ran foul of some oil company. They seemed very nervous about something and would only tell me an oil company was harrassing them heavily. Then I got a short email that said they might have to run... and I lost contact... sounded weird - cloak and dagger stuff - but there may have been more to it - whatever - I never heard of them or PFI (their term for Peroxide Fuel Injection) again.
but the tech info they passed on to me is something I definitely want to explore when I get a chance later on. They used a catalyst (I think it was a precious metal gauze) to react the peroxide with air then draw it into the motor via what they called an injector but was really a fancy jet.
Emissions went almost away, fuel could lean back 30% and by dialing in more you could increase power at will.... if too much it simply straightened the crank as the torque became like a straight line and the crank could not take it.... so they used to keep it conservative. They said the car needed virtually no gears as the torque was so strong and flat. They also used it on snowmobiles and won every event they entered.
someone needs to carry on this research as peroxide is cheap, nitro is not.