So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine
running nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower
could a stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to
nitro? I'm thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm
sure that if the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted,
and the cam changed, things might work better. But if all you do is
change fuels I think there won't be much of an increase. This is of
course in response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going
264 mph on a bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel.
I don't think the motorcycle could develop enough power to push
itself and someone sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind
of fuel it was burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

An added bonus is that if you get a misfire it's gonna explode on the next
cycle ... I read up a bit once on nitro burning drag cars , them motors are
running very close to hydraulic lock . It was also interesting to discover
just how few times the motor actually turns over in a quarter mile . At for
example 10k RPM's , on a trip down the track that lasts say 5 seconds
that's only like a bit over 800 revolutions - and many of those care do it
in way less that 5 seconds .
--
Snag
Learning keeps
you young !

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:52:02 -0600, "Snag" wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine
running nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower
could a stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to
nitro? I'm thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm
sure that if the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted,
and the cam changed, things might work better. But if all you do is
change fuels I think there won't be much of an increase. This is of
course in response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going
264 mph on a bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel.
I don't think the motorcycle could develop enough power to push
itself and someone sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind
of fuel it was burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

An added bonus is that if you get a misfire it's gonna explode on the next
cycle ... I read up a bit once on nitro burning drag cars , them motors are
running very close to hydraulic lock . It was also interesting to discover
just how few times the motor actually turns over in a quarter mile . At for
example 10k RPM's , on a trip down the track that lasts say 5 seconds
that's only like a bit over 800 revolutions - and many of those care do it
in way less that 5 seconds .

Right. The stoichiometric ratio for pure nitro requires one heck of a
lot of nitro. But even mixed with gasoline, the products of a misfire
are themselves explosive, and your engine can grenade in a spectacular
way.

Which makes you wonder about Gunner sitting on a nitro-fueled bomb,
just one misfire away from suffering high-speed castration...

I think the nitro story is a new addition to his account of the event,
BTW. g

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
The stoichiometric ratio for pure nitro requires one heck of a
lot of nitro. But even mixed with gasoline, the products of a misfire
are themselves explosive, and your engine can grenade in a spectacular
way.

Which makes you wonder about Gunner sitting on a nitro-fueled bomb,
just one misfire away from suffering high-speed castration...

I think the nitro story is a new addition to his account of the event,
BTW. g

Heh , I was following a friend on a little motorcycle ride . His was a
stroked 92 ci Harley Shovelhead . As he attacked a sweeping uphill turn at a
"high rate of speed" I heard a loud BANG and saw him and the bike basically
disappear in a cloud of smoke . After attempting roadside repairs we
discovered that the rear cylinder had cracked most of the way around at the
base flange . It probably wouldn't have castrated him as there was a frame
top tube between him and the jug , but it sure would have been exciting if
it had broken all the way . Pretty good chance the flying bits would have
done at least some minor maiming of his lower extremities ...
--
Snag
Learning keeps
you young !

wrote in message
...
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.


Well, there are stages to it.

1) Make silly Walter Mitty type assertion
2) When caught, pretend it's a joke
3) When no one laughs, gather up the Boyz, who will make wisecracks
4) Laugh at the wisecracks
5) Try changing the subject
6) If that doesn't work, villify whoever is arguing with you
7) If that doesn't work, accuse him of homosexuality
8) And of being a liberal
9) Tell him he's on the cull list and will die soon
10) Start a new conversation on an unrelated topic

It's complicated.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.
I know about the streamlining. That's why I was thinking about how
much HP it would take to actually push a sit on bike and rider at high
speed.
Eric

On Feb 26, 1:39*pm, "anorton"
wrote:
wrote in message

...

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. *After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.

"It was clear from Gunner's original description that was not the
case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this. Gunner is
a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he can
get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When
questioned, he resorts to threats. "

What I love is when Gunner claims you are now in his kill file when he
can't handle being confronted with the truth. An example would be
Gunner having no inspection area in his **** hole shop. He posted a
picture of his inspection tool cabinet. His inspection tools were
covered with dirt and sand from the dirt floor in his shop.

What's much more interesting than Gunner's many, many lies is the fact
that the more Gunner lies, the more his cult of idiots worship him.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.


Just think what a quart of the full strength stuff would do to the
engine of one of those idiot's who roar down your street at 3 in the
morning, ratting windows for blocks?

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:06:56 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g
My older brother thought it was funny too. He would tell me if he saw
a lawnmower dumped on the side of the road. I'd get it and see if it
was worth fixing. Usually they were. Just needed points or something
simple. Then I'd have another mower to modify for the tall weeds. No
bogging them mowers down.
Eric

On Feb 26, 2:02*pm, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress









wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc *Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:25:09 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:06:56 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g
My older brother thought it was funny too. He would tell me if he saw
a lawnmower dumped on the side of the road. I'd get it and see if it
was worth fixing. Usually they were. Just needed points or something
simple. Then I'd have another mower to modify for the tall weeds. No
bogging them mowers down.
Eric

Well, I'm with you on that. Until I bought my current Honda from my
neighbor, when he moved away, I never spent more than $10 for a lawn
mower, at yard sales. Points, plug, maybe a condenser, fresh oil,
sharpen the blade...another five to ten years of mowing happiness.

--
Ed Huntress

On Feb 26, 2:06*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc *Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer
wrote:

On Feb 26, 2:06*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc *Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is.
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

On Feb 26, 2:39*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer









wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:06 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is.
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

I have such found memories of my control line airplane from Cox. The
glow fuel, the castor oil all over everything, the wonderful noise, it
starting backwards and cutting my finger... still have the scar! Had
no mentor and had to teach myself everything. My dad wasn't mechanical
and had zero interest. It wasn't easy. I experienced lots of
frustration. See below.

This is what I had as a kid:

http://tinyurl.com/bj6g8o7

I had this dragster as well. No where near as fun as the plane:

http://tinyurl.com/bzdo3j3

After these I got a Carl Goldberg RC kit plane made of styrofoam. No
one told me that spray painting it would be a bad idea. Pretty sure I
cried when it melted. I remember the RC I put in it was called a
galloping ghost. Someone sold me a used RC control cheap. Don't
remember who made the RC stuff. I haven't thought about this **** in
many, many years.

One more thing:

I remember using Elmers glue to glue together a colored tissue paper
hot air balloon I got from a novelty company. I can't remember the
name of the novelty company. They had a catalog filled with cool ****
that I always looked at. The hot air balloon took me a lot of work to
put together on our kitchen floor and It was pretty big. You filled
it / launched it by putting charcoal in a stove pipe and putting the
bottom part of the balloon over it while being very careful. I think
around the tenth launch it caught fire as it took off. Huge flames. I
remember being both happy and sad at the same time.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:03:29 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer
wrote:

On Feb 26, 2:39*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer









wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:06 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is.
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

I have such found memories of my control line airplane from Cox. The
glow fuel, the castor oil all over everything, the wonderful noise, it
starting backwards and cutting my finger... still have the scar! Had
no mentor and had to teach myself everything. My dad wasn't mechanical
and had zero interest. It wasn't easy. I experienced lots of
frustration. See below.

This is what I had as a kid:

http://tinyurl.com/bj6g8o7

I had this dragster as well. No where near as fun as the plane:

http://tinyurl.com/bzdo3j3

After these I got a Carl Goldberg RC kit plane made of styrofoam. No
one told me that spray painting it would be a bad idea. Pretty sure I
cried when it melted. I remember the RC I put in it was called a
galloping ghost. Someone sold me a used RC control cheap. Don't
remember who made the RC stuff. I haven't thought about this **** in
many, many years.

Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them.


One more thing:

I remember using Elmers glue to glue together a colored tissue paper
hot air balloon I got from a novelty company. I can't remember the
name of the novelty company.

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****
that I always looked at. The hot air balloon took me a lot of work to
put together on our kitchen floor and It was pretty big. You filled
it / launched it by putting charcoal in a stove pipe and putting the
bottom part of the balloon over it while being very careful. I think
around the tenth launch it caught fire as it took off. Huge flames. I
remember being both happy and sad at the same time.

They always burn sooner or later. My dad set *his* dad's field on fire
with one when he was 10 years old. In those days, they put a crossed
pair of fine wires across the bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around
the intersection, soaked it in kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when
it caught fire.

Those things have been around for a very long time. My dad was 10 in
1925.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

Bone stock? Who the hell made that claim? It was a heavily modified
custom engine that may or may not been built by a guy who later busted
the land speed record on an improved verson. Might even have been the
same bike..shrug. Or not.

Bone stock? Sounds like a bone head was making buffoonery again.

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.

VBG

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie

On 2/26/2013 3:31 PM, Gunner wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
...
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.

VBG

Confession noted.

On Feb 26, 3:28*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:03:29 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:39 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:06 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro.. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is.
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

I have such found memories of my control line airplane from Cox. The
glow fuel, the castor oil all over everything, the wonderful noise, it
starting backwards and cutting my finger... still have the scar! Had
no mentor and had to teach myself everything. My dad wasn't mechanical
and had zero interest. It wasn't easy. I experienced lots of
frustration. See below.

This is what I had as a kid:

http://tinyurl.com/bj6g8o7

I had this dragster as well. No where near as fun as the plane:

http://tinyurl.com/bzdo3j3

After these I got a Carl Goldberg RC kit plane made of styrofoam. No
one told me that spray painting it would be a bad idea. Pretty sure I
cried when it melted. I remember the RC I put in it was called a
galloping ghost. Someone sold me a used RC control cheap. Don't
remember who made the RC stuff. I haven't thought about this **** in
many, many years.

Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them.



One more thing:

I remember using Elmers glue to glue together a colored tissue paper
hot air balloon I got from a novelty company. I can't remember the
name of the novelty company.

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****
that I always looked at. The hot air balloon took me a lot of work to
put together on our kitchen floor and It was pretty big. You filled
it / launched it by putting charcoal in a stove pipe and putting the
bottom part of the balloon over it while being very careful. I think
around the tenth launch it caught fire as it took off. Huge flames. I
remember being both happy and sad at the same time.

They always burn sooner or later. My dad set *his* dad's field on fire
with one when he was 10 years old. In those days, they put a crossed
pair of fine wires across the bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around
the intersection, soaked it in kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when
it caught fire.

Those things have been around for a very long time. My dad was 10 in
1925.

--
Ed Huntress

"I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it?"

I found who it was. It was Johnson Smith. I was completely obsessed
with their catalog and buying stuff from it:

http://imprint.printmag.com/branding...nson-smith-co/

"Glue sticks were easier. g"

Now you tell me. :)

"Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them."

I crashed mine all the time... no combat needed. Struggled with
controlling it. Never did get the hang of it. Maybe one day I'll buy
another one and master it. Cheaper than seeing a shrink for all that
childhood baggage and frustration of having no one to mentor me. :)

"In those days, they put a crossed pair of fine wires across the
bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around the intersection, soaked it in
kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when it caught fire."

The idea was to hold it till the hot air balloon inflated and took
off?

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:49:55 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.


Well, there are stages to it.

1) Make silly Walter Mitty type assertion
2) When caught, pretend it's a joke
3) When no one laughs, gather up the Boyz, who will make wisecracks
4) Laugh at the wisecracks
5) Try changing the subject
6) If that doesn't work, villify whoever is arguing with you
7) If that doesn't work, accuse him of homosexuality
8) And of being a liberal
9) Tell him he's on the cull list and will die soon
10) Start a new conversation on an unrelated topic

11) Demand that everyone laughing disprove his lie.
12) Pretend to killfile anyone who keeps laughing.
13) Tell new lies to validate the original.

It's complicated.

Arf arf. Complication isn't an impediment when you have a 165 IQ and a
Victoria's Secret girlfriend who worships you.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message ...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****

Pretty sure the printed version still is available, even...

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cat...ult/?q=balloon

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message ...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific.

http://www.scientificsonline.com/pro...r-balloon.html

"Professional Weather Balloon, One 16 Foot Balloon, 100 Cubic Feet (3072151) $79.95

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:04:06 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer
wrote:

On Feb 26, 3:28*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:03:29 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:39 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:06 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is.
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

I have such found memories of my control line airplane from Cox. The
glow fuel, the castor oil all over everything, the wonderful noise, it
starting backwards and cutting my finger... still have the scar! Had
no mentor and had to teach myself everything. My dad wasn't mechanical
and had zero interest. It wasn't easy. I experienced lots of
frustration. See below.

This is what I had as a kid:

http://tinyurl.com/bj6g8o7

I had this dragster as well. No where near as fun as the plane:

http://tinyurl.com/bzdo3j3

After these I got a Carl Goldberg RC kit plane made of styrofoam. No
one told me that spray painting it would be a bad idea. Pretty sure I
cried when it melted. I remember the RC I put in it was called a
galloping ghost. Someone sold me a used RC control cheap. Don't
remember who made the RC stuff. I haven't thought about this **** in
many, many years.

Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them.



One more thing:

I remember using Elmers glue to glue together a colored tissue paper
hot air balloon I got from a novelty company. I can't remember the
name of the novelty company.

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****
that I always looked at. The hot air balloon took me a lot of work to
put together on our kitchen floor and It was pretty big. You filled
it / launched it by putting charcoal in a stove pipe and putting the
bottom part of the balloon over it while being very careful. I think
around the tenth launch it caught fire as it took off. Huge flames. I
remember being both happy and sad at the same time.

They always burn sooner or later. My dad set *his* dad's field on fire
with one when he was 10 years old. In those days, they put a crossed
pair of fine wires across the bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around
the intersection, soaked it in kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when
it caught fire.

Those things have been around for a very long time. My dad was 10 in
1925.

--
Ed Huntress

"I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it?"

I found who it was. It was Johnson Smith. I was completely obsessed
with their catalog and buying stuff from it:

http://imprint.printmag.com/branding...nson-smith-co/

Oh, that's cool. I don't remember ever seeing that one.


"Glue sticks were easier. g"

Now you tell me. :)

"Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them."

I crashed mine all the time... no combat needed. Struggled with
controlling it. Never did get the hang of it. Maybe one day I'll buy
another one and master it. Cheaper than seeing a shrink for all that
childhood baggage and frustration of having no one to mentor me. :)

Get one of the cheap foam trainers. Start with slow movements and
don't overcorrect. Overcorrecting is what gets you into trouble.

Combat planes were wild things. They also were easy to build,
thankfully. They had no fuselage; all wing and elevator.


"In those days, they put a crossed pair of fine wires across the
bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around the intersection, soaked it in
kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when it caught fire."

The idea was to hold it till the hot air balloon inflated and took
off?

I never did it that way myself, but I think that was it. I know they
glued a string to the top and held it up with a long stick until it
was ready to fly.

My grandmother owned a florist's shop, so my dad had an endless supply
of tissue paper. I guess he made green balloons. g

--
Ed Huntress

On Feb 26, 6:09*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:

However, speed is an exponential-ratio thing, and the record set with
one of the recent models was 231 mph. If a bike will go 200 mph with
190 hp, it will take 298 hp to go 231, and 450 hp to go 265.


--
Ed Huntress

Can you explain the math?

Dan

On Feb 26, 5:01*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:04:06 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 3:28*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:03:29 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:39 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:31:18 -0800 (PST), jon_banquer

wrote:
On Feb 26, 2:06 pm, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:02:10 -0800, wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:26:19 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record.. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g
In the early 80s I found a radio control airplane store that sold
nitromethane for the engines in these model planes. It came in quart
bottles at different concentrations. So I used to buy the stuff and
run it in lawnmower engines. I would mill the heads until they would
just clear the valves to increase the compression some too. I was
amazed at how much better the lawnmowers would cut tall, thick grass.
Engine life was poor though. I never did try to run straight nitro. It
smelled good too.
Eric

Jeez, Eric, that's the only nitro-fueled lawnmower I've ever heard of.
Did you have to run behind it to keep up?

Regarding the model planes, yes, and I had to soup glow plug fuel with
an extra 10% nitro to start my model OS Wankel. That would mean about
20% nitro in total.

But a lawnmower? Jeez. Yeah, I'll *bet* engine life was poor. g

--
Ed Huntress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel

"Ingredients

Glow fuel is a mixture of methanol, nitromethane, and oil.

Methanol is the primary ingredient as it provides the bulk of the
fuel, and is needed as a solvent for the other ingredients. The
presence of methanol causes the glow plug found in model engines to
heat via a catalytic reaction with the platinum metal wire element
which glows in the presence of methanol vapor.

Nitromethane is added to the methanol to increase power and to make
the engine easier to tune. Typically glow fuel is about 0-30%
nitromethane. While higher concentrations can result in better engine
performance, usage of highly concentrated nitromethane is rare due to
its cost. Although a given amount of nitromethane contains less energy
than the same amount of methanol, it increases the amount of available
oxygen in the combustion chamber per every intake stroke, which allows
the engine to draw in more fuel while still maintaining a favorable
mixture setting. The increased amount of fuel entering the engine
increases power output, and also aids in cooling. For racing use, the
nitromethane content can be increased to the range of 30%-65%.

Nitromethane is often difficult to obtain in many countries, so in
these countries glow fuel typically has no nitromethane at all.

Lubrication

Most model engines require oil to be included with the fuel as a
lubricant since the engine has no independent oiling capability. Model
engine fuel is typically 8-22% oil, with the higher percentages run in
older design two-stroke glow engines that use bushings for the
crankshaft bearings. The most commonly used lubricants are castor oil
and synthetic oils, and many glow fuels include a mixture of the two.
The oils included in glow fuel generally are not burned by the engine,
and are expelled out the exhaust of the engine. This also helps the
engine dissipate heat, as the oil emitted is generally hot.

Four stroke model engines, since they are generally designed to be
simple powerplants while still incorporating the usual camshaft,
rocker arms and poppet valves of larger sized four stroke engines, are
generally meant to use glow ignition and their fuel. Often, the oil
percentage for four stroke glow fuel can be lowered from the 18-20%
figure used for some two-stroke engines, down to as low as a 12-15%
percentage per unit of blended glow fuel, but use of such low-
percentage lubricant fuel can also mandate the need for a small
percentage of castor oil in the mix to avoid having too little oil in
the mix, and also mandates setting the high-speed fuel mixture
carefully by using a handheld digital tachometer to check engine speed
to avoid over-leaning of the fuel mixture.

Glow engines generally have to be run slightly rich with a higher fuel/
air ratio than is ideal to keep the engine cool as the fuel going out
the exhaust also takes heat with it, and so vehicles with glow engines
generally get coated with lots of oil. Almost all the oil comes out
the exhaust, and some nitromethane and methanol as well (as it's not
all burned) requiring some cleaning when one is done using the model.

The nitromethane that exists in many glow fuel blends can cause
corrosion of metal parts in model engines, especially four-stroke
designs, due to the nitric acid residue formed from combustion of
nitromethane-content glow fuel, making the use of a so-called "after-
run oil" a common practice after a model flying session with a four-
stroke glow engine-powered model.

Glow fuel is not difficult to make, and so many modelers mix their own
to save money, but some of the ingredients are flammable and/or
explosive and so can be dangerous, especially in large quantities.
Most modelers buy their glow fuel premixed from such manufacturers
such as Byron, Blue Thunder, FHS Supply, Model Technics, Morgan,
Powermaster, Tornado, Wildcat, and many others.

"Typically glow fuel is about 0-30% nitromethane."

Yeah, standard old blue-can Cox was 10% nitro. It probably still is..
Cheaper stuff has 5% or less.

--
Ed Huntress

I have such found memories of my control line airplane from Cox. The
glow fuel, the castor oil all over everything, the wonderful noise, it
starting backwards and cutting my finger... still have the scar! Had
no mentor and had to teach myself everything. My dad wasn't mechanical
and had zero interest. It wasn't easy. I experienced lots of
frustration. See below.

This is what I had as a kid:

http://tinyurl.com/bj6g8o7

I had this dragster as well. No where near as fun as the plane:

http://tinyurl.com/bzdo3j3

After these I got a Carl Goldberg RC kit plane made of styrofoam. No
one told me that spray painting it would be a bad idea. Pretty sure I
cried when it melted. I remember the RC I put in it was called a
galloping ghost. Someone sold me a used RC control cheap. Don't
remember who made the RC stuff. I haven't thought about this **** in
many, many years.

Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them.

One more thing:

I remember using Elmers glue to glue together a colored tissue paper
hot air balloon I got from a novelty company. I can't remember the
name of the novelty company.

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****
that I always looked at. The hot air balloon took me a lot of work to
put together on our kitchen floor and It was pretty big. You filled
it / launched it by putting charcoal in a stove pipe and putting the
bottom part of the balloon over it while being very careful. I think
around the tenth launch it caught fire as it took off. Huge flames. I
remember being both happy and sad at the same time.

They always burn sooner or later. My dad set *his* dad's field on fire
with one when he was 10 years old. In those days, they put a crossed
pair of fine wires across the bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around
the intersection, soaked it in kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when
it caught fire.

Those things have been around for a very long time. My dad was 10 in
1925.

--
Ed Huntress

"I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it?"

I found who it was. It was Johnson Smith. I was completely obsessed
with their catalog and buying stuff from it:

http://imprint.printmag.com/branding...ses-and-9000-o...

Oh, that's cool. I don't remember ever seeing that one.



"Glue sticks were easier. g"

Now you tell me. :)

"Oh, yeah, I have great memories of flying models, too. We flew
control-line combat in our neighborhood. I must have build a dozen
planes, because we kept crashing them."

I crashed mine all the time... no combat needed. Struggled with
controlling it. Never did get the hang of it. *Maybe one day I'll buy
another one and master it. Cheaper than seeing a shrink for all that
childhood baggage and frustration of having no one to mentor me. :)

Get one of the cheap foam trainers. Start with slow movements and
don't overcorrect. Overcorrecting is what gets you into trouble.

Combat planes were wild things. They also were easy to build,
thankfully. They had no fuselage; all wing and elevator.



"In those days, they put a crossed pair of fine wires across the
bottom, wrapped a piece of rag around the intersection, soaked it in
kerosene and lit it. Then they ran when it caught fire."

The idea was to hold it till the hot air balloon inflated and took
off?

I never did it that way myself, but I think that was it. I know they
glued a string to the top and held it up with a long stick until it
was ready to fly.

My grandmother owned a florist's shop, so my dad had an endless supply
of tissue paper. I guess he made green balloons. g

--
Ed Huntress

"Get one of the cheap foam trainers. Start with slow movements and
don't overcorrect. Overcorrecting is what gets you into trouble."

I'll look into that. Thanks.

"I know they glued a string to the top and held it up with a long
stick until it was ready to fly."

Good idea. I hadn't learned to think well enough mechanically back
then. Mechanical wasn't emphasized / covered in the prep schools I was
forced to go to.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:53:52 -0800, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:39:24 -0800, "anorton"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic

I think the issue with a motorcycle reaching those speeds is not so much
horsepower as stream lining. After all, if there was no resistance of any
kind, you could reach 264 mph with a 1 horsepower engine. The only
motorcycles that have reached speeds close to that I know about have had
fully enclosed shells. It was clear from Gunner's original description that
was not the case. I am not sure why there is so much debate about this.
Gunner is a text-book classic sociopath. He will say whatever he thinks he
can get away with to gain status among his percieved peers. When questioned,
he resorts to threats.
I know about the streamlining. That's why I was thinking about how
much HP it would take to actually push a sit on bike and rider at high
speed.
Eric

For a bicycle the force necessary to overcome "wind resistance"
requires 216,228,92 watts, or 289.96 H.P. at 264 MPH. This, of course,
does not include the losses due to internal friction in the engine,
rolling resistance of tires and so on, and is calculated solely on
cross sectional area, I'm sure.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine running
nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower could a
stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to nitro? I'm
thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm sure that if
the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted, and the cam
changed, things might work better. But if all you do is change fuels I
think there won't be much of an increase. This is of course in
response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going 264 mph on a
bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel. I don't think
the motorcycle could develop enough power to push itself and someone
sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind of fuel it was
burning.
ERic
A non modified (non calibrated) engine won't run worth crap on
nitromethane. The engine needs about 8.7 times as much Nitro per unit
of air compared to gasoline, but only produces about 2.3 times as much
power from a full cyl charge.

So, an engine running stock compression and valve timing, but with
fuel injection or carburetion modified to pass about 8.7 times as much
fuel, COULD produce up to 2.3 times as much power.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:27:41 -0800, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message ...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****

Pretty sure the printed version still is available, even...

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cat...ult/?q=balloon

Jeez, all those toys....

No hot-air tissue balloons like the ones they used to sell, though.
And the prices are pretty steep.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:52:02 -0600, "Snag" wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:52:10 -0800, wrote:

So I was wondering, from a post here about a bone stock engine
running nitro methane instead of gasoline, how much extra horsepower
could a stock engine produce just by changing fuels from gas to
nitro? I'm thinking that the engine won't run very well. Now, I'm
sure that if the compression was changed, and the carb re-jetted,
and the cam changed, things might work better. But if all you do is
change fuels I think there won't be much of an increase. This is of
course in response to gunner's assertion that he was clocked going
264 mph on a bone stock Ninja motorcycle burning nitro methane fuel.
I don't think the motorcycle could develop enough power to push
itself and someone sitting on it to over 200 mph no matter what kind
of fuel it was burning.
ERic

At the time Gunner initially made this (absurd) claim, an all-out
lakes-modified Ninja did 231 at Bonneville. That was considered to be
the world record for Ninjas, although it wasn't a class record. Some
other make was slightly faster.

The 1000 cc Honda that topped 270 was claimed to have 400 hp. That
doesn't sound unreasonable: the engine was built by Honda specifically
for this attempt. That must be very recent, because Gunner held the
world record for sit-on motorcycles until very recently. g!

That is, if Gunner had actually gone 264 when he said he did, that
would have been a world record at the time. The record for "sit-on"
motorcycles was broken by Al Lamb in 2012. It was 265 mph, and the
bike was another Honda.

As for running a stock engine with nitromethane; only if you want to
turn your engine into shrapnel. It is very weird stuff, behaving
differently with different percentage combinations of gasoline or
methanol. You may get lucky with small amounts, or, if the gasoline
sucks up the oxygen in the mix, you may blow your muffler into the
next county when the resulting hydrogen explodes in your exhaust pipe.
If you use much, you will blow up any of several parts of your engine.
It's strictly for people who know what they're doing. It also costs
too much to be practical. And if your engine is newer than, say, 1980,
forget it unless you're an electronics expert, too.

If you want a chemical jolt for more horsepower, go for nitrous oxide
("the bottle"). You'll find kits for it all over the Web. We used to
have an expert on it here (Bottle Bob) but I think he left.

With nitrous, your engine may actually hold together long enough for
you to get home. g

An added bonus is that if you get a misfire it's gonna explode on the next
cycle ... I read up a bit once on nitro burning drag cars , them motors are
running very close to hydraulic lock . It was also interesting to discover
just how few times the motor actually turns over in a quarter mile . At for
example 10k RPM's , on a trip down the track that lasts say 5 seconds
that's only like a bit over 800 revolutions - and many of those care do it
in way less that 5 seconds .
You have to remember those "top fuel" cars are virtually all
supercharged - and they do pump enough fuel into them to fill the
combustion chamber up to90+% in volume. - with 60 PSI (over 4
atmospheres) of boost - SO - 4X as much air as a NA engine running at
100% VE, and 2.3 times as much power per unit of fuel = at leat 12
times as much power as a non modified engine. Then add additional
compression to the "mix". They burn about 75 gallons per minite. They
use 85% Nitro - the rest is alcohol - generally Methanol.

If a top fuel engine puts out 7500 HP, it is producing 8400 HP - the
other 900HP drives the supercharger!!!!

Ed Huntress wrote:

Get one of the cheap foam trainers. Start with slow movements and
don't overcorrect. Overcorrecting is what gets you into trouble.

Combat planes were wild things. They also were easy to build,
thankfully. They had no fuselage; all wing and elevator.

That yellow battery powered one that HF sells actually flies pretty
good, but you will want a supply of wings.....


I never did it that way myself, but I think that was it. I know they
glued a string to the top and held it up with a long stick until it
was ready to fly.

My grandmother owned a florist's shop, so my dad had an endless supply
of tissue paper. I guess he made green balloons. g



--
Steve W.

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:05:16 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Feb 26, 6:09*pm, Ed Huntress wrote:

However, speed is an exponential-ratio thing, and the record set with
one of the recent models was 231 mph. If a bike will go 200 mph with
190 hp, it will take 298 hp to go 231, and 450 hp to go 265.


--
Ed Huntress

Can you explain the math?

No. I used a speed shop's calculator and I'm not telling. g

Oh, all right....The horsepower required to maintain a specific speed:

P = 1/2 * Cd * A * k * v^3

P = horsepower required for the velocity in question
Cd = coefficient of drag
A = frontal area
k = constant to account for the density of air (or you can use the
actual number - 1.2g/m^3, if you watch your units throughout)
v = velocity

In addition, you have to work in the rolling resistance. For a
motorcycle with high-speed, hard tires, you can ignore it for these
purposes. I'll give you a shortcut for the formula in a minute.

I'll give you the site of a calculator but first, note the v^3. That's
the key to the whole thing, which leads people to overestimate how
fast they can go on, say, a Kawasaki Ninja with two or three hundred
horsepower. g

Here's the calculator.

http://www.apexgarage.com/tech/horsepower_calc.shtml

Knowing that the unregulated speed of a Ninja is 200 mph and it
achieves that with 190 hp, you can plug in any trial numbers you want
to get everything to work (I used Cd = 0.5; A = 7; weight 500 lb.) As
long as the relationship of these numbers isn't ridiculous, all you
need to know is what trial numbers give you 200 mph with 190 hp. Then
use those same trial values and try changing the speed. That will give
you the horsepower.

I tested the online calculator by using a shortcut of the real formula
on my own pocket calculator:

Original speed cubed over original horsepower = final speed cubed over
"x", where "x" is horsepower required.

Actually, I tested it by using the variable for speed, and assumed 450
horsepower, to test the online calculator. It works either way.

By knowing the original speed and horsepower, you can do away with
drag coefficient, frontal area, and air density. It's the relationship
between power and speed that you need, plus the "cube" factor for
velocity. The shortcut, or the online calculator, will give that to
you.

Have fun.

--
Ed Huntress




Dan

wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:52:02 -0600, "Snag" wrote:

I read up a bit once on nitro burning drag cars ,
them motors are running very close to hydraulic lock . It was also
interesting to discover just how few times the motor actually turns
over in a quarter mile . At for example 10k RPM's , on a trip down
the track that lasts say 5 seconds that's only like a bit over 800
revolutions - and many of those care do it in way less that 5
seconds .
You have to remember those "top fuel" cars are virtually all
supercharged - and they do pump enough fuel into them to fill the
combustion chamber up to90+% in volume. - with 60 PSI (over 4
atmospheres) of boost - SO - 4X as much air as a NA engine running at
100% VE, and 2.3 times as much power per unit of fuel = at leat 12
times as much power as a non modified engine. Then add additional
compression to the "mix". They burn about 75 gallons per minite. They
use 85% Nitro - the rest is alcohol - generally Methanol.

If a top fuel engine puts out 7500 HP, it is producing 8400 HP - the
other 900HP drives the supercharger!!!!

Yup , that was also in the info I read . The supercharger takes more
horsepower than 3 average cars produce .
--
Snag
Learning keeps
you young !

Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:27:41 -0800, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****

Pretty sure the printed version still is available, even...

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cat...ult/?q=balloon

Jeez, all those toys....

No hot-air tissue balloons like the ones they used to sell, though.
And the prices are pretty steep.

When I was a teen I made 'em out of those plastic bags the dry cleaners
send your suits home in ... but I always had a problem with getting enough
heat . I was using candles , and that just wasn't enough .
--
Snag
Learning keeps
you young !

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:34:01 -0800, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message ...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific.

http://www.scientificsonline.com/pro...r-balloon.html

"Professional Weather Balloon, One 16 Foot Balloon, 100 Cubic Feet (3072151) $79.95

Ok, but we were talking about tissue-paper hot-air balloons.

I have a funny story about those weather balloons, and my 8th-grade
buddy's hydrogen-generating apparatus, with zinc chips and some kind
of acid, but I'll spare you. g

--
Ed Huntress

"Snag" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:27:41 -0800, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****

Pretty sure the printed version still is available, even...

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cat...ult/?q=balloon

Jeez, all those toys....

No hot-air tissue balloons like the ones they used to sell, though.
And the prices are pretty steep.

When I was a teen I made 'em out of those plastic bags the dry cleaners
send your suits home in ... but I always had a problem with getting enough
heat . I was using candles , and that just wasn't enough .


HAHAHA !!!

WE filled them with hydrogen, THEN attached the candles....letting them to
drift at various locations over Puget Sound...

Oftentimes, numerous UFO sightings were reported on the nightly news...

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:57:08 -0600, "Snag" wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:27:41 -0800, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

I had a six-footer from Edmund Scientific. Was that it? Glue sticks
were easier. g

They had a catalog filled with cool ****

Pretty sure the printed version still is available, even...

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cat...ult/?q=balloon

Jeez, all those toys....

No hot-air tissue balloons like the ones they used to sell, though.
And the prices are pretty steep.

When I was a teen I made 'em out of those plastic bags the dry cleaners
send your suits home in ... but I always had a problem with getting enough
heat . I was using candles , and that just wasn't enough .


Start with a hair dryer or heat gun, until the bag is inflated. Then
apply your flame.

That's how I did it.

--
Ed Huntress