I know this is an old subject, I’ve read most of the threads the search engine turns up.  I was in a pinch, so I went to our local shop which carries only Morgan fuel, and bought a gallon of Cool Power. Got home and called Morgan on the phone and asked a simple question, “Do you mix your fuel ingredients by weight or by volume?”  I was referred to one of their techs, who assured me they mix by volume. Just to be clear, I asked if I have 100ml of Cool Power, will it have 17ml of oil in it?  The answer was a definite yes.

This is different from what I believe is the prevailing opinion on this forum, which is that they mix by weight, backed up by some forced evaporation tests. So, … are they lying to me? Have they changed recently?  Did I not ask the question properly?

Confused,
Mike

Yep, understood. That’s exactly why I asked the extra question about whether or not there was 17ml of oil in 100ml of fuel.

Mike

Do you know what oil they use? Just knowing the % is kind of irrelevant, with some oils you need 20+%, while 15% of another oil is just fine. L

Interesting.  Cool Power’s oil is all synthetic, but I really had not considered the differences in synthetic oils to be that dramatic. Can you give me a couple of examples of such oils that vary that much in needed concentrations?

Mike

Interesting.  Cool Power’s oil is all synthetic, but I really had not considered the differences in synthetic oils to be that dramatic. Can you give me a couple of examples of such oils that vary that much in needed concentrations?

Mike

Mike,
It’s difficult to draw the line between synthetics, blends and so called castor based oils nowadays because many ”modified” castors are so good, and also, with spectrum analysis you can clearly see traces of castor in many oils that are advertised as synthetic.
To me an oil is synthetic if it has no ill effects of classic castor oil, no matter what the original ingredients are.
For example, for a purely mechanical point of view, 14-16% of Maxima #927 ”Racing Castor” is usually enough, while I wouldn’t go under 23-24% with the low viscosity Klotz #189, with an average engine.
It all boils down to fuel film strenght, viscosity and surface energy and is engine-spesific what is tolerated and what not. L

Yeah, that’s the whole point in trying to understand how much oil is in the fuel in the first place, so I can calculate how much to add. In my case, I’m going to run this in a nice Fox 35 stunt motor. I’m going to add 150 ml castor per quart, or about 5 oz. That brings the total to about 28.4% oil, IF there is really 17% oil to begin with. I’m still trying to reconcile Morgan’s claim with what I’ve read on this forum.

Mike

  If you haven't used that Cool Power yet, you might want to exchange it for Morgan's Omega fuel. It's about the same oil content but a 50-50- mix of a synthetic and castor. It's a pinkish fuel and since it has castor in it already, I think more will blend in better. I'm not sure how well the green fuel blends with castor. I have used Omega straight from the jug with late model OS engines and such, and spiking it up on castor for a Fox will be no problem.
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

 Morgan Omega is 17% total oil with 70% synthetic and 30% caster. They also make a control line blend that has 22% total oil that is 50/50. I have used the control line blend in the past with good results.
Al


https://morganfuel.com/__static/57ffd8e2d5d4cdbd67cbbdbb7ba29367/product-analysis-2020_mod-1857-1-_in-476.pdf?dl=1

Morgan Omega is 17% total oil with 70% synthetic and 30% caster. They also make a control line blend that has 22% total oil that is 50/50. I have used the control line blend in the past with good results.
Al


https://morganfuel.com/__static/57ffd8e2d5d4cdbd67cbbdbb7ba29367/product-analysis-2020_mod-1857-1-_in-476.pdf?dl=1

Hi Al,
That’s a nice chart, I’ve saved a copy. The question is, are those numbers specified by volume or by weight?  Morgan claims by volume, but some forced evaporation tests reported on this forum indicate only about 14.7% oil by volume,
Which would indicate their 17% claim is specified by weight.

Thanks to Pat MacKenzie for cleaning up my language when I said “mix by …”, rather than “specified by …”.

Mike

If you are in any way in question, do a boil-down test - safely, outside, with a sterno can or camp stove!

  BTW, as long as you put in enough oil, Omega or Cool Power fuel works more-or-less OK. I don't know what the situation is anywhere else, but the few remaining hobby shops around here, Omega and Cool Power disappeared long ago, due to the bad reputation.  Powermaster is what you typically find at the store.

     Brett

I'm trying to figure if it would be better to weigh the ingredients or measure the volume on a production basis.

Motorman

If you do the maths right, the end result is the same. Here some densities:

 -Methanol 0,792
 -Nitro 1,14
 -Castor 0,959
 -For syththetic oils, I couldn't find any at the moment.

 L

True, but in a production environment where time is money and environmental conditions vary - who's is going to spend time constantly adjusting volumes of different materials to account for temp. changes -

Pretty much anyone packaging liquids in a large commercial operation is doing exactly that when necessary.
 Ideally you control product temperatures and environment but the larger the operation the more likely that adjustments will be needed several times a day. Most liquid fillers in large operations are either gravity fed and vacuumed to level or fill from a piston pushing a fixed volume. You periodically weigh a container from each filler position and adjust the volume of each one to maintain your target weight. Batch mixing in large operations is also done by temperature compensated volume. Model fuel isn't packaged in high-volume and I would bet that they have a proportioning pump setup that is easily adjusted between mixes. They also most likely have absolute environmental and product temperature control. So they dispense a given volume from each pump and weigh it to verify the amount.

I was plant manager of a vegetable oil packaging facility for 6 years. We had two indoor tanks that held 145,000 pounds of oil each. They were horizontal cylinders like the railroad tankers that we pumped from. We had temperature compensation tables to determine tank weight at a given level for inventory purposes. It was sold to the government by the pound and we kept track of it by weight but it was packaged by volume and weighed  to verify. Our 1 gallon plastic bottle line filled 38,400 gallons per 8 hour shift on average. Some months we would ship 1,000,000 pounds of oil a day, all taxpayer funded giveaways to other countries.