Here is my take on the acetone thing: The original website containing the article doesn't lend any credibility to it. Wierd "tree hugging, granola crunching, let's all build perpetual motion machines" sort of stuff. On the other hand, I did some searching and found quite a few people reporting some benefits to using acetone. They weren't associated with the original web site or article and sounded legit. Some were speculating that the improvements seen by some were perhaps the result of the acetone cleaning out a crudded up fuel system rather than any real increase in efficiency burning the fuel. In any event, I read enough positive reports (and no indications of damage) to entice me into trying it.
I put some in my '98 Toyota Tacoma at a ratio of 1000:1 (50mL of acetone in a 50L tank). It's too early for any real results, but on the not quite 1/2 tank I've burned so far it's looking like no real difference.
Now here is the interesting part. I've got an old Farmall M tractor with a front mounted post pounder. This thing is worn out and/or has stuck rings to the point that it normally fouls the plugs withing an hour or two. The normal procedure to get it going whenever I need to use it is to remove all the plugs and sand blast them or scrub them with solvents and a wire brush to clean off all the crusty carbon and still-liquid oil they accumulate. As I said, that buys me an hour or two of running time before it starts dropping cylinders to fouled plugs again.
Our neighbor needed quite a few fence posts put in this weekend, so I decided to try acetone in the Farmall. I put the usual "little bit" of gasoline in the tank (it leaks out, so I don't keep much in it) - maybe 8 or 10 liters. I then dumped in a quantity of acetone best described as "some" /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif and proceeded to go put in fence posts.
Somewhat to my surprise, the tractor ran absolutely perfectly for several hours over 3 sessions of post pounding and was still running great when I parked it. I haven't taken the plugs out to have a look, and this test was totally unscientific, but it would seem that there is some cleaning effect to the acetone if nothing else.
Oh yeah, before trying it in my truck, I ran a tank full of good fuel system cleaner through it in an attempt to eliminate the cleaning properties from the equation. If it truly does help the combustion efficiency I should see some mileage improvement. If people's gains are due to the cleaning effect, it shouldn't do anything for my truck. We'll see .....
