Different nitro fuel and overheating

[Jonathan_159]

Hi guys I have some questions I would like to ask.

Background: I have a Traxxas 3.3 engine with 20% traxxas topfuel. Its overheating a little and I can tell that its spitting oil.

Questions
1: Is it true that higher nitro and oil content causes better cooling.
2. What Brands of fuel would you guys recommend( I do wide open throttle street pulls and occasionally go on a dirt track. I was thinking like vp or Byrons)

 

[jlobbia]

I think I read somewhere that higher nitro content causes better performance but overheating. Oil is the opposite, as more causes better lubrication leading to cooler engine.
Traxxas fuel is known to be WAY too high in the oil content.
I suggest you get Torco 20% C1 Nitro fuel from Amazon. Very good performance at the cheapest price point. Traxxas fuel is 15 a quart, while torco is 44 a gallon (11 a quart). Also smells like fruit, ha.

 

[cbaker65]

I think I read somewhere that higher nitro content causes better performance but overheating. Oil is the opposite, as more causes better lubrication leading to cooler engine.
Traxxas fuel is known to be WAY too high in the oil content.
I suggest you get Torco 20% C1 Nitro fuel from Amazon. Very good performance at the cheapest price point. Traxxas fuel is 15 a quart, while torco is 44 a gallon (11 a quart). Also smells like fruit, ha.

Torrco is good fuel ,that is what I use as well ,But I order direct with free shipping!,,,,,

https://torcoracefuel.net/collections/shop

http://torconitro.com/pro-rc-nitro.html

 

[jlobbia]

Torrco is good fuel ,that is what I use as well ,But I order direct with free shipping!,,,,,

https://torcoracefuel.net/collections/shop

http://torconitro.com/pro-rc-nitro.html

Amazon is about a week and a half free shipping. Nothing I have seen beats torco at its price and quality.

 

[johnnydmd]

A lot of people swear by Bones Brew 30/8. Personally I use Byron's 25/12, but Byron's is not making any more fuel, only selling their reserves. Their stated reason seems out of touch, as nitro, and RC in general has had a revival of sorts during the pandemic. Hell, Tamiya just came out with a new nitro vehicle today!

 

[D3MON]

Higher nitro percentage is more power, it increases the compression in the chamber. , it can run cooler though as it is more volatile and than methanol and doesn't need to be as warm to combust/burn.
oil replaces the methanol that is in the engines which will cause the engine to run leaner, to get a cleaner burn with nitro, it needs to burn the oil, oil burns much hotter and needs to be much hotter to burn than nitro-methane and methanol. so more oil causes a hotter burn, traxxas uses around 16-18% oil and is way too much.
anything over 12% is really unnecessary, and will start affecting your tune. 7-8% is about the lowest you really want to go, and if you are newer i would use 12% to make sure that there is still enough oil in case you do run it lean, but not so much that the engine is hard to tune, and wont run really hot on a decent tune.
lower oil is also alot less finicky on the tune.

 

[olds97_lss]

Been running byrons Gen2 25% (11% oil) for 15 years, but they recently closed down. Before that I ran trinity, wildcat and dynamite blue thunder fuel. Now I'm not sure what I'd buy... lol! Whatever my LHS has I guess. Likely be traxxas or losi nitrotane fuel or some weird off brand.

I typically go for 25% nitro. Seems to be a happy medium between 20% and 30% that my big blocks tend to prefer, so I run the same in everything. I try to stick with oil between 8% and 12%. If it's less than 12%, I look for synthetic oil blend as it's a bit more robust.

I never ran traxxas fuel. A buddy of mine did and it was super oily, made a mess out of his truck. I have run odonnels, had to buy a gallon of 20 and 30 then mix it. It was pretty oily as well, smelled a bit like gun powder when it burned.

 

[D3MON]

Been running byrons Gen2 25% (11% oil) for 15 years, but they recently closed down. Before that I ran trinity, wildcat and dynamite blue thunder fuel. Now I'm not sure what I'd buy... lol! Whatever my LHS has I guess. Likely be traxxas or losi nitrotane fuel or some weird off brand.

I typically go for 25% nitro. Seems to be a happy medium between 20% and 30% that my big blocks tend to prefer, so I run the same in everything. I try to stick with oil between 8% and 12%. If it's less than 12%, I look for synthetic oil blend as it's a bit more robust.

I never ran traxxas fuel. A buddy of mine did and it was super oily, made a mess out of his truck. I have run odonnels, had to buy a gallon of 20 and 30 then mix it. It was pretty oily as well, smelled a bit like gun powder when it burned.

olds, if you can find it, Sidewinder Race blend is a great fuel, sadly no 25% though that i have found, there is a bunch of people swearing by Bones Brew, can have them custom blend your fuel and its not any more expensive than the rest. i personally have not run it, but know quite a few that really liked it. from what i gather its pretty close equivalent to Byrons and VP.

 

[cbaker65]

Been running byrons Gen2 25% (11% oil) for 15 years, but they recently closed down. Before that I ran trinity, wildcat and dynamite blue thunder fuel. Now I'm not sure what I'd buy... lol! Whatever my LHS has I guess. Likely be traxxas or losi nitrotane fuel or some weird off brand.

I typically go for 25% nitro. Seems to be a happy medium between 20% and 30% that my big blocks tend to prefer, so I run the same in everything. I try to stick with oil between 8% and 12%. If it's less than 12%, I look for synthetic oil blend as it's a bit more robust.

I never ran traxxas fuel. A buddy of mine did and it was super oily, made a mess out of his truck. I have run odonnels, had to buy a gallon of 20 and 30 then mix it. It was pretty oily as well, smelled a bit like gun powder when it burned.

olds, if you can find it, Sidewinder Race blend is a great fuel, sadly no 25% though that i have found, there is a bunch of people swearing by Bones Brew, can have them custom blend your fuel and its not any more expensive than the rest. i personally have not run it, but know quite a few that really liked it. from what i gather its pretty close equivalent to Byrons and VP.

I was using Torrco ,but the last batch that I did get was Sidewinder from my local hobby shop ,it is good fuel ,I never ran Traxxas fuel ,but
heard nothing but BAD about it ,an I had ran the Nitothane ,a lot before an it was great ,I would definitly run that before I would Traxxas
fuel ,but there is NO WAY that Traxxas fuel is going in any of my engines ,I would just run my brushless rig!....

 

[olds97_lss]

The last time I bought fuel was probably 2-3 years ago and I bought 2 gallons of byrons while I had 1.5 gallons of O'donnels on the shelf. I still have a full gallon of byrons and odonnels left. Will be a couple more years before I need fuel again. There are 2 LHS's in my area, both 45 minutes to 1 hour drive. I'll buy whatever they have on the shelf.

 

[MadCrusher]

I have been running nitro engines for good while, and have found out over time that the brand of fuel can definitely have an effect on engine temperature and ultimately engine longevity. I have tried Byrons, Traxxas, Odonell, and VP Power master. Out of all the fuels I have tried, I agree that Byrons was the best fuel available. From what I understand, the difference in the Nitro fuels is not only the percentage of oil and nitro, but the ratio of synthetic to caster and additives as well.

After reading your thread, I think you should consider the basics - are you getting white smoke when you give it throttle, and can you seem some oil residue when you put your had a couple inches from the exhaust outlet. As long as you are seeing those two indicators you probably don't have to worry about engine damage.

At this point I am wondering, how many degrees are you running too hot? Traxxas engines have always been
known to run a bit on the hot side. If you are talking 10 degrees high toward the end of run when your tank empties out you may not have to worry that much. The 10 degrees may even be due to the temps gun inaccuracy. To remedy this problem just make your mixture a little bit more on the rich side at the beginning of your run.

If on the other hand you are running 300 F and your white smoke disappears then you are definitely running too hot. Here a couple remedies you can try.

1.) Try running a little richer.

2.) Change the fuel, Torco sounds like it might be a good prospect. Another fuel I have considers is Morgan Sidewinder 20 percent race fuel with 12 percent lubrication sounds promising as well. I would recommend Byrons, but they stopped making fuel. Also, once you find a fuel that gives you good results stick with it.

3.) My third recommendation if the engine does not idle well, you may have an air leak. This can be remedied by getting some nitro engine sealant and running a small bead on the back of the motor and small bead around the carb as well to prevent air leaks. You may also want to tighten up your cooling head.

I hope this helps. Finally, you may want to check out some videos on you tube about tuning a nitro engine. Its easy to get a nitro engine to run, but to tune it for peak performance can be a bit more difficult.

Hope this helps!