Nay Sayers

I was just out on www.al.com reading the messages in their gasoline prices forum. One particular thread caught my eye as it had to do with using acetone as a fuel additive. Some of the veggie oil groups that I subscribe to have had similiar threads recently, so I was interested to see what the locals had to say. When I started reading the thread, I was immediately surprised at the negativity expressed by the individuals that responed to the initial posting.

The original poster, screen name wileykoyote, reported that he had been adding " 1 ounce of acetone to every 3 gallons of gas. On average, I get about 18% better gas mileage using acetone." He also included a link to the website that got him started.

http://www.lubedev.com/articles/additive.htm

One of the nay sayers responded with "All I know for sure is that truck drivers use acetone to clean the tar and road film off their trucks. It is a very strong chemical that could damage someones engine."

Another said "Unless I had a cheap car to try this on, I'd err on the side of safety. I get a good 35-50mpg highway anyways, so the couple of cents I save by putting acetone in my engine would not be worth the repair if it ate through the gaskets or something along those lines."

I'm not sure where the couple of cents figure comes in. If you figure an 18% increase, at 50 mpg and $2.13 per gallon, which is what I paid locally last week, then 100 miles would cost $4.26 to drive without acetone as an additive and would cost $3.61 with acetone as an additive. That would be considerably more than a couple of cents for just 100 miles of driving. Now I am not saying that wileykoyote's results are typical, or even accurate, but it really disheartens me that someone would offer up a possible suggestion for improving fuel economy in a forum that should attract persons interested in just that sort of thing and all he gets is ridicule.

I'm not sure when or why it has happened, but somewhere along the way, the American people have traded in their can do spirit for a defeatist mindset. If some government official, lawyer , doctor or MIT professor doesn't say its alright to do something, they immediately raise a red flag. I fear that with that kind of mindset, we were as good as we will ever be, yesterday, and that tomorrow we will be worse than we are today.