Fuelstar

[AE82 FXGT]

I've been seeing alot of ads in various mags and such about this fuelstar thing, after stalling for so long I decided to look into it. It looks and sounds interesting but I don't really want to spend the money to find out for myself if it works or not.

Apparently it adds power too.

Anyone here running it or had any experiences?

http://fuelstar.co.nz

[Lloyd]

viewtopic.php?t=45038

[l1ttle_d3vil]

seems to be a lot of sceptics in the old thread...but yes, it does actually work. my dad is an agent for them and is running them on one of his vehicles, a mitsi challenger and has had around a 10% decrease in fuel consumption...so yes, they do work.

im looking at getting one for my sr too, so i'll see how it goes on that...

[99gtt]

They are no good for modified vehicles though. So if your car remains factory it will work well.

[l1ttle_d3vil]

They are no good for modified vehicles though. So if your car remains factory it will work well.

why not?

[Stealer Of Souls]

I hope to try one in my car in the next couple of months...
Just gotta finish paying for my engine...

[Leon]

I'm suspecting that it is a placebo.

People look for their car to be more economical having just dropped $200 - $300 on a device (this is the one that is tin balls in a container that the fuel flows through?), so they drive more economically. It is quite a well known phenomenon.

A bit like the people who put computer fans into their intake, and convince themselves that it has made their vtax kick in harder with all the boosts their getting. Or when Peter Brock was into some of the new age stuff, and was convinced that two magnets set into a resin would make his cars better. Mmmmmmkay then.

There were some interesting articles about fuelstar back not long after leaded fuel was phased out, and the conclusions tended to be that their was no scientific or chemical basis for any change (due to the microscopic amounts of metal it added to the fuel mixture). Pretty sure that I don't have any car magazines going back that far though.

The human mind is a wonderful thing, and is capable of going to great lengths to create the evidence to support a thesis they want to be true.

[AE85coupe]

I'm suspecting that it is a placebo.

People look for their car to be more economical having just dropped $200 - $300 on a device (this is the one that is tin balls in a container that the fuel flows through?), so they drive more economically. It is quite a well known phenomenon.

A bit like the people who put computer fans into their intake, and convince themselves that it has made their vtax kick in harder with all the boosts their getting. Or when Peter Brock was into some of the new age stuff, and was convinced that two magnets set into a resin would make his cars better. Mmmmmmkay then.

There were some interesting articles about fuelstar back not long after leaded fuel was phased out, and the conclusions tended to be that their was no scientific or chemical basis for any change (due to the microscopic amounts of metal it added to the fuel mixture). Pretty sure that I don't have any car magazines going back that far though.

The human mind is a wonderful thing, and is capable of going to great lengths to create the evidence to support a thesis they want to be true.

Totally agree

complete placebo

show me some results from a scientific experiment not 'people notice the difference' then i'll believe it

the affect of placebo's has been documented time and time again, its all in the mind

[Chickenman]

Put a sinker in your gas tank

[Leon]

It's really difficult to find a truly neutral report on this sort of thing though. Because fuelstar the company won't accept other people's reports unless they support their own conclusions - well, duh, they're trying to sell a product here. Independent scientific testing costs some serious dollars, so it isn't the sort of thing you're going to get a car magazine to fund itself just to print one article. Because frankly they'd sell more magazines by putting an interesting car on the cover, rather than "shock horror, fuel additive doesn't work".

The AA tested fuelstar, and said it was rubbish. So fuelstar said that the AA didn't test it right. This is pretty standard stuff when it comes to this sort of additive.

You're just going to get a litany of claims, and counter claims.

Really you need to do the old double blind test, where you don't actually know if you have the device, or a placebo fitted to the car, and then do tests.

The Americans can be quite good, as a branch of the government will test product claims, and take manufacturers to court for false claims. Some of the oil additive companies found that out That's what you get for selling oil with colouring in it and claiming that it will fix your engine.

[sergei]

send it to myth busters, along with magnets.

[Leon]

There's another one out called Evodrive that swirls fuel past magnets ... making similar claims as well

[sergei]

There will be nothing happening. It is just required a lot of energy to brake the long chain molecules apart (without partially combusting them). The hidrocarbons are diamagnetic.
Wikipedia is your friend:

Diamagnetic materials have a relative magnetic permeability that is less than 1, thus a magnetic susceptibility which is less than 0, and are therefore repelled by magnetic fields. However, since diamagnetism is such a weak property its effects are not observable in every-day life. For example, the magnetic susceptibility of diamagnets such as water is \ \chi_{v} = −9.05×10−6. The most strongly diamagnetic material is bismuth, \ \chi_{v} = −166×10−6, although pyrolitic graphite may have a susceptibility of \ \chi_{v} = −400×10−6 in one plane. Nevertheless these values are orders of magnitudes smaller than the magnetism exhibited by paramagnets and ferromagnets

What that means: the magnet to have any effect on the gas should be very massive (like this one here http://www.hfml.ru.nl/).

[malc]

I'm suspecting that it is a placebo.
People look for their car to be more economical having just dropped $200 - $300 on a device (this is the one that is tin balls in a container that the fuel flows through?), so they drive more economically. It is quite a well known phenomenon.

So your basically saying that if you put this in your car it will work
and that you will get better fuel economy

[strx7]

[quote="sergei"] The hidrocarbons are diamagnetic.
Wikipedia is your friend:
[quote]

its a Y not an I

[Mr Revhead]

mythbusters?

fcuk that


lets give the bits to sergei so he can make a cold fusion drive

[neon_spork]

Yeah, its rubbish. Its based on pseudoscience. Also, the claimed increases in efficiency are unreasonable, a 12 to 15% increase in efficiency is massive for an internal combustion engine. Teams of engineers at Toyota spend years of research and millions of dollars trying to eek out every last bit of efficiency from their engines. If you could just stick a little magnet on your fuel line and get a 15% increase I suspect they would have done it...

[Lloyd]

mythbusters?

fcuk that

Yeah, so many holes in all their experiments


And if it worked, it would be standard on cars and even moreso in this fuel-efficient vehicle age we seem to be entering. As above, internal combustion engines are hardly efficient, pulling a few extra % from anything is a remarkable feat

[Dirtbag]

oh but the car manufacturers and petrol suppliers are in a pact to keep profits up so they make cars inefficienct, and THATS why those wicked vortexes/fuelstars/fancy magnets are not installed factory

[Stealer Of Souls]

Iron as a fuel

For the skeptics in the world...

This article basically describes how metal particles could potentially be used as a replacement for petrol.
For the chemists and scientist you'll find it makes theoretical sense (just think how volatile un-oxidised aluminium is).
Microscopic particles of tin could be used to increase the combustion efficiency.
Why do large companies not utilise these ideas? Why should they? To produce units like fuelstars in massive quanitities could be an economic nightmare initially. And it's not the great solution. Not as effective as hybrids, or fuel cells, or hydrogen.

Worth a thought, and everyone needs to try and keep an open mind.

Swirling vortexes can be used to produce localised increases in flow velocity (dyson vaccum cleaners, air tabs).