Cost Effective Maintenance in the Puma

**Scallops** · 16th March 2012, 07:22 AM

Just thought I'd share my experience....a wise fellow suggested I might find adding some of the products from Cost Effective Maintenance's additive collection a good idea....I think the words were..."stick some of Brid's gear in your fuel, Scallops....the Puma will love you for it...."

Well, Grover does!

My vehicle exhibited a slight surge as it was warming up at around 60 km/h in 4th...kind of went away when fully warm, although not completely. Felt like drive train lag a bit....anyway, after talking personally with fellow Puma owner and manager Brid about my vehicle (his office is just around the corner to mine), he recommended 2 products for me. I'm now using Clean Power and FTC Decarbonizer in my fuel....

Cost Effective Maintenance - Home

My Puma has been transformed. I am a convert. My vehicle has ceased exhibiting this surge and feels to be making more power. I'm a big fan and although the initial outlay is substantial, the stuff is cost effective as 1 litre treats 16, 000 litres of diesel.

Just wanted to relay my experience with this stuff.

**Scallops** · 20th March 2012, 07:30 AM

PS ...sorry...1 litre treats 1600 litres of fuel....(1:1600)

**Blknight.aus** · 20th March 2012, 05:18 PM

yep, the commonrail pump and injectors going to love that stuff....

**sashadidi** · 20th March 2012, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

yep, the commonrail pump and injectors going to love that stuff....

???

**incisor** · 20th March 2012, 06:59 PM

my caddy loves it as well

as did my 4bd1t

and my 300tdi

i am about due to buy some more when the dollar fairy flutters by again...

**Scallops** · 21st March 2012, 07:23 AM

Well, another wise man has alerted me to a post rick130 put up in the good oil some time ago regarding additives...

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/640499-post6.html

and I wonder if Dave Blknight is alluding to something along these lines too...are you suggesting to not use it, Dave? ....I note that oil testing may reveal less than benign associated complications too....and (possible) corrosive effects of fuel additives....help!

**Scallops** · 22nd March 2012, 06:28 PM

I was hoping there might come some discussion of the merits or otherwise of these additives....I'm happy to admit I might have bought my first snake oil!

Is this a polarising topic or something? I'd like to simply make a good decision here, so all comment is welcome!

I'm going to start "oil testing" though....hopefully that might give me some baseline.

**newhue** · 23rd March 2012, 05:52 PM

cant comment of Cost Effective Maintenance, but can add an observation of the additive for lead in unleaded fuel.
It seems my 1955 2lt series motor had been rebuild and run in for 500 miles on flash lube.
I have experienced a sticky valve and some back firing upon turning off the vehicle. I was told that the flash lube is not required, and it seems with just using premium unleaded over a few tanks has resolved the problem.

Now for the puma additive, from about 5K km I have added Fuel Doctor when I refill. It all stemmed from a mate who's 2010 Mitsubishi Challenger had carbonising of the manifold. Apparently this is related to the recirculating of spent gasses back into the motor and compounded by soft driving: i.e city driving. A work college had the same vehicle and used Fuel Doctor and had no concerns. Mitsubishi's fix is a fuel additive, after a new manifold.
Admittedly I have not seen this in the Puma motor, and I'm not completely sold on additives, but an added bonus of the product is it floats the water instead of sinking, so the fuel pick up should be clear of water unless run almost empty. I assume the water trap/filter will eventually clear the tank of water, unless there is heap of it in there.

**roverrescue** · 27th March 2012, 07:28 AM

"but an added bonus of the product is it floats the water instead of sinking, so the fuel pick up should be clear of water unless run almost empty. I assume the water trap/filter will eventually clear the tank of water, unless there is heap of it in there."

Snakeoil marketing at its finest. Adding schtuff to suspended H2O aint not never gonnna make its density less than diesel. What it may do however is make water miscible in diesel such that it will then get taken through the fuel system, not be separated out by density dependent water separators and get into the majic of your fancy fuel system. You could also achieve this with a splash of metho though?

Additives can be good at slowing/preventing "algal" growth... which IME is more important in marine enines which are around water rather than a piddly 100L vehicle fuel tank which is turned over relatively often.

If you are truly worried about bad fuel destroying a CRD, buy a dumb diesel instead. Adding a potion each fillup may make you feel better, but can never ensure clean diesel to the pump.

S

**isuzurover** · 27th March 2012, 02:39 PM

As for CEM, their website claims:

The most recent validation of FTC’s fuel efficiency comes from Australia’s Prof Dongke Zhang in a paper presented to the Asia Pacific Conference on Combustion (2009) in Taiwan. His work was commissioned by BHP Billiton.

The paper can be found here:
http://www.fueltechnology.com.au/doc...on%20paper.pdf

I know the guy who wrote the article personally, but will not comment further.

From the article we can see that FTC is actually manufactured by:

Contact Us

Fuel Technology Pty Ltd
2 Tipping Road
Kewdale, Perth
WA 6105

Tel: 08 9353 1016
Fax: 08 9353 1013
Email: fueltech@iinet.net.au

Industrial Fuel Additive FPC (FTC/FPC) | Fuel Technology Pty Ltd | Perth, Western Australia | Home page

Who may sell it cheaper than CEM?

Furthermore, from the article:

The FTC/FPC diesel additives are made from ferrous picrate
with approximately 12% n-butanol, a complex mixture of
short-chain alkyl benzenes (approx. 87%) and a small amount
(approx 1%) of dioctyl adipate, a common plasticiser. The
short-chain alkyl benzenes range from xylenes (C2 alkyl
group) to tetramethylbenzenes (C4 alkyl group). As far as the
fundamental chemistry goes, ferrous picrate needs to be
dissolved in a solvent. An organic solvent or solvents are often
used so that the solvents can form continuous phase with both
picrate solution and diesel. Alcohols are the obvious choice as
they can mutually dissolve with both water and hydrocarbons.
Benzene or toluene and their derivatives are necessary
additives that help improve the stability of the ferrous picratewater-
butanol-diesel solution.
Picric acid or Trinitrophenol is a potentially hazardous
chemical [19,20]. It was formerly used as an explosive and is
an intermediate in dye manufacture. It is also present in many
laboratories, where it is used as a chemical reagent. Water is
added to picric acid to act as a desensitizer. The wetted
product is significantly less shock sensitive than the dry acid.
Picric acid is highly reactive and, in the presence of metals,
metal salts, bases, ammonia and even concrete, readily forms
picrate salts, some of which are more sensitive explosives than
the parent acid.

....

Therefore, ferrous picrate, as used by Fuel technology Pty ltd,
is a good choice among the many possible options as it
delivers the ferrous ions as the combustion catalyst and
decomposes at an extremely high rate upon heating. In
summary, the use of the FTC/FPC combustion catalysts as a
diesel additive to improve engine energy efficiency has a
sound scientific basis.

Overall the stud(ies) found inconclusive results (varied between worse fuel economy and 12% - with the average 1-2% improvement). Note that none of the field trials seem to have been "double blind" and did not report oil analysis results. The paper conducts a statistical analysis and suggests that 2.5% is a representative figure. The statistical analysis is however questionable.

Some other studies on ferrous picrate additives:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/pubs/pdfs/ri9438.pdf
http://www.unicat4.com/SAE.pdf

Edit - Btw - you can buy 98% pure Ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) here:
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/...g=en&region=AU

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