Hello again, another pilot fuel question - has anyone tried using Heptane as Stanley pilot fuel? My car has a Packard pilot by the way.

Hexane is proving difficult to find at a reasonable cost, though it looks like some automotive panel wipes may be an alternative source of Hexane.

I may end up having to use pump petrol and clean the pilot more regularly....

Thanks

Peter Turvey

Peter Turvey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Hexane is proving difficult to find at a
> reasonable cost, though it looks like some
> automotive panel wipes may be an alternative
> source of Hexane.

Peter

Be careful how you distill it out of them!!

No experience of heptane but my guess is that it would work and be better than pump petrol. It's not the cleaning which causes a problem with petrol but the fact that petrol is a very wide boiling point mixture so that in any normal Stanley pilot (incl the Packard version) there is the constant risk of a significant proportion of the fuel getting cool enough to condense before it gets to the jet.

Heptane like hexane should be a single compound (or at least a very high percentage of a single compound) and will have a narrow boiling point which is still high enough to avoid condensing twixt vaporiser and jet. Try a small amount before you buy a drum of it.

Hexane boils at 69C, heptane at 98C and octane at 125C. Pump petrol boils at a range from 40C up to 200C because it is a mixture of hydrocarbons with up to 12 or 14 carbons in the chain. My experience was that the fuel had to get to the jet at at least 90C to avoid problems. This is hard to achieve in an ordinary Stanley pilot.

It would be interesting to try E15 pump fuel as ethanol boils at 78C - who knows - this might be a rare example where the new fuel is better than the old!

Mike





Edited 1 times. Last edit at 06/08/12 03:50PM by Mike L Clark.

PETER:
I could not burn it in my 1924 Stanley. I could not keep it lite. Maybe an operator error but I ended up giving it away.

Thanks everyone, I will cross Heptane off my list of potential easily-available pilot fuels!

Interesting Tom - seems like the components of petrol which boil below 98C are the ones which make it work - heptane must be (all of it) unable to stay gaseous at the temperature in the area of the pilot jet.

Mike

Having difficulty sourcing hexane, I have been using an equivalent of Coleman lantern fuel in my Packard pilot. According to Coleman's MSDS at [www.coleman.com] , it is a mixture of cyclohexane, nonane, octane, heptane, and pentane. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 - must be everything you need! Around here it is called "naphtha gas" and is fortunately still in broad enough use by the Amish community for lighting that I can dispense it into 5-gallon jugs.

My pilot reliability seems to be slightly improved by using carbureter cleaner to squirt through the jet and clean the nozzle every 20-30 hours of use. Perhaps straight hexane would be even cleaner than that.

There's more on naphtha at [en.wikipedia.org] .

Kelly

I use common petrol in the Toledos pilot and give it a good clean for the winter. Not a spot of bother and never even blown out. The burner is the old type Stanley (Locomobile) . It is on the side of the boiler as opposed to the front, do you think that makes any difference?
Regs to all Tim

Probably less cold air blowing on it Tim
Mike