Converted an old 2 stroke Lawn Boy!

[dan45mcc 53]

Another year, nothing much more to report.  Everything's still running great.

 

I've decided to just run Benol in everything.  The engines seem to love it, and that way I only have to keep one 2-stroke oil around.

 

 

Rusty I swear you said  Beno lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rusty70f100 1]

Now what's the fun in that? 

[Corey872 1]

Glad to hear everything is working out for you, Rusty.  IIRC, in my weed eater thread, you ask about the oil and I don't believe I've had a chance to reply.  I'm running the Klotz Super Techniplate.  Before I ran it, I did some testing.  I mixed it to a 25:1 ratio, then tried various things to see how it mixed or separated with E85. 

 

I mixed E85/S-TP in one vial and made another with the oil on the bottom and fuel on the top.  After about 4 days the oil dispersed in the fuel, and the mix showed no signs of separation.  I tried to freeze the mix to -20F, centrifuge it an hour at 800G, add 20% water, etc.  There was no fuel/oil separation what so ever.  The only thing I did find was once I went past ~15% water, I got an alcohol/fuel separation, but up to that, everything was a solution.  But to do that, you'd have to leave the tank out in the rain with no cap, or purposely add water to the fuel - just no other way to get that much water in the fuel.

 

So I labeled S-TP 'the good stuff' and called it a day!

[rusty70f100 1]

I've been running the same E85 / Benol mix in my weed wacker as I run in the Lawn Boy mowers.  I find that it runs best after it warms up for a minute or two.  It'll run fine and chop weeds no problem right after it starts up, but it doesn't really reach max rpm until after about a minute.  I guess that kind of thing is typical for most 2-strokes, gas or E85.

 

You're certainly doing more testing than I did.  My testing went no further than a glass jar in the garage.  Good to know it'll stay mixed in such extreme conditions.

[rusty70f100 1]

Another year, everything is still working fine...

[gasisoutrageous 85]

Congrats on that conversion by the way! Sounds quite easy.

 

Thankfully I don't have to bother with oil or fluids at all as I use battery powered lawn equipment (weedwacker and lawn mower), but the trade-offs are that the lawn mower battery life isn't as long as I'd like it to be, and the cost of the mower (with battery) was $460. Saving about $9/year on crapoline, about $5 on oil, and potential repairs on the spark plug or other parts of the mower, it will take quite a while for this investment to pay off. The nice thing with your situation is you hardly had to do anything, and it didn't cost you very much - a cost which was paid back as soon as you started the mower with the new mixture.

 

Also not to mention that neither of us is truly fossil free (unless the oil you use is synthetic) - all of mid-Michigan's electricity comes from coal. Now if only I could live up in Ithaca, 45 minutes to the north. The entire town of 2,900 is powered by wind!

[rusty70f100 1]

Actually, the oil I use, is Klotz Benol.  It's made from castor beans.  So no fossils there.

 

https://www.klotzlube.com/techsheet.asp?ID=2

 

Of course there's still the 15% gas in the E85.  If I had access to E100 I'd try it.

 

I'd say the biggest effort I had to put in was the initial trial and error.  Getting the oil right was the biggest thing.

Edited May 19, 2014 by rusty70f100