Using Xylene to kill transitional knock?

Black Box

Out cruisin'.
Joined
May 29, 2001
I have the SMC kit on my car, tuned pretty well. If I put my 26º race chip in the car, I get some transitional KR at WOT (<5º), but none with the 20º street chip. I really wanted to eliminate it altogether, so I added a gallon of xylene to the 5 gallons of 93 in the tank. Lo and behold, the transitional KR is gone.

I really like running my race chip, the car feels so much stronger with that extra 6º of timing over the street chip. My only question is, am I playing chemist too much? :D Is running all these different chemicals going to do any damage? I felt its better to do this than have the transitional KR, but what could be the long term effects of this? I do add MMO to the tank when I add the xylene.

Thanks,
Steve
 
It may have been coincidence but both times I used Xylene my O2 sensor died within hours. It also could have just been my fault for using too much. I used 5 gallons to a full tank the first time and 3 gallons to maybe a 3/4 tank the next time. I used a few ounces of tranny fluid each time.
 
3 gal of xylene to a full tank, have had no problems with 02 sensor. dont forget a few oz of MMO too........
 
You're fine with the xylene. And with using it in conjunction with the alky. I have thousands of miles on my O2 sensor, so I'd say your's dying was a fluke, or the result of you running pig rich, but not the chemical it was being exposed to.
 
I've added the xylene 3 times so far, at that ratio (20%) with some MMO. I know some guys go up to 30% but if I were to go that far, considering the amoung of alky I use, it'd be more economical to just use race gas, and that's not readily available.

My cross count are still good (Scanmaster), and the O2's look good. Yeah, I know, I should get an EGT sensor. :)

Thanks guys
Steve
 
Why not up the boost with the lower timing chip, or increase the alcohol amount sprayed into the motor? These two yield higher power on a less timing chip.

Also you can get an alky chip that has more aggressive timing put in on the lower speeds.. and less timing up on top. They make those ya know :)

I can speak from experience, I was exactly where your at Feb '03 playing the mixing game. Refer to paragraph one for the solution ;)

I havent used Xylene now for a year and 4 months.
 
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