Xylene for octane boost?

Personally, I've never used it, but it can't be any worse than Ethanol.

Lots of info on both acetone and xylene as a gas additive here:
http://www.lubedev.com/smartgas/faq.htm

I use that stuff at work when painting and its wicked. I don't care if its safe or not there is no way Id put that through my car.

They put small amount of alcohol in gas but the fuel systems on most vehicle will not hold up under larger percentages. I do not know how xylene will work in larger percentage but if it was my car I would be real sure before I ran it.

What you are thinking of works very well. You can go upto a ( 55 gas/45 Toluene/Xylene ) mixture but be very careful as you can erode your gas line using this Xylene. I would suggest using Toluene @ 114 Octane as it is a little easier on the gasline lines.

Once you find something that is fuel system safe then you need to look at specific gravity and BTU values per unit and what air fuel ratio this mix needs to run at.

i have run toluene in my car before and it works well. I think that toluene is 114 or maybe it was 117 octane. I get that stuff from sherwin williams as well. I have run it multiple times without any problems on my car just becareful with toluene putting it in your gas tank because if it gets on your paint that can be bad as it is used in paint thinners lol. I felt a pretty good difference when using that mixed with 93 octane nothing big like 10hp but it did feel more responsive.

There's a product out there that ends in "oxide" I'm not going to tell you guys the rest of it, because about 2 ounces to the gallon will make your car a rocket ship, and also because it's not detectable by most sanctioning bodies fuel checks (at least on a local level) so I don't want to create a new generation of cheaters.
There are 2 things that you need to know, #1 is that the plan is to alter the oxygen content of the fuel (NOS does this artificially) that way you add more fuel and the car goes faster but no one knows you're doing it. #2 and this is really the important part, is that these chemicals are highly toxic and can cause cancer, to me, it's not worth the risk to go a little faster and then die from some lingering disease.

What you keep overlooking is the complexity the air/fuel ratio and how that ratio changes with different fuels and additives. Remember air/fuel ratio is by weight and not volume.

Stan Weiss said:

What you keep overlooking is the complexity the air/fuel ratio and how that ratio changes with different fuels and additives. Remember air/fuel ratio is by weight and not volume.

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correct and also, does this stuff raise the specific gravity of the fuel, if it does it may not flow well and make the engine run lean or clogg-up injectors, which are designed to flow most "automotive fuels" not heavier agents.
even 'Flex Fuel" cars run a different injector, in addition to being made of stainless steel the injector orifice is larger to pass the alcohol base fuel. as alcohol has a higher specific gravity than gasoline

Wikipedia lists several gasoline additives, none of which are xylene.

Additives

Main article: Gasoline additive

[edit] Lead

The mixture known as gasoline, when used in high compression internal combustion engines, has a tendency to ignite early (pre-ignition or detonation) causing a damaging "engine knocking" (also called "pinging" or "pinking") noise. Early research into this effect was led by A.H. Gibson and Harry Ricardo in England and Thomas Midgley and Thomas Boyd in the United States. The discovery that lead additives modified this behavior led to the widespread adoption of the practice in the 1920s and therefore more powerful higher compression engines. The most popular additive was tetra-ethyl lead. However, with the discovery of the environmental and health damage caused by the lead, and the incompatibility of lead with catalytic converters found on virtually all US automobiles since 1975, this practice began to wane in the 1980s. Most countries are phasing out leaded fuel; different additives have replaced the lead compounds. The most popular additives include aromatic hydrocarbons, ethers and alcohol (usually ethanol or methanol).

In the U.S., where lead was blended with gasoline (primarily to boost octane levels) since the early 1920s, standards to phase out leaded gasoline were first implemented in 1973. In 1995, leaded fuel accounted for only 0.6 % of total gasoline sales and less than 2,000 tons of lead per year. From January 1, 1996, the Clean Air Act banned the sale of leaded fuel for use in on-road vehicles. Possession and use of leaded gasoline in a regular on-road vehicle now carries a maximum $10,000 fine in the United States. However, fuel containing lead may continue to be sold for off-road uses, including aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines until 2008. The ban on leaded gasoline led to thousands of tons of lead not being released in the air by automobiles. Similar bans in other countries have resulted in lowering levels of lead in people's bloodstreams.[8] [9]

A side effect of the lead additives was protection of the valve seats from erosion. Many classic cars' engines have needed modification to use lead-free fuels since leaded fuels became unavailable. However, "Lead substitute" products are also produced and can sometimes be found at auto parts stores.

Gasoline, as delivered at the pump, also contains additives to reduce internal engine carbon buildups, improve combustion, and to allow easier starting in cold climates.

In some parts of South America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, leaded gasoline is still in use. Leaded gasoline was phased out in sub-Saharan Africa with effect from 1 January, 2006. A growing number of countries have drawn up plans to ban leaded gasoline in the near future.

[edit] MMT

Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) has been used for many years in Canada and recently in Australia to boost octane. It also helps old cars designed for leaded fuel run on unleaded fuel without need for additives to prevent valve problems.

US Federal sources state that MMT is suspected to be a powerful neurotoxin and respiratory toxin, and a large Canadian study concluded that MMT impairs the effectiveness of automobile emission controls and increases pollution from motor vehicles.

[edit] Ethanol

In the United States, ethanol is sometimes added to gasoline but sold without an indication that it is a component. Chevron, 76, Shell, and several other brands market ethanol-gasoline blends.[citation needed]

In several states, ethanol is added by law to a minimum level (typically 10%). This fact may or may not appear on the fuel pump.

[edit] Dye

Main article: Fuel dyes

In the United States the most commonly used aircraft gasoline, avgas, or aviation gas, is known as 100LL (100 octane, low lead) and is dyed blue. Red dye has been used for identifying untaxed (non-highway use) agricultural diesel. The UK uses red dye to differentiate between regular diesel fuel, (often referred to as DERV), which is undyed, and diesel intended for agricultural and construction vehicles like excavators and bulldozers. Red diesel is still occasionally used on HGVs which use a separate engine to power a loader crane. This is a declining practice however, as many loader cranes are powered directly by the tractor unit.

[edit] Oxygenate blending

Oxygenate blending adds oxygen to the fuel in oxygen-bearing compounds such as MTBE, ETBE and ethanol, and so reduces the amount of carbon monoxide and unburned fuel in the exhaust gas, thus reducing smog. In many areas throughout the US oxygenate blending is mandatory. For example, in Southern California, fuel must contain 2% oxygen by weight. The resulting fuel is often known as reformulated gasoline (RFG) or oxygenated gasoline. The federal requirement that RFG contain oxygen was dropped May 6, 2006[10].

MTBE use is being phased out in some states due to issues with contamination of ground water. In some places it is already banned. Ethanol and to a lesser extent the ethanol derived ETBE are a common replacements. Especially since ethanol derived from biomatter such as corn, sugar cane or grain is frequent, this will often be often referred to as bio-ethanol. A common ethanol-gasoline mix of 10% ethanol mixed with gasoline is called gasohol or E10, and an ethanol-gasoline mix of 85% ethanol mixed with gasoline is called E85. The most extensive use of ethanol takes place in Brazil, where the ethanol is derived from sugarcane. Over 3,400 million US gallons (13,000,000 m³) of ethanol mostly produced from corn was produced in the United States in 2004 for fuel use, and E85 is slowly becoming available in much of the United States. Unfortunately many of the relatively few stations vending E85 are not open to the general public[11]. The use of bioethanol, either directly or indirectly by conversion of such ethanol to bio-ETBE, is encouraged by the European Union Directive on the Promotion of the use of biofuels and other renewable fuels for transport. However since producing bio-ethanol from fermented sugars and starches involves distillation, ordinary people in much of Europe cannot ferment and distill their own bio-ethanol at present (unlike in the US where getting a BATF distillation permit has been easy since the 1973 oil crisis.)

Let us know how it goes do not inhale the fumes or allow it to come in contact with your skin.

the98stang said:

Also, ethanol is 129 octane. Some places in the US use 10% ethanol in gas. Now how could xylene hurt the engine when it has a smaller octane rating of 117 compared to the ethanol? Hell, some countries use 95% ethanol. Just a thought...

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Because to run high percentage ethanol gas in a non-flex fuel/ethanol ready engine will corrode your fuel lines/hoses due to the acidity, as well as prematurely eating away non-stainless exhaust components due to higher H20 content in the exhaust.

My method does not raise the specific gravity, nor does it show up in a water/test and it doesn't appreciably change the conductivity of the fuel. FWIW.
I'm not a scientist or a chemist (the guy that taught me this was for Shell oil, however), but really guys, the health issues are just not worth it.
I worked the pits at the St. Pete Indycar race, they've just gone from methanol to ethanol, when they did that they also run something like 2% gasoline in the mix. The methanol was actually pretty pleasent to smell, same as the sprint car and Alky dragster guys. The ethanol burns your nose like crazy, it seems like it's more akin to nitro than an alcohol car. It's harder to extinguish as well.