A great find.

I burn a lot of model airplane fuel. The brand name fuel from a hobby shop is about $20.00 a gallon. I used to buy a 54 gallon drum from Red Max fuels but shortly after the haz mat fee just about doubled the cost. I started buying the components of the fuel and mixing them myself saving about 40% of the price of store bought fuel. Castor oil is the main ingredient for lubrication and nitro methane is the power ingredient methanol makes up the bulk of the fuel. I've been getting the methanol from drag strips, hardware stores and speed shops. The castor oil came from Fox who makes engines, fuel and parts for model airplanes. Fox stopped making and selling hobby related stuff a couple years ago and Sig Mfg. bought their inventory including the $20.00 a gallon castor oil. I had to buy 4 gallons a while back and Sig had raised the price to $25.00 a gallon which wasn't too bad. I was down to one gallon left and looked up the price on the Sig web site. Over $50.00 a gallon but they would be nice and sell it for $38.00 a gallon. Shipping is extra. I did a search on the web and found a place called Bulk Apothecary. They have castor oil for under $17.00 a gallon. But the question is is it usable for lubrication in model airplane engines? I took a chance and ordered a gallon to test. I mixed up a small batch and ran it in one of my engines here at the house. It worked fine for the test. I was confident enough to order a 5 gallon batch of castor and I used the first gallon to mix up a 5 gallon batch of fuel. I took the opportunity to test the fuel in the air this morning. I ran three flights using the new fuel and two flights using the old fuel. I couldn't see any change in power or anything between the fuels. I tried a second plane with the new fuel and it ran perfectly also. I still have one gallon of Sig castor and 5 more coming plus the five gallons of fuel I mixed and three gallons of fuel from the next to last gallon of Sig castor. I figure I have enough castor to make up 35 gallons of fuel not counting the 8 gallons of fuel I have mixed already.