Some of the best inventions in the world were discovered accidentally through experiments. Still, some of the worst things happen during experiments – most never get documented. American Race driver Garret Mitchell aka Cleetus Mcfarland, on YouTube, has recently been a man on a mission. He calls his latest test antics – Mcfarland Science.
McFarland isn’t the first crazy car enthusiast to pull unconventional tests on his cars. Car influencer Westen Champlin has built a reputation on the platform trying out ‘the unimaginable’ on cars in what he calls ‘Redneck Science.’
It’s not the first time the American race driver is trying out something crazy in the name of science. Previously, he replaced the engine oil in his 4.6-liter V8 Ford Crown Victoria for gasoline, and everything went Kapow!
Not too long ago, McFarland drained the engine oil on another Ford Crown Vic and replaced it with diesel. It surprisingly did 36 laps on a race track.
Well, this time around, he’s trying something different. With the help of his sidekicks, he replaced his truck’s fuel with brake cleaner – and put it on the dyno.
“We are going to test if this Silverado with an LS V8 engine will run solely on brake clean,” McFarland said.
Well, if you know anything about brake cleaner, it’s highly flammable, and if your guess is good as mine, his experiment was a potential suicide mission.
Photo: YouTube Screenshot/Cleetus McFarland
Getting brake fluid in your fuel line isn’t the simplest of things. For starters, it comes in spray cans. Also, it evaporates pretty fast. Their solution was to spray the brake cleaner into a bucket and use a fuel system to suck it up into the truck.
The truck lit right up with brake cleaner in the fuel system. Obviously, there was considerable spark knock since brake cleaner is more volatile than regular gas. As McFarland’s crew member explained, it was igniting earlier than expected and, as a result, exploding way before the piston got to it (50.3 degrees of knock).
“Race gas burns a lot slower. It takes more to actually light it, where this is taking a lot less to light the fuel, so it’s unhappy,” McFarland’s crew explained the reason behind the spark knock.
Before they swapped the fuel, the truck hit 270 hp (274 ps) on the dyno. With brake clean, it did 229 hp (232 ps) on the first run and 150 hp (152 ps) on the next run. They had to stop it after some time. There was a lot of spark knock, and the whole thing threatened to blow up.
There you have it. Brake cleaner isn’t a good alternative for fuel – unless, of course, you want to turn your car into a bomb.
Humphrey is a car enthusiast whose love and passion for automobiles extended into collecting, writing, driving, and working on cars. He got his passion for cars from his Dad, who spent thousands of hours working on his old junky 1970 E20 Toyota Corolla. Years later, he would end up doing the same with a series of lemons he’s owned throughout his adult life. Full profile
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