i heard that you can put some naphthalene (C10H8) mothballs into your gastank and prevent Pre-compresson ingnition in High-displacement engines. and increace preformance.
Has anyone tried this before? does it work? is it safe?
Good Answer: http://www.venturers.org/NextGenTech/2ndGen/Gasoline.html
Or…
http://www.forwardlook.net/mail-archive/msg04636.html
http://hotrodders.com/showthread.php?threadid=17924&highlight=Mothballs
http://www.100megsfree4.com/dictionary/car-dicm.htm
mothball: A substance that was used to increase the octane rating in gasoline. It had a marginal effect in increasing octane.
Looks like a few people believe it, as for me i dont know that i’d try.
From what I remember of my chemisty, diffrent lenght hydro-carbon chains burn diffrently. Diffrent ignition temperture as well as burn temp. So if mothballs are indeed naphthalene (C10H8), then it might well burn diffrent then gas. Also, mothballs are solid, arn’t they?
But if you have pre-compression ignition, you have other problems you should look into. Like checking that you havn’t advanced the timing to far, or if it is just not in time.
Personaly, I’m not sticking mothballs in my gas tank.
Wetzel
Woh - this is totaly new to me.
I’ve never heard of this before…Mothballs?! Man - I wouldn’t want that touching my gas tank. There may be the naphthalene in it - but what else accompanies it? I realise that the other insert ingredents may be small and minute - but that can put a fuel system in jepardy really quick. I’ll never do it - and I strongly don’t recommend you doing it. If you really need the higher octane - just buy plus, premium or Super-Blue (drools) and some others have 100 octane fuels. Especally when you are running that type of engine. Or (I don’t like using additives) just buy some of that Octane Booster stuff. I’ll never touch that stuff - but other people sware by that.
Anyone have a little gas powered RC car that they wouldn’t mind possibly “testing”. 
those rc cars run on nitro, not gasoline
Yup…maybe if someone has an old lawn mower engine or something…or even a beater car…DJ!!