Puzzled ! Math Minded
 

This has been a Thanksgiving brain tease for a few of my friends:

If I have 2.5 gallons of gas with 32 oz of 2 stroke oil in a container;

How much of the above mixture is needed to be mixed with fresh gas to make 1 gallon of a 50:1 ( fuel to oil ) mixture ?

I 'think' I figured it out, but a buddy is adamant about his different answer. All in the name of making use of my fogging mix for my i/o ! I wish I just threw it in my car and was done with it - but being a fix-it guy, it's bothering me !

My answer, add 10 gallons of gas (happened to be sitting in my office, calculator in hand,
obviously bored and surfing my favorite website).

Put 102 oz (8/10th of a gallon) of fresh pure gas in an previously empty gas container. then add 26 oz of your pre-mix gas/oil mixture (which currently is at a 10:1 ratio and thus contains 2.6 oz of oil) from your other container.

Then you will have 128 oz of gas/oil mixture in your new container that by ratio has 2.6 oz of oil. That is now a 50:1 ratio.

Jim

Does my calculation make sense ?

Add 2 gallons of fresh gas to a 1/2 gallon of the heavily concentrated/oiled gas to get me pretty darn close ? Gets you to about 2.56 (50:1 is 2.6)

How do you come by your answers ?

I did:

2.5 gal : 32oz of oil is equal to 1 gallon of gas : 12.8 oz of oil

My theory -- If I added (4) gallons of clean gas to the (1) gallon with 12.8 - for a total of (5) gallons ( less the 12.8 oz which I didn't worry about ), then it would be about 2.56 of oil for the (5) gallons overall. Sound about right ?

what ???

Yes, I agree with you and your calcs.

I thought you were asking in your original post how to make ONE gallon with the proper ratio (50:1) utilizing the oil rich gas mixture you already had in your container.

We need to have Denny (Bushwacker) chime in on this one...LOL!

Holy Moly....

Use what you have in your weed whacker, blower, chain saw or what ever..

All else fails just dump it !! Start over...

Water Rat is right if you want to convert the whole mix to 50:1 . . . just add 10 gallons of straight gas and you'll have a 50:1 mix! But Jim is right if you want just 1 gal of 50:1 mix. But Ken has the most practical answer . . . many of the air cooled lawn tools run much hotter than outboards, so running only 1 gallon of a richer oil mixture in them really is no big deal! But the most important factor is NOT to use E-10 gas in lawn equipment, as it will dissolve their cheap Chinese fuel lines! I learned a long time ago from local lawnmower shop to only run real non-ethanol gas in those things!

The turkey had too much tryptophan in it. I've got to go to sleep, something is making me verrrrrrrrrrry sleeeeeeeeeeeepy.................................. .......................................

Thx guys. I know it's a crazy topic. I know. This had my brain reeling for a little while - mostly because I couldn't figure it out quickly. Then, I asked a Thanksgiving guest, a math teacher, and it took a life of it's own.

This is what happens when I can't find the definitive answer to my gunnel/knee/gussett lay-up questions… :)