Be careful about hobby shop gear. some of it (no idea what brand names or whatver) might have some amount of oil in it (which will stuf up the octane rating a little bit, and defeat the purpose - depending on concentration. So at leat double check if it has any other additives.
Other R/C fuels can contain nitro. I recall some time back someone on the jyturbo list tried it (it was something of a methanol/nitro blend, nowhere near as high in nitromethane concentration as top fuel dragsters run). Now aside from the cooling effect helping density and therefore upping power and also making it safe for higher boost etc. the nitromethane itself should add power too. Anyway he tried it and ran with an already rich 'fuel' mixture, so it was richer than stoich even without the aux methanol/nitro injection and threw it in in quantities around 10-15% of the petrol flow. Anyway - it didn't run any faster like that, or was it safer from detonation or pre-ignition. It seemed to have been finally 'discovered' that it was the oil in this combo that robbed the gains.
Don't get me wrong, there will be trace amts of oil in many racing fuels (often to help prevent efi injectors from sticking etc) but it's the relative amounts that can be an issue.
I haven't tried to purchase it in a while, but people used to go through Shell who sell it (usully in drums) and call it 'shell racing A' - the A standing for alcohol (which methanol is of course - as is ethanol, though thanks to usage it's less common here to call methanol alcohol, and alcohol is normally used to refer colloquially to ethanol.
I think they also had something like 'shell racing m' which was a premix - possibly methanol and castor oil (which is used becaus many 'regular' motor oils won't mix with methanol like they do with petrol, and as such to run methanol on a 2 stroke racer or other engine that needs a pre-mix with oil - they they can't use mineral oils so they use castor.
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If you have no luck going through shell you could try:
Coogee Energy supplies - a little bit cut n pasted from their site:
http://www.coogee.com.au/op_meth.html#buyingCoogee Energy supplies methanol in bulk from its road tanker loading facility in Laverton, Victoria and by road tanker or sea tanker from its bulk storage facility in Port Botany, New South Wales.
Methanol is also available in 205 L drums through Coogee’s drum distributors at various locations throughout Australia.
All enquiries for the purchase of methanol should be sent by email to
ceadmin@coogeeenergy.com.au or alternatively by telephone on +61 3 9360 2015.
http://www.coogee.com.au/SpecSheets/S ... ee%20BS506%20Methanol.pdfnotes that their's is 99.9% pure - not too bad
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If none of those work, you 'might' be able to get it through some paint wholesalers - they might not stock in (they are a potential source of toluene too) but might be able to order it in. Not 100% sure but worth a phone call or two to find out.
If _all_ of them turn up nothing, send me a pm. I have a mate (who I haven't seen for a good few years) that used to run (and almost certainly still does) a turbo lpg centura, and he was undertaking a fairly comprehensive testing plan with methanol injection and various boost and methanol flow rates. I don't remember where he was getting teh methanol from, but I can certainly try and contact him and ask him. The main reason I bring it up ia he lived in Oakleigh (probably still does) which isn't too far away from where you live, so his source would be pretty conveniently located I would imagine.
I haven't looked at any legislation about this, but I suspect that it is far easier to purchase than other 'race' fuel. Since the government has gotten into the ethanol blended fuels 'to save the planet' (even though there's serious drawbacks to its use, it 'sounds good' for a political sound bite and makes them look like they care) - anyway with e85 now being available, it's hardly likely that methanol would be more tightly restricted. Being unleaded etc, it would probably avoid the issues that petrol based race fuels might have. About the only reason it isn't used as a day to day fuel (even on a trial basis) is that it doubles fuel needs fr the same power output, due to stoich ratio etc. Ethanol gets the nod as the increase in fuel consumption isn't nearly as severe.
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