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Cruiser
Posts: 106
L.I., N.Y. | :) Looking for anyone that has facts to back up if it is better, worse, or indifferent. One dealer states DO NOT USE, another say GO AHEAD. Now I've never used it straight and have mixed it 50 - 50 with Sunoco 93 octane and I noticed a slight improvement on acceleration, not wide open throttle. Just steadily going up to 55 - 60 mph I'm guessing over a 500 to 600 hundred foot span. Slight increase in mpg and I didn't notice any advantage in cold starts at 20 degs range, still 2-3 start stalls til she runs on her own and at 6.95 to 7.95 gals decided it wasn't worth the extra dollars. Besides the weather has been so wacky with yesterday being 22 degs 6:30 am to 56 degs 10:00 pm ;) I'd like steady weather thru the season, but alas grin and bear it, put on an extra shirt, take off the extra shirt and ride on thru it. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! Good Health to and Be safe. :)
Edited by slowryder 2008-12-15 10:16 AM
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Iron Butt
Posts: 600
Linwood, MI | Unless you have some sort of ungodly compression ratio in your beefed-up racing Vision engine, you're wasting your money using anything other than 92-94 octane regular-ol' premium pump gas, which is what your owner's manual specifies. | |
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Visionary
Posts: 3773
Pittsburgh, PA | What is Gasoline Octane?
Have you ever wondered why there are different grades of gasoline? All grades of gasoline have what's called an octane rating. So what is it and, more importantly, what should you use in your vehicles?
First of all, the engine in your vehicle burns fuel by compression – in other words, your engine is an internal combustion engine or burns fuel internally. The engine allows a mixture of air and fuel into the combustion area and a piston then compresses this mixture. Your spark plug then ignites this mixture causing an internally explosion that produces the power to run your engine.
Therefore, the octane rating tells you how much the gasoline can be compressed before it ignites spontaneously. Should gasoline ever ignite by compression rather than by the spark plug, then it would cause the engine to knock, possibly damaging your engine (think of it as taking a hammer striking the top part of your piston) – obviously this is not something that's desirable.
Take regular gasoline with an 87 octane rating for example. This grade of gasoline would require less compression than gasoline with a 93 octane rating. Simply said, the higher the octane, the more compression it takes before spontaneous combustion occurs. Another way to look at it is that, the higher the octane, the slower the fuel burns, whereas a lower octane rated gasoline burns faster.
If you use a lower grade of gasoline than what your vehicle manufacturer recommends, then you run the risk of engine damage caused by pinging or pre-detonation. And if you're using a higher grade of gasoline in an engine that wasn't originally designed to handle a higher grade, you can actually reduce engine performance and gas mileage. How so? Since the higher grade of gasoline burns slower and you're using it in an engine that was designed to burn a faster burning fuel, you therefore don't burn all the fuel. If you don't burn all the fuel, then all the air that is in the mixture isn't burned either. Your vehicle computer sees more air in your exhaust system and then compensates by adding more fuel to this perceived lean running condition (more air). In short, you have more raw fuel being pushed through your exhaust system, causing your catalytic converter(s) to over work and possibly lead to premature failure, not to mention the pollutants released into the air. Unless you've had modifications performed to your engine (and computer reprogrammed) to run properly on a higher grade of gasoline, you won't improve the performance of your vehicle just be buying a better grade of gasoline.
So which grade of gas should you buy? Use the grade that your vehicle manufacturer recommends unless you've had your engine modified and your computer reprogrammed to burn a higher grade of gasoline.
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Cam Am 100 octane racing gas