Lord Odin

What do you think of octane boosters?

spineshank

its pretty good when you have a blower and nitrous

vader86

Its good, keeps detonation away. Id rather not use it if i had a choice though.

VetteBabe1

My 87 seemed to be ok if you advanced the timing a little bit to accomodate it....ran pretty good ;).

oldace84

OUTLAW!!!!

Is this a good one?????? :) :) :)

SurfnSun

Octane booster is a waste of money. It advertises a 4-7 point increase right?.......did you know that a point is actually a tenth of a point b/c thats how its measured so.....

If you get pump 93 and add a bottle of 104 super....then you get 93.7. No exactly a great return on investment.

If you are gonna use this stuff, the NOS brand is the one to get. I recommend going and getting a couple gallons of 100 unleaded. It will cost about the same and do better. Or if your car is without catalysts, then a gallon or two of the 114 leaded, will make you :D

Ive been filling up with 100 unleaded in the Callaway at 3.79/gal. Then I did some emissions work ;) and now run 114 leaded(4.79/gal) and mix it with some 93. Keeps my motor very happy.

stillthere

it smells good but i dont think your car will run a great deal better with it. that stuff is used on higher compression engines that wont work well with 93. it wont hurt anything.

Lord Odin

What's the highest octane I can go if I do have cats? The best they sell at the local pumps are 91 in Phoenix and the closest they have is 92, which is at least a gas tank's drive away. I'm sure they sell higher stuff at the track but that's probably gonna be in the 112+ range. I don't wanna hurt my engine. That's why I'm curious about the octane boosters.

Arnie

I've heard that TORCO Race Fuel Concentrate is the best, not really an octane boost, but concentrated race fuel. I guess there's a difference, anybody have any experience with TORCO?

stillthere

you cant run to high. as long as it is made for a car. airplane fuel is made for planes. it has a higher burning point and it will make your car run hot. racing fuel with the same octane will make your car run cooler. it wont hurt anything by runing the booster it just wont help much. sure cant hurt 91 octane.

Lord Odin

Actually, jet fuel is nothing more than diesel. If it isn't used for a long time, planes aren't allowed to use it anymore and you can throw it in vehicles like trucks that use diesel just fine.

John Row

I voted "Bad...", however in a recent study the "NOS Octane Booster" (Racing version) did actually increase octane a significant amount.

All of the others that claimed "raises octane 1,2,3 (pick one) points" were really saying .1, .2, .3. Some actually decreased octane.

The article's recommendation was to blend pump gas and really high octane racing gas to keep the price down and octane up.

Danno355

Depends. If you are running high compression or boost, then yes you want a high octane, and if you dont have readily acceable high octane pump gas, you need the boost. I use the nos octane boost in my turbo when I race as I go above 1 bar boost. anything below a bar i can run 92 pump gas with worrying about detonation.

Octane does not increase performance. It decreases the chance of detonation.

dtorc4

I have read in many places you can make your own octane booster/injector cleaner using Toluene from a paint store and some transmission fluid (and other ingredients I can't remember). This has even been talked about on this very forum a couple of times. I'm sure the people who know how to do it or have done it will chime in.

Nathan Plemons

To truly answer this question you need to determine if you car getting any knock retard. This might sound a little counter intuitive but it's a fact, go with the lowest octane possible and you'll make the most power.

The octane rating is essentially a measure of how hard the fuel is to ignite, and how much engery is there to be released. Since we are all talking about gasoline, let's stick to comparing apples to apples.

93 octane has less energy potential for unit volume than does 87. So why do our high performance engines need a less potent gasoline? Well 93 is also harder to detonate, allowing a higher compression ratio, which makes more power. Apparently the power gained by raising the compression ratio is greater than the power lost per unit volume when you raise the octane rating. Run too low an octane in your high performance motor and it may well detonate before the spark plug fires, a very bad thing. However, if your car has a very low comrpession and will run on 87 octane you will actually make less power on 93.

My old car was a perfect example. It was 91 Cutlass with a 2.5L 4-cyl that made a whopping 8.3:1 compression. With 87 octane it would start up immediately and run great, no pinging (except of RaceTrac gas, they suck) and got great gas mileage (I keep very good records). When I put high octane in it the car would run fine and still get good gas mileage but I noticed one very important problem. It took a lot more cranking to fire on a cold start. This is because with a low compression ratio and a cold cylinder it was just too hard to detonate the fuel. This meant more unburnt fuel getting dumped out of the pipes during cold starts and more wear because cranking speed doesn't do much for oil pressure. My detailed records showed no gain / loss for fuel economy, but for $.20 extra cents a gallon it was effectively reduced. Pretty pointless if you ask me, ghetto sounding hard starts and more money for 0 gain.

Now that being said I always run premium in the Vette. Not only does it have a fairly high compression ratio it has been modified. When it was stock it probably would have ran OK on 89 or 87 octane. However the cam and heads allows more air to be drawn into the cylinder, which although doesn't change the actual compression ratio, does increase cylinder pressures, again making it easier to detonate.

Detonation is caused by cylinder pressures and temperatures. It's always pretty warm around here as well, so that's another way for it to try and detonate on me, so I pretty much have to run premium. To be honest I'm afraid to try anything else. Now if your car is stock you'll be fine to experiment. Everything will be well in the range that the car can pull some timing if it senses any knock. Worst case you'll lose some power until you burn all of that gas.

Now, why can't you get 93 octane where you live? Well cylinder pressures remember? Atmospheric pressure plays a part in that. In coastal areas that are closer to sea level you will find higher octane ratings. There is a higher barometric pressure which means denser air / higher cylinder pressures / and higher octane requirements. Now if you go to Colorado you'll find some pretty crappy looking octane choices, but that's fine too. Your car will still run fine because you have lower cylinder pressures.

Now, assume you fill up in Colorado with the best thing they've got and then you make it to a lower elevation with that gas still in your tank. You'll probably run into a little bit of pinging. Probably not a lot, well within the range of the car to adjust for it in the timing. You just wouldn't want to race until you got some fresh gas for the region you're in. It would work the other way around. If you could get some Bowling Green 93 octane up to Colorado you might as well be running some race fuel, which could be costing you power as well because it's too hard to detonate.

Hope this helps :cheers:


[Modified by Nathan Plemons, 12:51 AM 10/26/2002]

John Row

Nathan,

Do you have references for your statement? I can't say you are wrong, just that I haven't heard them before.

JR

Nathan Plemons

Which part of it? That's a compilation of all the reading about gasoline that a person can do in about 2 years, sumarized into a fairly short explanation. Specific sources, no I can't give you any, but just do some reasearch on gasoline from qualified sources (not octane booster advertisers) and you'll find the same thing.

Using an octane rating higher than your engine requires is simply throwing money away. Some will argue that the additive packages might be different and such, and maybe company x's high octane keeps your fuel system cleaner than their low grade, but that's not comparing apple to apples. Hold all additives as constant and just change the octane rating and you will see no better if not decreased performance with a higher octane than is needed for your motor.

Anybody who tells you that they feel a seat of the pants difference with high octane either has a car that was getting knock retard with low grade, or they just feel the seat of their pants is different because they now have a lighter wallet. I like to call it "I paid more for this, now I have to justify it to myself" syndrome. Anybody who also tells you that they got better gas mileage with premium is most likely full of it as well for the same reasons. On a high performance motor this may well be true, but for a low performance low compression car, fuel economy won't go up with premium, and even if it did it would doubtfully be enough to justify the extra cost. I'd like to see a detailed gas mileage breakdown from the people who claim to have better gas mileage on premium, I'm betting they didn't keep records. I'd also say that I can vary my driving style and easily see a 5 mpg difference in fuel economy. These people who claim they get better mileage on high octane may well subconciously be driving differently and skewing their results.

So, if you feel like you got better performance out of high octane am I calling you a liar? Absolutely not! I'm just saying that there has to be a reason. If your car sucks with 87 but runs with 93, did you try 89? It might run even better. Just becauses 93 works better for you than 87 does this does not mean that 107 will do the same benefit. It's not a linear relationship by any means and there are far too many variables.

The only way to know for sure is to find the gasoline rating that your car will run on without pinging or causing any timing retard. If this is 87 then 93 is a waste of money. If this is 93 then well you better buy 93 for best performance. It's something you've got to experiment with, but there is nothing magical about high octane. If it's not needed it is merely a waste of money. :cheers:

SurfnSun

Unless youre getting detonation you don't need octane booster. But certain places do sell, 100 octane unleaded. thats what I was running til I took the cats off. You can not run leaded gas with cats....leaded gas has the higher octane 110-114.

SurfnSun

RatRacer here on the forum does this. He is experienced in this stuff though, Ive read here on the forum that you can damage your gas tank with this stuff, b/c it damages the bladder in the tank causing it to separate. Then you need a new tank.

Lord Odin

What exactly is detonation? Just so i'm clear on this. Is it like backfiring? I have been getting that a lot when I go WOT and it shifts to 2nd.