Hello all. Looking for some insight as far as what people recommend for fuel.

I have a 96 and a 00 Accord, both stock motors, daily drivers. The 96 has 258K miles on it and the 00 has 180K on it. One's simply a winter car as I live in NH and my 00 gets stored and has never seen snow/salt. Both are meticulously maintained and I do 90% of the work myself.

Recently I cleaned all the EGR ports on the 96 which were incredibly clogged and loaded with carbon to clear a CEL code. I heard buying premium gas will make the car run better and cleaner and considering they both have high miles, I'm willing to spend the extra money. However I've also heard buring higher than recommended octanes will burn too rich/hot and may cause other issues in high mile cars. Just wondering if any of you could shed some light on this subject, Thanks!

 

'Octane rating' is used at gasoline pumps to represent how much of an anti-knock a blend of gasoline is. 92 is more anti-knock than 89, which in turn has more anti-knock than 87.

Knocking/pinging may occur in one of two ways from detonation or preignition.

Unless your vehicle is knocking/pinging, or requires the higher octane rating there is no need or benefit to using a higher grade of gasoline in a vehicle that does not need it. And if your engine is knocking, the proper solution would be to find out why and fix it. Not mask it with a higher octane rating of fuel.

The three grades burn at the same rate with the same energy once ignited by the spark plug proper.

If your engine runs fine on 87 there is no power/economy/energy benefit if you switch to 89 or 92 ocatane rated gasoline.

 

Regular 87 unless you like wasting money for no reason.

 

Only run 91 if you have a vtec motor.

 

i haven't come to a conclusion on that first part. is it marketing hype, do they add more cleaners/detergents to premium, does that even have a real effect... or is it just myth perpetuated by "car guys"? doesn't really matter. the second part; if you understand what Mad Mike said you'll understand why this is iffy at best.

what you may want to try is a few rounds of your choice of fuel cleaner additive. it's about the same cost as the difference between regular and premium for a fill up but it's design and intended purpose will suit your needs better.

 

I only run premium in my cars these days as I hate running ethanol. All of the low and mid grades of gasoline around here all run 10-15% ethanol blends. I more than get my moneys worth from switching to premium over any ethanol blend when it comes to performance and MPG.

If your car was not tuned/programmed to run ethanol fuels your performance and MPG will suffer. I'm pretty sure Honda didn't make provisions for running ethanol in the '92 or the '00 Accords.

Now if you are lucky and still have non ethanol blended fuels. the octane rating that your owners manual states is all you need to run. As stated above, there are no benefits to running a higher knock rating if your engine is low compression/performance based. If you are looking for cleaning additives, just add them yourself every couple of tanks.

 

based on the labeling at the pumps, here in SC it all has "up to 10% ethanol" for any grade of standard pump gas be it 87, 89 or 93 octane. some entire stations are ethanol free and they let you know it! signs everywhere! then others will have one ethanol-free pump off to the side while the other ten are e10 blend.