http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premiu.../roadtip13.htm

It's only 1 octane, but will this hurt performance?

yoshi - who is

 

sunoco 94 in N.Y., if cali didn't have such beautiful weather there be no reason to go. j/k

 

Damn, sorry to hear that Yoshi. I wonder if they'll do the same on the east coast

 

LOL, this is a joke:

``This will not hurt your engine,' said Jerry Cummings of Coast Oil. ``We always tell people that even if your car manual says to use premium, unless you hear a ping, you're not hurting anything with a lower octane.''

Yeah, I want my timing dialed back and robbed of 25hp so that I can use crappy gas. And if you hear detonation, it might be too late at that point.

And adding ethanol is crap also. I ALWAYS avoid the gas stations around here that add ethanol to their gas because it runs like crap in my R. Sunoco 94, ethanol free!

Looks like some of you will maybe need to stock up on octane booster





[Modified by Todd00, 1:15 PM 7/13/2001]

 

It's interesting that the article says "you won't hurt anything unless you hear a ping." Yah, ok, THEN what do you do??

Having just gotten back from cruising on the German Autobahn, it's interesting that the lowest octane they offer in Germany is 93! Then mid-grade is 95, and Super is about 98 octane! Not sure why they need such high octane there.... It cost me about $50US to fill up a tank on a C180 Mercedes with 95 octane. We could do with more octane over here but they can keep their prices!

 

Todd,

Beware! I heard from a friend who lives in Athens that Sunoco is going to start adding ethanol to their gas. I don't know if that will include Ultra 94 or not. Let's hope not!

 

g:
actually octane rating in europe is not any higher then it is here, its just the system they use....we use "pump octane" whatever, which is (RON+MON)/2

MON (motor octane number) and RON (research octane number)used in europe (and most of other countires of world)

so our 87 octane = 91 RON (in europe)

 

If Sunoco added ethanol, that would suck. I'd need to find a new place to get gas. Who else doesn't add ethanol in the midwest. Any cheap gas station does, and some of the "better" ones even add it (BP for example).

What about Shell or Marathon? And now UDF carries Mobil gas, so I'm not too sure about that either.

 

Max,

What are u doing, get back to work!

I thought the gas in Europe uses a diff scale, like they're 100 octane was like 94 octane here?

Not sure though...

**EDIT, jeez, someone already answered my q before I posted, hehe.

FB

 

Once again, morons display their ignorance with octane.

"Premium gas: Jim Preston of Santa Clara points out an advantage to using premium gas in his 1996 Ford Aerostar that has 102,000 miles on it:

``It still doesn't need a tuneup and qualifies for the smog certificate. . . . The savings on the three tuneups that I've avoided because of Chevron additives more than offsets higher prices. I'll never go back to cheap gas.''"

 

I don't think Shell uses ethanol, but don't hold me to that. My friend that told me about Sunoco has started using only Shell (he drives a '78 BMW 5 series and has a Moto Guzzi FWIW).

 

Shell has no Methanol, but can contain up to 10% Ethanol. But I use it all the time and I have never had a bad tank of gas or problems.

 

98 Ron which is offered in the UK is the same as 95octane if we had it here.
There is apparently 100 Ron in the UK but very hard to find...which is 97 octane here.

Most places around here sell 93oct whilst some sell 94oct some 93oct I've seen run better then the 94oct. I guess it because it could be due to whatever they add to the petrol. But there are places here that atleast 5 months ago sell Elf petrol 98 and 100oct. I got full tank of 100oct for around 38 bucks and I can tell you, you have never heard the ITR engine run better smooth as silk and barely even makes a sound at idle. Also you will notice the car got abit more go power but if you had been on the old 93 you feel like the engine is out of breathe. The 98oct was around 28 bucks for a full tank. I also notice the 100oct burn's off alot better as when I was on half tank of 100 lasted as long as full tank of 93. So in way it's worth the extra cash meaning two fillups with 93 oct costs me around 31 bucks. I also notice as soon as I went back to 93 oct I notice all the little noises come back into the engine as well. Which tells me the ITR engine is not as noisy at idle as some believed was because of the lack of sound proofing. With 100oct my ITR sounded 20% quiter and when it roared it roared not sure if the later part was in my head or everyone elses? As I was told by couple people that said it sounded like a race car or IROC V8 of all things?

Well there is talk around here that they could raise or lower Oct to help lower emissions. They currently are using the ATL Gas in B'ham which is ok for normal driver but not too good for our cars as it's like using lowend oct.
I'm hoping with new race tracks and drag strips popping up around here, in a few yrs I will only have to drive 15mins to get me some 100oct or atleast 98oct.

 

Phillips doesn't seem to use ethanol. I can get 93 around St. Louis there. Shell and Amoco always seem to have 10% EtOH in their gas.

 

Come on guys, its *1* octane. Thats still the lowest possible octane as
well, meaning it could be higher than that. You guys run that low
compression too. If *I* can use 91 octane with no problems, there's no
reason why you cant.

regarding ethanol, is that the same as what they term "oxygenated fuel"?
I thought that was a federally mandated thing for certain parts of the year.

 

jus filled up at chevron. 91 already. dayam.

 

eg6ajk - thanks for the clarification. That makes much more sense now.

 

the reason they're going w/ ethanol is b/c the govt found out that the previously used MTBE was contaminating the ground water.

 

Contaminating ground water.....Thats always nice.

 

Yeah anything we like normally harms the earth or us.

 

You need NOS!!!


Two of everything...by TONIGHT!
Might wanna think about octane booster before track events, etc..That does suck. God bless our environmentally unfriendly East Coast, and the 87, 89, 93, and 94 octane gas regularly available here

 

Okay ..if you're a forced induction person then you 'should' know a lot about Octane and what it does for your engine. More octane does not equal more performance, power, or efficiency.

Octane is an additive that prevents knocking and pinging or in severe cases 'detonation'. Detonation is the pre-imflamation of the air and fuel mixture usually caused during the compression cycle due to excessive heat and friction. Cars that have high boosts or high compression engines are more suseptible to detonation, hence the require premium fuel to operate trouble-free. Unless the car has very high compression (something in the F-1 territory), lowering the octane by 1 is not going to hurt anything. However, with performance cars getting more and more hi-tec these days...its puzzling why the States chose that route....


[Modified by MiraiZ, 10:48 PM 7/14/2001]

 

Exactally. In fact, normal low compression cars may actually generate less horsepower with higher octane fuels, because the octane is a flame retardent. Therefore more octane equals less energy by weight.

Heres one thing for the tree hugging environmentalist in cali. After a high compression car starts detonating for a few years running on lower octane gas its going to start to burn oil right? How is that good for the environment? Eventually the block will have too may cracks in it and will have to be replaced. Wasting resources right there too...

Your R should be fine though. It can adapt to lower octane. But yes, performance will drop.


[Modified by jond, 12:26 PM 7/14/2001]

 

First of all,
knock, ping, and detonation are all the same thing.

Second, 91 octane is not going to cause any performance decrease.
It simply isnt low enough. Your block wont crack, your sparkplugs
and head gasket will probably go first. Then the pistons will fail.
And at that point if you havent stopped then you probably dont deserve
to have your car anyway.