About a month back I had my car tuned. My mechanic did a great job advancing the spark such that he maxed the power output - I could feel the diff. Anyway, about a week later I accidently put 89 octane unleaded (the engine has been rebuilt so it can handle unleaded). Anyway I got some slight pinging on hard acceleration on an incline. Immediately I went back to premium (91 octane in CA) and the problem went away. However, I then actually looked at the manual and it recommends a ~94 (R+M)/2 pump octane rating (= ~99 R octane rating according to the manual). So, I went down to the local Kragens and bought some octane booster. It only boosts ~4 points or 0.4 in (R+M)/2 octane but I swear that the engine ran smoother (note that not all detonation is heard as pinging) - but this may be just psychological because I had just spent $8 :wink:
Anyway, it raised some questions in my mind.
What do you guys and gals do in CA for premium >91?
Specifically, if anyone lives in the San Francisco south bay (Sunnyvale, Santa Clara) where can you get gasoline with >91 octane? I gotta believe with all the Porsches, etc running around here that there's got to be some high octane gas (or possibly all the Porsche people just in general suffer from severely retarded spark and not know it??)
Has anyone *hypothetically* :wink: used toluene (the stuff they use in Formula 1 racing) to boost octane? It seems like a very cost effective way to do so.
Here's an interesting webpage about it.
http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/misc/octaneexplained.html
Thanks
James
Anyway, it raised some questions in my mind.
What do you guys and gals do in CA for premium >91?
Specifically, if anyone lives in the San Francisco south bay (Sunnyvale, Santa Clara) where can you get gasoline with >91 octane? I gotta believe with all the Porsches, etc running around here that there's got to be some high octane gas (or possibly all the Porsche people just in general suffer from severely retarded spark and not know it??)
Has anyone *hypothetically* :wink: used toluene (the stuff they use in Formula 1 racing) to boost octane? It seems like a very cost effective way to do so.
Here's an interesting webpage about it.
http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/misc/octaneexplained.html
Thanks
James