Racing Fuel

DO NOT use race gas fore it WILL ruin your O2 sensors! Run the lowest octane gas possible that your car will run on.

same question here. I live in an area that has a zero availability of premium gas and I want a supercharger. Can I fill with regular and mix in the right amount of UNLEADED race fuel that is 114 octane to give me a 92-93 mix? I have to drive 47 miles to fill premium.

Well, yesterday I just used up 3/4 tank for 70 miles during a HPDE track day at Sears Point yesterday. cost me like $60 bucks for a whole tank of 100 octane(I have an extra tune setting that bumps up my timing for high octane)

47 miles for Premium, were ya goin Rapid City? Might as well keep goin and cruise the Black Hills now that's worth a tank....

Venom_Nitrous said:

same question here. I live in an area that has a zero availability of premium gas and I want a supercharger. Can I fill with regular and mix in the right amount of UNLEADED race fuel that is 114 octane to give me a 92-93 mix? I have to drive 47 miles to fill premium.

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I hear Torco is suppose to work really good to up the octane. Not like the stuff on the auto store shelves.

http://www.torcoracefuels.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=28

101 is lead free , you can run it no prob!

as I posted before, you are wasting money to run higher octane if your car is not tuned to take advantage of it. Octane reduces the chance of detonation. The lowest octane you can run without detonation will give you the best performance. If you mix the race fuels with pump gas you will destroy your o2s. Higher octane fuel allows you to run more timing without detonation. think of it this way, 87 octane fuel has a faster burn rate than 93 octane. 93 has a faster burn rate than 101. I will search, there was a thread that explained it a lot better than I can if you still don't get it .

I asked this question a while back as well. The reason I was told to mix 1 gallon with a full tank of gas was to clean the injectors, nothing more nothing less.

Y2K_MustangVert said:

Thanks for the replies guys, but do I really need to worry about my O2 sensors that much? I am running an Off-Road X and I have the MILs on the back, what exactly would ruining them hurt given my setup? I was told that it would be okay to run a gallon of it per tank and my tune requires me to run at least 92 octane. I am not trying to sound like an ass here, I just want to know what it would do to the car.

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you will ruin the front o2s not the rears
if tune is set for 92 then there is no advantage of running anything higher than 93 if it is available.

merc123 said:

I asked this question a while back as well. The reason I was told to mix 1 gallon with a full tank of gas was to clean the injectors, nothing more nothing less.

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run a can of fuel injector cleaner through at every oil change if you like.

green_fow_six said:

I hear Torco is suppose to work really good to up the octane. Not like the stuff on the auto store shelves.

http://www.torcoracefuels.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=28

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I use Torco concentrate (UNLEADED) and 1 qt to a 92 Octane fill up gives you 102-104 Octane.. and it will not harm 02's.

what I posted before is not the correct way to describe so I will try again without giving a chemistry class( I'm not a good teacher anyways, a better student)

87 octane will combust at a lower compression in the cylinder than say 89. If the fuel combusts(starts burning) before the sparkplug fires( determined by the timing) you get spark knock or( detonation) this is bad. If you get detonation with 87 and run the 89 octane fuel it will handle a higher rate of compression rate before it combusts and the spark from the spark plug can ignite the fuel, no detonation.
The more timing advance you have the more the fuel will compress before sparkplug will fire for that cylinder, therefor you will need a fuel with a higher octane to keep it from prematurely combusting ( this sounds like sex ed)
Ther are a lot of variables and it comes down to how an internal combustion engine works . I wont try to explain again because now I am confusing myself.

The unleaded fuels will not hurt the o2s. The leadeds will. You do not get performance gains from fuel, you get them from engine mods and tuning. Mix if you want to, you will waste you money and may hurt your car.

There are different fuel companies that put additives that may clean the fuel system somewhat. That is not determined by octane ratings.

forpit2000gt said:

you will ruin the front o2s not the rears
if tune is set for 92 then there is no advantage of running anything higher than 93 if it is available.

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Rear o2's act the same as the front. The eec just looks for a different voltage to come from them, so it will eventually ruin the rears too.

And to be clear, it is the lead that contaminates the o2's. It can also leave white deposits on them, so if you are worried about warranty work, they may be able to tell if you have been running leaded fuel. The heated circuit o2's will last a while longer running it, the old unheated o2's would be shot on the first run. The lead will also ruin the cats, but the original poster had an offroad pipe, so I didn't mention that earlier. If you are going to run race fuel make sure it is unleaded, but there really isn't any benefit unless you have a way to bump the timing up when you are running it, via a timing adjuster or a flip chip.

As the guys above have said, unless if you're car is tuned for higher octane, it's not needed. I run all the mods on my car w/ advanced ignition timing on 87 octane pump gas. I do use a fuel conditioner and I am running two steps colder plugs, so that could be why I'm getting by with the advanced ignition timing on 87 octane pump gas, but the point is the same. Run the lowest octane you can run without pinging or combustion issues and you'll be fine.

Dark Knight GT said:

Run the lowest octane you can run without pinging or combustion issues and you'll be fine.

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QFMFT