I was up in the Dragon area last weekend. There is a relatively new Chevron gas station in the town of Robbinsville, which is not too far from the Dragon. I saw a pump labeled "110 octane race fuel" at this station. I was not sure whether it was leaded or unleaded gas. The pump did not say anything about that. Besides, it was $8 per gallon!!! Anyone ever tried this race fuel from this station? How did your R56 run on it?

 

With the fuel requirement for the S model being 91 octane, I feel that putting 93 (which is what I have available) into the car is a waste of money. 110? Unless one has significantly modified the engine, they would just be throwing money out the tail pipe. I would also be concerned about burn rate, temperature, etc.
Besides, I can think of a lot of things to do with the $5 or more per gallon savings.

 

+1 on the wasting money,anything above whats called for in the owners manual for your particular engine is just throwing your money away.
Seems a lot of the North American public have been duped into the idea that PREMIUM fuel must be better than regular no matter what your car was designed to run on.I shudder to think how much extra money the oil companies are making every day on people who are buying PREMIUM instead of regular with the mistaken belief that they will some how get higher HP and better MPG because ??? err,hmmm,, Premium must be better because its PREMIUM

 

I don't know if MINIs have a high enough compression engine to effectively use 110 "octane". If using too-low octane causes pre-ignition (which the timing compensates for), then using the too-high octane would delay ignition (or slow the advance of the burn front). Whether the engine electronics are designed to be able to retard ignition that much, who knows?

 

Higher Octane does not automatically equal better gas.
Octane is just a measure of the resistance of gasoline and other fuels to detonation.
Putting a higher octane in you car does not automatically give you a performance gain either, it depends on what you car is made to run on. If it is made to run on 91, the it will be better performance with 91 than 87, but it will not get better performance on 94.
I would not waste the money on 110 when it will not help performance and could potentially cause a bunch of problems.

 

Any time I've put a lower octane fuel in mine, I've gotten worse MPG, so I won't put anything lower than 91 in it. As for the 110, if you're running on the track, it may make a difference. Search around these boards and you'll see a few testimonials from people who've used it and can really feel the difference. But anyone putting Premium in a car that was only designed to use Plus truly is wasting their cash and likely damaging the engine.

As for the different grades of gas, I know a chemical engineer who works a refinery in Newark NJ and he tells me that the only difference between the different grades is the detergent they put into each tank. The same gas truck pulls in to fill all the tanks - you never see a truck for Premium or a truck for Regular. The secret is in what detergent each company formulates to clean up the gunk left behind. This is why car companies like BMW will recommend certain brands - because they already know and have tested those brands with their engines.

 

Do a search here on the forums--there are a number of threads, some fairly recent about racing fuel/ 100 octane gas. Here is one that beats it up pretty good https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=151662

The short version is that some people "feel' it helps and some say dyna results to prove it, but experts indicate that without racing mods (mucdh higher compression, etc.) it is a waste.

 

I have a barrel of VP Racing fuel (99 octane) which I mix with our pump gas (which is sub-par). Overall, I feel the car is much smoother and runs cooler at our temperatures. I tried this for the first time yesterday since the fuel is for another car.

 

Just a note I used to put the race fuel, 110 oct available at a local shell station in my 117ci harley...noticiable difference and it ran really hot! If your'e draggin or just need a thrill it was quite a bump, but in my cooper I think I'd pass.

 

Octane is not a myth. The difference between premium and regular isn't just detergency. You may have misunderstood your friend.

 

The reason you only see one truck is because one truck has three or four compartments. That is why if you watch them fill the tanks they have more than one hose going to the tanks. That way they can carry all 3 grades.

 

A friend of mine worked for a Shell gas station. They have multiple grades (4 I think) of gas but the truck that comes in only has 2 grades. Premium and regular. The mid-grades are simply a mixture of the two at the pump.

 

During the gas crisis a few weeks back when there was NO gas the texaco up the street always had the 100 octane for the same 5.99 a gallon price which was only a dollar more than regular at the time so I filled all the cars up on it.No noticable difference in the MINI's performance.

 

During the same 'IKE' shortage, all three pumps were labled "Regular".

I filled from the Premium nozzle and have not been able to detect any change in performance.

Flew by Savannah yesterday and there were at least eight Oil Tankers anchored out of sight, offshore.

Shades of the 1973 Oil 'Shortage', all the Port Storage Facilities must be overflowing.

It should have been done from the '70's, but the best answer for our "dependancy on imported oil" would be a tarriff/surcharge on imported oil to stabilize the price;
the revenue generated should be used to support domestic/renewable sources and subsidy for 'home heating' etc.,
as well as increases in energy efficiency for all users.

 

You're sorely mistaken friend. Octane has everything to do with chemical quench, which is part of the whole combustion quench formula. If you run too low an octane in your engine, it WILL knock, causing pitting in your pistons, and if unchecked, broken piston ring lands at the least. If you run your R56 MCS at the racetrack with 87 octane, the ECU will be desperate to pull timing based on the knock sensor, and you will not get peak performance. It's not marketing or brainwashing, it's simple physics and chemistry.

Will the vast majority of slow daily drivers ever realize this? Probably not. However if you ever push your car to its limit, you better well know what you're getting yourself into.

Back to the original topic, 110 "race" gas, is always leaded, which is a bad idea for the longevity of the direct injectors, catalytic converters, and O2 sensors. The catalyst material in the cats and O2 will only last about a tenth as long when run on leaded gas continuously. As long as your R56 MCS or JCW is stock or just has a few non-ECU bolt ons, 91-93 octane is perfectly fine...the ECU can handle it if there is any knock. If you want you can run 100 octane unleaded, but you'll only see any real benefit on a racetrack, where the engine is under maximum load.

Regards,
Ryan

 

I think a mod need to take Ryans post, move it to the top of every forum and sticky it, lol. I'm get tired of reading threads regarding fuel choice. This is one of the best posts I have read in a while in response to this.


I think too many people are paranoid and think everyone is out to screw them, or the just don't understand certain things, and will just follow whoever makes a statement that sounds legitimate.



Oh yeah, BTW, the local race fuel dealer carries an unleaded CAM2 at the pumps, and unlike the race fuel pumps, it has a small nozzle. I think its the equivalent of Speedways TurboBlue 100.

 

Thanks Rick!

CAM2 was a staple for me during my turbo R53 days.

 

If only they were that smart. Hopefully with Obama at the wheel, we'll be better off then we have been.

 

i was at homestead speedway a few months ago 110 octane is leaded fuel they also had 97 unleaded octane i needed about 3/4 tank so decide to put some in my car does have many mods at idle i could barely hear the car running which for my car is very unusal the car did seem to run better on the track like most people said at max load

so after leaving the track and driving with the 97 octane in the tank the check engine light has been going on and off had it checked and 02 sensor on the rear of exhaust went bad changed and went bad again i dont know if the residual of the 97 octane was still in the tank finally after about 2 months changed o2 sensor again and has not gone off since

so there are the good and the bad extra money for gas and for 02 senors for only about 15 miles of racing

 

i used to fill up with that stuff when i had a fully modded A4 with big turbo + injectors and all that stuff. big difference there, because it was fully turned.

doubt you'll notice a difference with your R56, except in your wallet.

 

Let me know how that works out for you.

 

When we got our Mini the dealership had filled it up with regular. The MPG wasn't too good the first week or so. We began putting 93 in and the MPG went up to 35 with the 2nd tank! We're staying with 93 Shell.

 

These types of threads are always heated, and filled with a lot of good and certainly bad information. I also have a friend that wrote a book on rocket propulsion and we had a long discussion about the subject.

High octane gas does not have more energy, it has spark inhibitors to make it ignite at a higher pressure.

Let's take high compression engines or in our case forced induction. When gas reaches a certain temperature and compression, it will ignite with or without a spark which I call "dieseling". Like in an old car with lots of carbon build up. When you turn it off, it keeps running on it's own since the fuel continues to ignite due to higher compression. Of course it needs a carburetor to do this since the vacuum continues to pull gas into the cylinders.

Higher octane fuel takes more compression to ignite, thus allowing an engine to have more compression or higher psi from a forced induction device. That's why a race engine requires very high octane, they have very high compression.

A few weeks ago during the fuel crisis I ran 87 octane in my MCS due to the lack of availability of 93 octane. My car pinged under heavy load, so I kept out of the throttle as much as possible. I added an "octane booster", but that didn't really help. I read that those additives only add about .5 octane to a tank so you would need 12 bottles to get to 93 octane at about $5 each.

So back to the original question, 110 octane will not help performance on an engine that doesn't have very high compression or forced psi. You will likely experience the affect of retarted timing since the fuel takes longer to ignite.

 

I'll admit that is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. =) I'm no chemical engineer.

 

Forget that....... Regular Unleaded mixed with ethanol at 10% volume! lol