Seems to be workin' with all the smoothness and reliability of a fine Polish timepiece.

 

This thread is almost 2 years old but thanks for bringing it back to life. I now have a definitive answer to the question I posted in this thread 2 years ago:

We put my car on a dyno two months ago and did back to back to pulls on 93 octane gas and higher octane unleaded race gas. With a race gas tune from RMW, the car made about 15 more horsepower at the wheels on race gas. So the bottom line is our engines will make more power with the high octane stuff if you can tune the ECU for it.

 

I used to have a heavily modified Mustang with 598 RWHP. I would remove my O2 sensors at the track and run the exhaust uncapped with full length headers. The O2 sensors would foul out if you left the in with CAM2 fuel. By running race fuel you can run more timing without detonation. In a mini you have to do an ECU tune to advance your timing. It's a great option if you drag race your car and can advance your timing easily with a timing light and a distributor wrench. Not an option in our Mini's.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents. No scientific theories here, just personal experience.

 

At the same time, I can personally attest to ther fact that if you don't do a tune, it doesn't make any discernable difference, at least to the butt dyno.

By mistake I put 10 gals of 110 leaded in my '09 Clubman S at a track event - it wasn't a bit faster and didn't seem to do any damage to the cat, but it smelled wonderfull! It was darn near empty by the end of the day, so I filled it up again with unleaded premium on the way home. No problems since either....

That was last summer, this summer I put in 10 gals of 100 unleaded and ran the days events - again, no discernable difference even by the end of the day. Without doing a tune or having a switchable maps setup, don't bother spending the money on high octane gas.

 

What is with people???

It isn't that hard, it isn't rocket surgery...

If the ECU isn't tuned to advance the timing, or you are getting detonation with a lower octane fuel, using a higher octane fuel DOES NOT increase performance. Period.

If your engine isn't having detonation, knocking, pinging, or whatever you want to call it, the ECU will try to run the most advanced timing it can up to the programmed limits. If the knock sensors detect "knock" (duh) the ECU retards timing until it no longer senses the detonation or until the retard limit is reached and then you get a check engine light, because the car isn't running within programed parameters.

I would hope you would get more power from 100+ octane race fuel and a "RACE" tune... That's what it's designed to do.


On a side note, I was the manager of a large oil storage terminal. There are 2 grades of fungible gasoline. Regular, and premium. 87 and 93 (east coast) summer and winter blends, and reformulated, and special air quality control area blends, depending on conditions and seasons.

Stations can either blend mid grade at the station (if that's how they were designed), or it gets blended at the terminal as it's loaded.

Gasoline doesn't come with ANY detergents or additives from a refinery. They are all added at the loading terminal when they are loaded into the tankers and trucked out. And yes there were different additive packages. 1 package was for all stations and grades other than our company branded stations, and the package we put in our gas. It was about 10 times more costly than the additive that everybody else got. The normal additive package met all Federal and local requirements, ours was just better....

When you fill up at a gas station, you have no idea where that gas came from. (with the exception of Sunoco 94, and Amoco Ultimate, which were segregated/non fungible products.) So the gas you buy at Shell, or Texaco,or Sheetz could have come from anywhere. In fact, non MAJOR brands usually price shop before they send in a tanker order. So whoever has the lowest price, (could be as little as $0.002/gal) gets the sale. And yes it changes daily, even hourly...

Tankers can have 1/2/3/4/or 5 seperate compartments. It depends on the trailer. Most modern tankers can haul about 7,500 to 8,100 gals of gas.



MAn, sorry about that, what else you want to know...lol

 

I'm sensing your frustration.

I think "octane rating" may be the concept most misunderstood by automotive enthusiasts. High-performance cars run on high octane fuel, so logically, high-octane must be the secret to higher performance.

Octane rating is the measure of a fuel's resistance to autoignition under compression, ONLY!

A gallon of 87 octane fuel has the same potential energy as a gallon of 93 octane fuel. High-performance engines extract this energy more efficiently through greater compresssion. The high octane is needed to prevent the fuel from combusting too early under that high compression.

Engines that have significant carbon build-up often need an octane rating higher than what the engine was designed for to prevent knocking. That can often explain performance "gains" from the higher octane fuel. It's really more like lost performance regained, especially in vehicles with knock sensors.

In any case, start with the octane rating your engine is tuned to run on, and only increase it if your engine knocks.

 

Yes, I mentioned that in my post too - underlined it even.....

 

I've been looking at this and searching a bit, it seems everyone is only concerned about performance and track times. I tend to drive on the highway about 150 miles once a month. If I were to put a few gallons of 100 Oct. In, would it help the mpg?

 

Nope not at all. If your car is running within programmed parameters on the gas you are no using, there is no benefit to using much higher octane gas. In fact your mileage may suffer. The higher the octane, the harder it is to light the mixture. (the more ignition advance you need to give the mixture time to burn completely.)


If you get the car tuned to actually run will on 100 octane, then you can maybe gain some performance.


But in general, (for most people with canned tunes or stock tuning), it won't help one bit.

 

The mini in its stockish form will see no benefit of 110 octane fuel. If you are running a larger turbo with high boost then it can be of use. Higher octane reduces the likelihood of Detonation.

I've been drag racing turbo cars for 20 years and I have a wall of shame stacked with melted piston tops, cracked heads etc etc. !

The arrival of modern meth injection really makes no sense for the average modded mini to run 108-110-116 octane fuels.

If you do want to try some higher octane fuels and still have a cat it should be clearly labeled as unleaded and it will generally have an unleaded size spout on the pump. Unleaded race fuels not located at race tracks will generally have the larger unleaded spout because it's illegal to pump it directly in to a street driven car.

 

Resurrected old thread with no new information and I thought I would add some more undocumented words. My 2008 Justa gets a bottle of Lucas Octane booster a few days before track day, still plenty of it in the tank when I run the course. What I notice is that I have stronger pulls from lower rpms, especially in third. I live in a very hot climate, southern Arizona, your results may vary. More horsepower? Dunno, just like the effect it has on sub 3,000 rpm's, although I never notice any ping on just 91 octane normally.

I do have a 69 Jaguar XJ6 with the HD8 "Euro" spec carbs that loves leaded 110 Octane, and it is a B*^%ch to keep tuned on anything else. There is documentation I have on the power/hp increase on the Jag with that octane which is irrelevant to a Mini forum.

 

Will Jensen who works with Luis from PAW said if you get their tune you can squeeze out an extra 10-12whp on the Dyno with 100 octane, but don't use leaded gas like 110 obviously. I wouldn't go any higher than 100 and I wouldn't use E85 either imo.

 

Octane booster? Really? If you read the bottle, it says that it will raise the octane of a tank by 1 point. The 1 point they are talking about is 0.10. So for a 14 gal tank, if you had 93.2 (yes, all gas is more than what it states on the pump) You will have 93.3


You want to raise the octane? Add about 1 gal of Toluene to an empty tank and then fill up. That will raise the octane by about 50 points or 5.0 (and no I'm not really saying to do that, but it will do the job)


Yes, I worked as the manager of a oil terminal/storage/trucking facility.


Again, if your car isn't TUNED to make use of the higher octane, it wont make ANY more power. And, if you are tuned for it, you need to run it ALL the time. (unless you have some magical switchable tuning... I guess you could with an Accessport and suitable maps).

 

Perhaps my car on hot days needs the MMT additive to keep the fuel delivery clean or something, because it really does make a difference in low throttle response. Not 108 Octane, like the packaging implies, that is kinda deceptive. But maybe 93.3 is the magic number in my climate,... it gets really freakin hot here.

 

Anything with a decent amount of MMT will raise the octane level drastically, such as Torco, but it is expensive. Like Richard said, the stuff in the stores generally doesn't have a whole lot in it.

 

You can with a Maniac tune and a SPS

 

The premium (super plus) has a higher specific weight then the normal fuel so a gallon of super plus weighs more and can provide more energy .You consume less.