my VR4 runs fine on 89 octane (had to do it once. the 91 pupms were broken. put 5 bucks in to make it to the next station)



until i get into boost. then it starts popping and backfiring because of all the pulled timing. that lasted about .5 seconds. didnt do it again.


if a car calls for 91+ octane that doesnt mean it wont run on 87 donkey piss but it will not make full power and in the long run it will hurt the engine

 

Yeah it "feels" fine, but i gaurantee if you were to dyno, you'd see you're losing horsepower, not to mention i'm willing to bet you'd find you're getting some slight detonation.

Detonation CAN cause damage. So go ahead and save your $1-$2 per tank. Until you burn through a cyclinder, and have to replace your entire engine. And yes I've seen it happen first hand. Worth it? You tell me.

And before you run around giving people advice and telling them to go against manufacturer recommendations, are you ready to pay if someone takes your advice and damages/breaks their car? Are you gonna pay for their repairs?

 

Have you ever dyno'd on 87? Didn't think so. So just because you're blind eye doesn't "see" a problem, doesn't mean one isn't ocurring.


Is this such a hard concept for people to understand? What's next? Put a quart of 10w30 in your diff cuz it's cheaper, and you don't care what the manufacturer says to do?

 

At least someone gets it!!

 

Understand that I always use 93 premium, even though I just cruise most of the time. I personally would rather be on the "safe" side, and the extra money saved is not worth it to me. But I think a person has the right to do whatever he wants with his car - so rather than pass along value judgments, I will state what I know about the subject.

Honda's engineers have said that running 87 is fine. Even Porsches are made to handle 87. They said something about how their cars were made to be driven all over the world, and not all of the world has premium. As long as you are cruising, 87 should work fine.

I will dig up the references to these claims - they are bookmarked at home. But this has been discussed on these forums before.

And for those of you who say that the car doesn't "deserve" anything less than premium gas, maybe I should say that the F20 engine doesn't "deserve" to be abused by a supercharger.

 

Yep and the reason is performance. You can eek out a few more horses if you run the higher octane.

 

Here you go - after reading, you can decide for yourself.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-0...remiumgas_x.htm

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?se...4&page_number=1

 

So are you saying the biodiesel I developed might work?? In any case, interesting article. I am glad I was wearing a flame retardant suit.

 

interesting. i never knew detonation or pre-ignition could be so harmless. who knew?

 

Better buy a VAFC or AEM ECU and lean everything out too! Gets better gas mileage and you can just let the knock sensor handle any detonation that occurs.