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fuel additives

Joined
May 10, 2002
Messages
2,254
Location
Boise, Idaho
Corvette
2002 electron blue Z06
I have an essentially stock '97 with automatic transmission. I like to bracket race a few times each year. I use Chevron premium fuel most of the time, with occasional tankfuls of other major company gasoline. At the strip, I have had people suggest using octane booster, or even aviation gas. What's the deal here- is this helpful or is this bad for my beloved 'vette?
 
Stay away from aviation fuel, if you want to run a Octane Fuel booster make sure that it contains Xylene or Toulene . But remember it will only boost your octane by 1/2 point. To me you are better off trying to find Union 76 Station that sells Competition 100 fuel and mix it yourself, I would fill my tank with half of premiuem 91 and the other half of Competition 100 fuel =97 Octane. Remember though Union 76 Competition 100 fuel is expensive. When I used it here in Calif it sold for $3.89 a gallon and is hard to find.
Just my $.02 cents :beer :beer
 
Unless you are getting spark knock, you don't need higher octane... It does no good, adds no HP. The reason why there are different octanes is because of compression ratios for different engines. If your compression is very high, you will need a higher octane. the higher compression is what gives you more power, not the fuel.
 
Fuel improvement

Well, that's only partly true. If you have some poor quality or lower than usual octane gasoline, and your engine goes into the early phases of pre-ignition, the computer will retard your timing and that will cost you horsepower and e.t. If you have good gas and no "ping", it probably won't help at all.
Joe
 
I am pretty certain that chevy knows the fuel we get isn't perfect... I know the car will run fine on quality mid-grade gas... even not so good premium should be fine... if you stick with a major brand then there will be no benefit at all to any kind of octane booster
 
octane content

I was thinking along the same lines as wagonmaster. If the fuel was poor enough to produce any detonation at all, the timing could be retarded, causing a decrease in performance. The truth is that my e.t.'s vary only about 0.4 seconds regardless of temperature, etc, so I doubt that it will help any. I suspect that I will just spend more for fuel and not get any improvement in times.
 

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