What grade gas do you use.

[Sapphireho]

Originally Posted by finch1750

Figuring 30mpg to be nice it's a savings of $600-650 based on the normal $0.20 savings from premium to 87

Well, what if he drives downhill to work, both ways?

[XPLSV]

Originally Posted by Tokay444

Why non ethanol?

Non-ethanol gas has anywhere from 15-20% more energy than typical ethanol gas. This is completely separate from the Octane ratings. The Octane ratings is more closely related to the ignition timing and running too low an Octane will result in the engine knocking. Where I live at 7000 foot elevation in Colorado, the lower oxygen content in the atmosphere allows for lower Octane without getting the engine knocking...so typical regular gas is 85 rather than 87, premium is 91 vs 93. Modern vehicles are designed for the crappy ethanol gasoline, so there won't be damage to them and you may not see much change in performance. I've only put premium in my recently acquired FR-S, so I couldn't tell you anything about my experience with running it on regular Octane gasoline. I do have a 2010 Goldwing and my gas mileage on that is a minimum of 20% better when running it on non-ethanol gas at the same Octane. I also have a 2017 Power Wagon and haven't noticed any difference between 91 Octane ethanol gasoline and 87 Octane non-ethanol gasoline--the price is about the same here between the two.


An additional effect of driving at 7000 feet is a roughly 20% loss of horsepower for a naturally aspirated engine. A turbocharger does better at altitude than a supercharger, but it is what it is.


Two cycle yard equipment really prefers non-ethanol gasoline.

[PetrolioBenzina]

Originally Posted by Borchert97

Huh, it was my understanding that most high compression engines could run on 105 octane race fuel no problem. Am I perhaps thinking of a non-ethanol 105 octane?

Correct. To run E85 you need a specific ethanol tune. The downside is 14MPG.

[Tokay444]

Originally Posted by XPLSV

Non-ethanol gas has anywhere from 15-20% more energy than typical ethanol gas. This is completely separate from the Octane ratings. The Octane ratings is more closely related to the ignition timing and running too low an Octane will result in the engine knocking. Where I live at 7000 foot elevation in Colorado, the lower oxygen content in the atmosphere allows for lower Octane without getting the engine knocking...so typical regular gas is 85 rather than 87, premium is 91 vs 93. Modern vehicles are designed for the crappy ethanol gasoline, so there won't be damage to them and you may not see much change in performance. I've only put premium in my recently acquired FR-S, so I couldn't tell you anything about my experience with running it on regular Octane gasoline. I do have a 2010 Goldwing and my gas mileage on that is a minimum of 20% better when running it on non-ethanol gas at the same Octane. I also have a 2017 Power Wagon and haven't noticed any difference between 91 Octane ethanol gasoline and 87 Octane non-ethanol gasoline--the price is about the same here between the two.


An additional effect of driving at 7000 feet is a roughly 20% loss of horsepower for a naturally aspirated engine. A turbocharger does better at altitude than a supercharger, but it is what it is.


Two cycle yard equipment really prefers non-ethanol gasoline.

Ethanol though, has an effective octane rating of 160, and Methanol 180 through a DI system.
It has a very high latent heat of evaporation, and the benefits of running it far outweigh loss of energy. So much so that you will pass MBT before you start knocking on E85. If you can tune for it, it's great.
Your two stroke yard equipment is assembled with seals that don't stand up to the dryness of the alcohols. That's all.

[TooSlow]

91 in CA all the time.

[Sapphireho]

Originally Posted by PetrolioBenzina

Correct. To run E85 you need a specific ethanol tune. The downside is 14MPG.

Is that boosted?

[Silverz]

I guess it’s kind of an experiment. I’ve had premium gas cars for the last 20 years as my personal vehicle. I keep daily drivers for a while. My last car I had for 13 years before I traded it in. I used 87 in it for the last 6 years without issue before trading it in.

Not sure where you live where it’s only 0.20 difference between premium and 87. It’s between 0.60 to 0.80 per gallon difference where I live.

[PetrolioBenzina]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

Is that boosted?

No. I may be an agressive driver, since the front of the 17 is so aggressive. I think it was you who said you should drive either hard on the gas or hard on the brakes. Its more fun that way!

[Sapphireho]

Originally Posted by PetrolioBenzina

No.

Wow, that is what I average with E85 with JRSC, bigger injectors and pump at 310 HP.

[finch1750]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

Well, what if he drives downhill to work, both ways?

I did manage to get 45mpg coming home from Reno in my MR2. Went 85 in neutral the entire way down the mountain.

Originally Posted by PetrolioBenzina

Correct. To run E85 you need a specific ethanol tune. The downside is 14MPG.

Holy hell. I never got worse the 17mpg on e85. And that was the first tank where I smashed the throttle everywhere. (Not counting on track lol)

Originally Posted by Silverz

I guess it’s kind of an experiment. I’ve had premium gas cars for the last 20 years as my personal vehicle. I keep daily drivers for a while. My last car I had for 13 years before I traded it in. I used 87 in it for the last 6 years without issue before trading it in.

Not sure where you live where it’s only 0.20 difference between premium and 87. It’s between 0.60 to 0.80 per gallon difference where I live.

Do you have any data from your experiment besides the car didn't die while you still had it? Like timing, MPG, knock correction, etc?

I'm in CA. if there is more then 0.15 between each grade it's a rip off out here. That's crazy it jumps so high

[XPLSV]

Originally Posted by Tokay444

Ethanol though, has an effective octane rating of 160, and Methanol 180 through a DI system.
It has a very high latent heat of evaporation, and the benefits of running it far outweigh loss of energy. So much so that you will pass MBT before you start knocking on E85. If you can tune for it, it's great.
Your two stroke yard equipment is assembled with seals that don't stand up to the dryness of the alcohols. That's all.

Provide your car is designed for it...it will eat up a lot of the older, classic cars--same issue with the seals and such, as you mentioned. We have some E85 here, although I think in general terms when I use the term ethanol gasoline as that gasoline that is commonplace and has no more than 10% ethanol added to the mix. When I first moved to Colorado in 2005, there were quite a few places that had pure gasoline...then the numbers started to dwindle. I think we were down to one single place in town, but a three more places have opened in the past year or so. The federal gas mpg testing still uses pure gas...find this kind of funny as it has been the government mandates and subsidies that have pushed the ethanol additions over the years.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

There are places here and there where I live where you can get a variety of different race fuel octane levels from 98 to about 110. You won't notice any difference in your street car, except maybe an increase in acceleration due to the weight loss in your wallet.

When we used to do no class "fun run" days at the strip a couple of us with high compression (by the standards then) builds would run 100 in our street cars. We would fuel up at home (from cans) and spend about two hours tuning for it. When I say tuning I mean oldschool tuning of the carb, timing, dwell, plug gap etc with a screwdriver and wrench since computers still fill whole rooms and a laptop was a dance you got at certain clubs. After a couple of runs the noobs would ask us what we were burning and run out and buy a can or two. They would just dump it in and go for it. They could never figure out why they were never any faster.
Would have run it all the time but it cost about an hour's pay a gallon.

[Sapphireho]

Originally Posted by PetrolioBenzina

No. I may be an agressive driver, since the front of the 17 is so aggressive. I think it was you who said you should drive either hard on the gas or hard on the brakes. Its more fun that way!

.

[Chikna]

I use either Shell or Exxon premium (93 octane) gas, even I told dealer at the time of pickup to premium gas which they did.


I am curious, does it hurt to put fuel injectors like Chevron Techron or Seafoam, etc.