Mazda Rotary Club

Been pondering adding Octane booater to a tank but thought I\'d find out some info first

Does anyone use Octane Booster if so which one ?
Is it safe to use on a FD ?

If the car is mapped on Optimax is it a good idea to use it, surely a higher Octane will only be a good thing ?

Have heard a couple of opinions saying its not a good idea because the engine will run hotter ?

If anyone can answer one or all of the questions above I\'d appreciate it  :cool:  :D

Cheers

jap ecu is maped to 101 octain so if u are maped to 98 u wont need an octain booster but i think it will help your turbos boost allot better

Funny, I actually read the high octane label on the fuel bowser tonight at the local Esso.

100 it said. ;)

And it was only 126 yen per litre. Good stuff and cheap too...

oh bugger off :D :D

Gloating is not an attractive emotion! lol
I use NF fairly regularly & ONLY ever optimax always plan me journeys c/o http://www.multimap.com/clients/places.cgi?client=shell&db=GB&lang=en (http://www.multimap.com/clients/places.cgi?client=shell&db=GB&lang=en) so i can fill up with the good stuff as necessary.......
Dunno how extreme the difference is but cant hurt, hopefully, & only costs a small amount against a tank of burning juice anyhow....OH & i had a box of it sitting around from a group buy the other year (oops me gloating now must stop.....(http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/contrib/icw/020.gif) lol)
Si

I am not one to jump on any band wagons but yeh schtoo, bugger off. :D Jealosy is a curse,
 sorry I dont have anything usefull about octane boosters. I have had no dealings with them but can see why you would be tempted.

when i bought my fd the guy who owned the garage said it would help if i used it !! been usin it for the last two weeks, ok so far :wave

i used to run cvl religiously. i found the car to not be  as explosive but ran cooler and the idle was a dream. seemed to have more torque at high speed but slower though the gears. if that makes sence. but...... the car went though plugs like no ones bussiness. after about 2500 miles they were clogging up all over the place until the car was so eratic i could nt drive it. not planning on using it again. shell optimax + cvl should give 100.5 ron i think. stick to optimax bud make sure its fresh tho

Shop bought stuff is in general a waste. Much better to roll your own, or use water injection and run cheapest petrol available.

As my compay are distributors for 76, I actually sent a leading and much trusted booster brand off to them for testing after talking to the boss over here and the results were wait for it ---------

There is no way that a little bottle like that can raise the octane level to make a desirable difference on a whole tank of fuel they exclaimed , as for the test they found nothing to get excited about in it\'s ingredients !!.

I also pushed at the time to see if they would be prepared to make cool-blue in smaller cans than 20 litres for ease of caring in the car to use as a booster, but they answered with, you need this type of volume make a difference,so no.

Did they give you an idea of what mix to use? 5:1 10:1??

Iain

QuoteOriginally posted by clive
There is no way that a little bottle like that can raise the octane level to make a desirable difference on a whole tank of fuel they exclaimed , as for the test they found nothing to get excited about in it\'s ingredients !!.

Clive, so are they basically saying "don\'t bother with CVL, because it doesn\'t make any difference"? Or is it the case of it doesn\'t make a \'noticable\' difference to the performance of the car?

I would be very keen to find out whether any brand of octane booster\'s will actually raise the octane level in a full tank of petrol by 2 or 3 octanes. The reason being is that my RX-7 will arrive from Japan in the next 40 days or so. It will be mapped for Jap fuel (100 RON according to Schtoo ;) ). So until I can get it re-mapped I was thinking of using Optimax (98 RON... I think) and topping up the tank with CVL to get the fuel to the 100 RON the car is expecting.

Should I bother doing this? Should I worry about running the car on just Optimax when it\'s mapped for higher RON fuel, can it really hurt the engine that much?  :confused:

Cheers.
TonyB (aka Jon)

Sorry:evillaugh

As far as making something run on lowly 98 as compared to the \'alleged\'100 (I say alleged because it did not actually say 100RON, just 100. And after a while here you learn to never judge a book by it\'s cover nor does anything do what it says on the tin) the standard things are reduce compression (not happening), take off some timing advance (tuning), cool the intake air and/or reduce boost or any other numerous ways to drag the engine back from the edge of detonation.

What Bill says is very correct, the best way IS to roll your own, but it is not always economical nor simple.

Till you get the thing tuned to 98RON fuel that you will be using all the time, take it easy just to be safe, and then make sure the fella tuning it knows what he is doing. The simple fact is that loading up the engine is where octane really counts, if you don\'t have the octane and you give the engine a boot full (or forget to downchange) then it\'s going to knock and it\'s a good change you will need to do more than just plug into the computer. ;)

Thanks for the advice Schtoo  ;)

If I understand you right... the best thing to do would be to not bother with the octane booster and just take it very easy with her until I\'ve taken her to a specialist to get the ECU upgraded and re-mapped? And the ECU should be upgraded and re-mapped ASAP?

I\'ve never heard the term "roll your own" ... are we still talking about fuel here? :rollin

Cheers.

That\'s what I would do. Be super nice to her until you get the thing tuned with a belly full of whatever you can cough up for. After that, go yer hardest. All of the other solutions are for after you have the thing running happy on yer desired fuel.

Roll your own? Well smoking types might roll their own cigarettes, but in this case it means mixing yer own fuel with as much go in it as you are willing to fit/pay for.  Rolling other stuff here is not a good idea and not very likely because it\'s all very illegal...  

Bill would be in a better than I to go into specifics, as I have only really played with that kinda stuff once or twice, and even then it was nothing specifically exotic or high tech. And I\'ve not owned anything thus far that needed any more octane than the basic 91RON garbage they served in Oz.

Well, grandpa did happen to have a small can of tetraethyl lead laying about that made a difference to my little grocery getter at the time from pinging it\'s brain off to being happy, if not fast. That\'s all gone, and so is the car.

Tried some octane booster for a go like and didn´t notice any difference to normal optimax performance???

So dont think i´ll bother in future, mapped to run optimax anyhow:)

Hi Jon and welcome,
Anders ( boss of 76 over here) told me that he had yet to see an octane booster that actually raised the octane the couple of points they all seem to claim.

Schtoo,

Here\'s barrel of worms to open, l had a printout years ago that from memory explained that RON and MON rating varies around the world considerably !!

This was back in the days when l was buying 130 octane AV gas back door from a small airport for my racecar, damn stuff smelt of rotten vegetables.

Cheers for the info Clive... I won\'t bother with any octane boosters - unless you want to tell me which airport was supplying you the 130 RON fuel  :D

But on the serious side, I will get her re-mapped as soon as possible. I am looking at getting a new ECU and have been recommended by a few people that Apexi Power FC & Commander is a good choice. Anyone use these, or know of any \'just as good\' but cheaper alternatives?

Cheers.

hmmmmm
all very interesting

I have a 93 fd3 and it is running lumpy.... see my thread

could it be that I havent had it remapped since it came from the land of the rising sun?....

do run it on optimax/ or superunleaded if the opty isnt around when I need it...

now I am nervous....

anyway... any advice noted

Lemster

Have you had your car checked over by a specialist before hammering it over here, if not i suggest you do

don\'t want to cause any damage if its not running right

its easy to crack a tip if you hammer it when its not running right

Lemster,

I\'m no expert by a long way! However all the research I have done on these cars tells me to just get it checked out asap by a specialist whenever there are problems with the engine.

Some problems can be solved easily and cheaply - if they are looked at when the problems start, if you continue to run it when it\'s un-happy you may end up with even bigger problems then when you started.

Ask the nice people on here if there are any specialists in your area.

Jon.

have any of u guys tried using nitrox power boost or ecotek power boost foam or sumthing similar(de-coking spray/foam) to clear out the engine and exhaust from dirt and grime deposits on ur rx\'s?... iv got 4 spare bottles of the stuff sitting in the garage just wondering if i cant use a couple on my rx (wen i get the damn thing turnd on!)

any1 for the above question???

I used that spray stuff thats supposed to de-coke the engine - you are meant to spray it up the air intake (after the filter) while the engine is running - a week later my car went to rebuild land. Not sure if this stuff made a difference or not, but i wont be using it again!!!!:(

ooooooooo its a good job i havnt used it then any1 else used them and had any probs or is this just a one off>??

he\'s not saying that it was DEFINITLY the result of the product

I\'d ask a engine builder before you used such a product if you feel the need to

Personally I wouldn\'t imagine it makes any difference, if you engine isn\'t running right, it won\'t fix it

Not sure how this cleaning spray acts on a rx but on conventional cars theres a well known story that on older cars you shouldn\'t use it as with wear and tear the carbon deposits actually coat the engine covering any holes that may have appeared through time. Once you\'ve sprayed the carbon cleaner the holes are exposed meaning damage to the engine??

Not sure if this is true for the rx though??:confused:

Threads like this always seem to cause confusion!! Well, I am anyway!

From some of the replies, there seems to be an implication that any imported RX should have a programmable ECU fitted and re-mapped.

In simple terms:

1) for a non-modded car, 92-96, 96-99, and 99-02

      a) if using standard unleaded, is this true??

      b) if using Optimax, is this still true??

2) for modded cars of all years, is this true??

In Japan petrol is 100RON, here it is 98RON (Optimax)

Jap Cars are designed to run on 100RON, if you want to change your ECU to ensure the car is running perfectly on UK fuel then you can

Before I got my Apexi ECU I ran on Std ECU no problems at all, all depends what mods you have etc and how your fueling is and what boost you are running yady yada yada etc

So, assuming a standard 280 bhp RX, NO mods, how crucial is it to use something like an Apexi?

Are the problems between 100 and 98 (or even 97) ROn fuels, REAL  or PERCEIVED ??


Just trying to understand this, and whether to justify spending, what is not an insignificant amount of money, getting an Apexi ECU plus the time/effort to map it properly.

Cheers

I\'d say if the car has been remapped to compensate for 98ron then the car should be fine.:)

Mine i have had remapped recently and runs fine on optimax, like i said earlier tried some octane boosters and found no difference:(

IMO it would be fine on a std RX, I am sure lots of people run std ECU\'s on optimax, if I was to mod the car, then that would be another story

QuoteOriginally posted by davefrith
IMO it would be fine on a std RX, I am sure lots of people run std ECU\'s on optimax, if I was to mod the car, then that would be another story

I\'d have thought so to. Surely there must be some variation in the programmed parameters in the ECU that would compensate for a variation in the quality of the fuel used?

I can understand moving outside those programme limits if you mod the car - the original programme is simply not designed for modifications.

Indeed

Personally I would get the programmable ECU, its a fragile car so I\'d like that extra piece of mind