Octane Boosters - Good or Bad

[davefrith]

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:  

Cheers

[yonner]

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

[Schtoo]

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...

[davefrith]

oh bugger off

[scooby_si]

Gloating is not an attractive emotion! http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb008\' target=\'_blank\'>http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/23/23_4_162.gif\' border=0> 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 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..... lol)
Si

[travellinbob]

I am not one to jump on any band wagons but yeh schtoo, bugger off. 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.

[chris p]

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

[sdminus]

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

[bill shurvinton]

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

[clive]

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.

[iaint]

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

Iain

[TonyBlair]

Originally 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)

[Schtoo]

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.

[TonyBlair]

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.

[Schtoo]

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.