Anyone ever experiment or have experience with 87/93 fuels for highway driving and/or heavy loads? I may be taking a trip into the mountains with a fully loaded vehicle (3-4 people and hiking gear) in the next few weeks and I wanted to get some feedback regarding performance.
I always run premium. I get better mileage and the car just runs and performs better. If you pay .10 per gallon more and have a 12 gallon tank that's $1.20 more per tank. Well worth it.
And if you don't have it already, get the Injected Tuner!
Did you work out the numbers? You get better mileage but it costs more. Yeah I've fallen back on keeping up with the tuning threads, need to check out prices. Still have time on my warrenty still though.
Regardless of cost, for hauling 4 adults on grades I would use 93 simply to maintain my sanity. Even just putting one adult in the car is noticeable on flat roads. Even if you normally only use 87, I would bump it up just for the trip.
While previous posters have mentioned why running premium can help, this specific l;oad you are doing is not going to change anything, premium doesn't have more power.
Thats a big "but if" , For no more then the cost going to 93 it would be well worth it
e85 does not have super high octane , have it tested your self I did , buy a cheaper tester that tests the E in e85 and tell me what you find , I have never tested one where it was 85% ever
I don't doubt that, and I am sure a lot of places blend it with less than 87 octane gas, E85 is supposed to be 105 octane, so even if they cheap out and it is lower there is still a fairly large gap from 105 to 93 where it would have an octane advantage. Not saying E85 is great and I have only run a handful of tanks on E10 even.
It isn't that he shouldn't choose 93, but if he never asked the question ran 87 on the trip it is pretty unlikely that there would be a thread about how he blew an engine going up hill with 4 passengers.
If you put in 87 and do a run on a dyno then remove and replace with 93 you will see more TQ and HP and less knock
If you tune for 87 it will have less timing then tuned for 93 , proper timing = more TQ and HP
Is this going to = 10 tq/hp that you might be able to feel maybe not but its there , a but dyno is the worst dyno to test your car on
I own a dynojet dyno and been tuning for 30+ years I have seen this hundreds of times 93 almost always makes more HP then 87
Absolutely I agree, especially with tuning, I wasn't saying it wouldn't make more power, I was saying it wouldn't make enough extra power on the butt dyno to be noticeable with stock parts. My first post was a bit of hyperbole, with saying there isn't more power, and the only comparison I have seen is on Red's car when SCT did their test tune, and he gained 16HP from no tune 87 to tuned 93, so just switching octanes has to be less than that. Is a 10% or less gain going to change his driving experience?
The OP has a 5MT so he is going to be able to downshift and be able to make good power even on 87. But I agree with you that 93 won't hurt and he should do it.
I ran 93 to pull timing for nitrous. I know the higher octane retards timing a touch, my mental thought is to have more timing would be better. Looks like Tom is putting some great info in this thread.
I can't find my exact sources. There deep in LTXTECH but I remember the Tuner on that forum recommended premium to help reduce the chances of a timing pull. I mean I could be wrong, and If I am I have no problem accepting it. I just threw out an idea in my head.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Focus Fanatics Forum
5.8M posts
189.1K members
Since 2003
A forum community dedicated to Ford Focus owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about SVT performance, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!