Octane Boosters

[unclebilly]

Do Octane Boosters work?

My son challenged my assertion that I cant get purple gas in Premium (and he was right).

The catch? I need to get 500 - 800 gallons at at time.

They are telling me that I can get smaller quantities of regulat 87 octane and add octane boost to bump it up.

Does this stuff work? I recall on one of the Can-Am drives many years ago, one Pelican was adding some hydrocarbon (Tolulene?) at each fill up... he blew up his engine. Probably from not enough octane.

[908/930]

I'm sure they do, but usually added after you can't get high enough octane with pump fuel. 92 octane pump gas will be cheaper then trying to get low octane non road fuel up to 92. What are you running it in?

[ben parrish]

toluene is octane booster…added to pump gas at the refinery. Can you not get aviation gas? What are your running it in? Aviation gas is high octane but has lead in it so no good for catalytic converters.
What about E85 for farm use?

[chrismorse]

? If you are running an O2 sensor with efi - TOASTED sensor????
Any way around it???
c

[JackDidley]

I use Boostane.

[unclebilly]

Hmmm. We have one Cayenne with farm plates. I would put farm plates on the other ones as well.

Running farm plates allows us to use purple gas (no road tax or carbon tax… ��). It’s $160/gallon in savings.

Option 1: buy 500-800 gallons of purple premium at a time.
Option 2: treat regular and I can get 300 gallons at a time.

[red 928]

Regular old octane booster you can get at the flaps doesn't do much at all:

When it says it raises the octane 50 points,
what they mean is it raises it 5/10ths of one octane.
87 to 87.5
Pretty much a rip off IMO.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
VP Octane Booster is unleaded and formulated to provide an octane boost of up to 5 numbers (50 points). It increases horsepower, eliminates knocks and pings, cleans fuel injectors, reduces gum and varnish buil-up, and improves throttle response and acceleration when used as directed. VP Octane Booster is safe for limited use in cars and trucks with both catalytic converters and O2 sensors.

[slow&rusty]

@JackDidley - I had not heard of Boostane before as I always considered Boost additives as expensive and not yielding much of an increase in octane.

After doing some research it appears that Boostane has some solid reviews. Curious how long have you been using it and what application?

I might give it try.

Thanks.
Yasin

[pavulon]

Not having much faith in octane boosters, I run VP fuel in a car. I can't get it from a pump locally so I buy in a can. Picking the right one took some reading and experimentation as there are a LOT of different VP fuels with significant differences. For my car, it came down to octane rating (of course), oxygenation and vapor pressure. Aviation fuels have a low vapor pressure by design. Starting a car on a low vapor pressure fuel can be problematic. Justifying the price for racing fuel is also problematic.

https://vpracingfuels.com/product-category/racing/racing-fuels/

[JackDidley]

Originally Posted by slow&rusty

@JackDidley - I had not heard of Boostane before as I always considered Boost additives as expensive and not yielding much of an increase in octane.

After doing some research it appears that Boostane has some solid reviews. Curious how long have you been using it and what application?

I might give it try.

Thanks.
Yasin

Ive been using Boostane for a year or so. My car and truck are at about 10.7 to 1 compression. Car has an LS2 and the truck, old school SBC. Seen no side effects so far. No O2 sensor problems that I read about with other octane boosters. Cost is about 40 cents per gallon versus 80 cents per gallon increase for 93 octane.

[slow&rusty]

Originally Posted by JackDidley

Ive been using Boostane for a year or so. My car and truck are at about 10.7 to 1 compression. Car has an LS2 and the truck, old school SBC. Seen no side effects so far. No O2 sensor problems that I read about with other octane boosters. Cost is about 40 cents per gallon versus 80 cents per gallon increase for 93 octane.

Perfect.

Thanks for the follow-up! I'll give it a shot. I have a turbo car that is running on the ragged edge, so this will help with timing and detonation

[Zeke]

Add one ounce to one gallon propylene oxide and a few ounces of nitropropane. Increase the overall blend percentages until you see too much change in spark plug color, engine knock or mixture problems.

The propylene oxide boiling point is about 90ºF so I kept it in a cooler. The cetane value of PO is higher than gas so works better in lower compression (stock) engines. Nitropropane mixes with gas whereas nitromethane does not and separates floating to the top.

This will add not only HP but hundreds of dollars to the cost of your fuel bill in the quantities you need. I ran this stuff in karts where we didn't use much more than a pint in a short sprint race. Maybe a quart in the main. If there were post race fuel tests you fail.

At a low compression of 7:1 in a 2-stroke the PO was an 'exciter' and the burn rate was increased using a 50/50 mixture of the 2 for total of 10% mixture overall. IDT that 50/50 will work in a 4-cycle motor but the methane will definitely increase the torque and HP.

Legend has it that circle track cars running gas would use PO as it evaporated before the finish of the race and was therefore undetectable in a post race test. That is not the case with NP.

Toluene works too but it burns hot. Not good for air cooled engines.

[Arizona_928]

Good information here.

I’ve used isobutanol. Kinda pricy but it’s cheaper than the bottle stuff

Literature.

The “conventional” biofuel mandate was not specific to ethanol, and other biofuels could be used for compliance. One of the most promising nonethanol biofuels is isobutanol, or 2- methyl-1-propanol,6 which can be produced through fermen- tation routes similar to conventional ethanol. Like ethanol, isobutanol offers similar benefits: boosting the ON and with paraffins having a synergistic effect with isobutanol and olefins
lowering emissions when blended with gasoline. Compared to ethanol, isobutanol properties include higher energy density, lower moisture affinity (no phase separation), and lower vapor pressure.7 EPA approved isobutanol for blending into commercial gasoline up to 16 vol. % following a petition from Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC.8 However, one of the primary barriers for the adoption of isobutanol, beside supply and availability of large volumes, has been the need to better understand the final octane properties after blending isobutanol with different gasoline blendstocks. ON must be measured prior to the sale of the fuel, and laboratory measurement of ON is costly and time-consuming.9 The ability to predict ON has been the subject of several studies in the literature.

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1660041

[JackDidley]

Originally Posted by slow&rusty

Perfect.

Thanks for the follow-up! I'll give it a shot. I have a turbo car that is running on the ragged edge, so this will help with timing and detonation

Do you have the option of using E85 ? I used it for 3 years and really liked it. Downside is availability is not always there.

[pavulon]

E85 is remarkable stuff but requires a lot of it for power, oil contamination can be a concern and cylinder washdown leading to premature wear has also been cited as a problem. As always, ymmv.

[Jeff Alton]

We run our mini JCW fully build race car on E60. That 1.6 motor requires 1000cc injectors to make it work. Uses about 50% more fuel.... But, the ECU is tuned to run with any blend, up to 100% gasoline.... But it makes about 30 more WHP on the E60.

But, with our Cayenne, what are you trying to solve? Just save money vs 91/92 octane?

Cheers

[unclebilly]

Yes, marked premium is $1.30/L. At Costco, clear premium is $1.70/L.

Marked regular is $1.15/L.

If we get marked premium, this is about $40 per fill in savings.

If we can boost regular, the savings are more and it’s ok for my tundras.