Race Gas - How Much Difference

[North Coast Cab]

Assuming you set-up the timing/DME or whatever to accept say 110 Cam2, how much of a gain would you get? Curious based on the fact that 93-94 has risen towards $3/gal while the Cam2 has stayed a little over $4.

John

[89911]

I would assume that you would have a new chip made to take advantage of this? If not, using race gas is useless. Your motronic is designed for fairly average gas and is set so. If you have the chip setting changed for higher octane, you can certainly gain some horsepower. Setting it for something as high as 110 octane permanently would be very expensive and impractical. I have mine set for 94 octane and notice that when I due run race gas, it burns leaner. I'm sure SteveW has some hard data on higher octane/chip improvements since that is really were they derive most of the power gain from.

[Tspringer]

If your car does not have a compression ratio high enough that it requires 110 octane to prevent detonation, burning 110 octane is a total waste of time.

Higher octane will allow you to advance the timing a bit and that may yield a bit more top end ultimate horsepower but you do not need 110 for this. 98 would probably get you as advanced as is beneficial without ping.

Running much higher octane than your engine demands is not only an expensive waste of time, but your engine may run hotter as a result.

[North Coast Cab]

My Steve W chip is for 93 octane, although I run 94 Sunoco. Just curious about what kind of gains could be had. It's easy to change chips if that's allI'd need, but how much of a gain? 5HP? 10HP? 20HP?

89911 - Stop at BR this weekend if you'r out and about.

John

[89911]

I'll try. I just got back from 3 sunny days at the Glen and put almost 300 track miles on the car. The weather looks good for this weekend so far for you. Are you doing Mid-Ohio with N Ohio region in October?

[Tyson Schmidt]

Even with stock timing, and stock compression, it's not a bad idea to run race gas at the track.

But on the street, I think maybe mixing in a little race gas along with a more aggressively mapped chip wouldn't be a bad idea.

It would probably be a waste of money to run straight race fuel though. You can only go so far with ignition timing before it gets ugly, no matter what octane fuel you use.

[Jeff Alton]

Performance gain? None in your configuration. Safety gain? Yes, at a track on a hot day it is not a bad idea at all.

Jeff