We all know those Octane Boosters we see at walmart and autoparts stores. You can pick one up for a couple dollars and says it does a lot to help. My question is do the colorful bottles do anything? Do they help or hurt your engine? How much is to much to put in the tank? Will it help with towing/MPG/basicPerformance? Thanks Jim

 

You don’t need higher octane unless your compression is more then stock or you flashed it with a tuner.

Higher octane just burns slower
a waste for a vehicle that doesn’t need it.

To answer your question I believe the off the shelf octane boosters will only raise your tank of regular by a few 1/10 of a point.
Not worth it. If you had no cats you could run a gal of 110LL in a tank. I’ve done this a few times when I started pinging with crap fuel.

 

Yes,
they take up a lot of space at the landfill!

Phil

 

Higher octane does not mean more power. It means the fuel has a reduced detonation threshold. That allows an engine to be ran with high compression and advanced timing. Water injection also raises octane levels. Does nothing for performance by itself.
Alcohol fuels (E10 e85 whatever) have higher octane level but more of it is required to reach the same performance of regular gas because regular pure gas has more thermal energy.
No octane booster is a waste of money. So is running premium fuel with out the other things needed to take advantage of it.

 

I put it in the tank of my truck and the tail pipe turned so black it was seeping around the outside of the pipe. From what I read on other forums, the active ingredients whether its toluene or what ever plays havoc with your converters as well.

This is just what I have read so it may all be wrong but I but I wont use it again. Tailpipe finally turned back to that neutral color. I found a station here that has 93 as well as 101 octane if I feel the urge

 

Run what the manual suggests, 87 and it will run fine. Thats all ive ever ran.....Same thing with my R6, suggests 91 or better, ran that and no problems...

 

Higher octane will do very little for you unless you are tuned for it. The knock sensor may allow a little more timing advance, that's about it. Not enough to make the extra 20 to 30 cents a gallon worth it.

 

Not only is it a wast to run higher octane but them little bottles,98% of them make your 87.0 octane like 87.01 so it's really worthless!

 

i agree if you read the bottle it actually says it only raises the octane a certain percent like phil said goes from 87 to 88 ive read a couple and i think i found one that raised the octane like 2 points for a 20 gallon tank most tanks nowdays take more than 20 gals

 

I have the Edge CS and its on the highest stage for 91+ octane, gotts mod, and a slowmaster 40

 

They work pretty good getting wet firewood to light......

 

Then you should be using 91+ octane gas, not trying to boost 87 or 89 with additives.

 

Test's have shown that the real world use of these only raises your octane a small percentage and will wear plug electrodes prematurely. If you need the higher octane you should use a brand name gas with 89, 91 or 93 on the pump. Some fuel injector cleaners have been known to improve mileage on the highway but they also wear plug electrodes prematurely.

Try a different brand of gas; Shell, Chevron or Conoco. My Ford's ('92 Ranger, '93 Escort, '95 F150, '01 F150, '02 Stang GT, '94 Lightning and '07 F150) have always received their best Mileage on Conoco 87 octane gas. I run Shell in AR, Chevron in LA & MS and Conoco in TX.

 

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