Premium V's Regular

[Lozza150]

With current fuel price's and the outlook of further rises if the war goes ahead against Iraq, i was wondering the effect of running regular Unleaded instead of Premium.

My first guess would be that the car might "Ping" as the mapping is set for "Hi ocu" 100 RON Unleaded.....

Would that be the only issue or would there be other issue's with the car...??

What do you think??

Know of any other issue's with using Regular Unleaded....??

I use Premium and always will....,Would LOVE to have Hi ocu but ......niah.... what do you do.... I dont think it would pass AQIS somehow....

Loz

[hippy]

i use premium too ... it doesn't matter either way ... i pay an extra 5cents ... but i get that extra economy and its better for the car so it works out good ... i dont' use ultimate ... but when i can't get to a station with normal premium then i use ultimate cause i know its cleaner.

[predator]

The whole engine is engineered from the ground up to use high octane. I am sure you could have the whole thing detuned to take regular unleaded but then again why?? If you want a performance car then you're going to have to pay some of the costs that are associated with it.

Petrol still isn't too expensive IMHO. If it went up to $2/L then i guess i would feel different

[predator]

hippy: i think he's talking about running "normal" unleaded (90RON or whatever it is), not the lower grade "premium".

There is a reason most cars imported via normal channels have to be detuned for the Australian market.

[Lozza150]

I have an aussie car too.....

I have the best.... well i have one performance, and one "family" car

[predator]

In short, increase in wear of piston rings, valves, head gasket and probably greater dangers when the engine timing starts to get thrown out. None of which are that cheap to fix. You'd probably notice missing and spluttering under load which wouldn't be pretty either. Anybody done it before or seen the effects?

If you have something that lets you adjusts the mixtures (S/AFC or modded ECU) you might get away with it more to cater for the changed combustion?? With a modern car, how it adjusts itself to suit changes in conditions is very much ECU controlled. If something is not within its defined "parameters" then it doesn't really know what do, and other more subtle problems could occur. And of course the combustion process is set by chiefly two base parameters: the type/quality of air and fuel going into each cylinder.

Anyway, this is all a bit theoretical, because i am sure nobody really wants to to do it.

[red17]

Always use the best fuel you can get. Whether it be ultimate or optimax or whatever the hell else you eastern staters have (Perth only seems to have Ultimate at BP and Vortex at Caltex).

My dad worked for BP for 25 years and has told me that you shouldnt run any car in regular. It is engineered by fuel companies to JUST (and i do mean just) conform to the government standard and no more. That way they make more money.

To add octane to a fuel it costs exobitant amounts of money at a refinery level. Some grades of aviation gasoline are merely 98-100 ron fuels with a huge addition of toluene. This is done because its the cheapest way to raise octane.

As for what you should run in your car? Well id go with premium no matter what the price. Premium is created from much cleaner source chemicals. Regular unleaded contains alot of bi-products from other processes eg: while in one part of the refinery its considered a waste product, on the other side it ends up being used to make fuel. Premium burns much much cleaner and id run it in ANY car, not just performance models.

You may not realise it, but it has the ability to increase longevity in any engines life. Probably less so in imported skylines though because they are built to run 100 minimum.

It would be nice to see them produce a high performance fuel, somewhere around the 100-102 mark.... but perhaps they think the market isnt there considering only a minority of us even care about what fluids we put in our cars.

Red17

[uLa32]

don't take any risks.... stick with the highest octane you have available to you.... if you have to downgrade to a lower grade petrol, try and keep boost to a minimum while driving.