91 v 93 Octane?

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Cue, You should try filling up with 1/2 tank of Shell 91 and 1/2 Husky 94 and see what the knock is. It'll put you around 92 octane and I'm sure shell doesn't use ethanol blend like husky does.

I don't know.... if for some reason I liked the results, I'd hate to half to fill up at 2 stations all the time... but we'll see.
 
93 with a 10% ethanol blend (mileage killer right there... ethanol)... all it's had so far..

ethanol blend is all you can get in just about all of texas now.

ahhh i remember the 11.5:1 compression days with big cams and lots of timing... i used to run half a tank of av gas, and half unleaded or full race gas. oh, the smells coming out of the pipes were GREAT!... i guess in todays terminology you could call it a 'fuel mod'... :)

Nothing like the smell of leaded gas and a well tuned engine. That was one of beat things about NASCAR, then the ******* hippie greeners bitched and moaned bout it...
 
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Unless your tuned for a higher octane, what's the point? Unless you like throwing away $$$... (yupnope)
 
obviously 93 will be superior
and your reason why it's superior without a tune? Do you have some hard facts to go with your statement? Going with a higher octane is a placebo unless your running a tune to get the performance out of running a higher octane. This car is designed to run on 91 unless you re-program your ecu. I'm open to listening to any results that are proven that running a 93 will improve performance on a basically stock or lightly modified MS3...
 
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and your reason why it's superior without a tune? Do you have some hard facts to go with your statement? Going with a higher octane is a placebo unless your running a tune to get the performance out of running a higher octane. This car is designed to run on 91 unless you re-program your ecu. I'm open to listening to any results that are proven that running a 93 will improve performance on a basically stock or lightly modified MS3...

ok... if i'm wrong i'm wrong... my take on running a higher octane fuel....

more octane = more resistance to detonation or pinging, and allows for more ignition timing, all of these things are increasing cylinder pressure, giving more power, assuming the computer in the car is taking care of this, and giving more agressive timing or other things...

for the same reason, guys running 91 are seeing better mileage.. the octane is keeping the timing retarded a bit... using less fuel in the process...

now the difference between 91 and 93... miniscule. but my manual says to run 93... or at least 91.... and i would think in a turbocharged car, you would want to run as high an octane as you can...

my old carbed v8s.. would run the same on unleaded as they would with the av gas blend (maybe just cooler)... i would have to adjust the jets and timing (tune) to get the most out of the extra octane in the gas.. i figure with these cars the computer is doing some 'tuning' of the engine to match the octane of the gas...


ok. fire away.
 
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and your reason why it's superior without a tune? Do you have some hard facts to go with your statement? Going with a higher octane is a placebo unless your running a tune to get the performance out of running a higher octane. This car is designed to run on 91 unless you re-program your ecu. I'm open to listening to any results that are proven that running a 93 will improve performance on a basically stock or lightly modified MS3...

Even at stock, MS3's will knock bad every now and then... I don't own an MS3, but from reading around, I think 93 would benefit the MS3's to help avoid, or at least lower, the knock levels...
 
Even at stock, MS3's will knock bad every now and then... I don't own an MS3, but from reading around, I think 93 would benefit the MS3's to help avoid, or at least lower, the knock levels...

I do own an ms3 and running nothing but 91 with the VERY occasional octane booster when I drive it REALLY hard I have never had even a hint of a knock...
If people want to waste their money on fancy gas that offers little protection and poorer fuel mileage that's fine, but its not going to help performance. thecar is tuned for 91 it has to be for California, the car will not recalibrate itself with a more aggressive tune for higher octane fuel if you put it in, if it did there would be no point in buying an after market tuner for it, because it would adjust for mods and fuel... Remember, this is a <$25,000 car, it's not gonna have NASA computers that adjust to every parameter, and mazda is not gonna waste their resources tuning different models for different states, especially because I'm sure California is a HUGE market for these and they would not want to exclude it because of available fuel...
93 won't hurt anything except fuel mileage, but fir this car in relativly stock form it's not gonna help
 
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I do own an ms3 and running nothing but 91 with the VERY occasional octane booster when I drive it REALLY hard I have never had even a hint of a knock...
If people want to waste their money on fancy gas that offers little protection and poorer fuel mileage that's fine, but its not going to help performance. thecar is tuned for 91 it has to be for California, the car will not recalibrate itself with a more aggressive tune for higher octane fuel if you put it in, if it did there would be no point in buying an after market tuner for it, because it would adjust for mods and fuel... Remember, this is a <$25,000 car, it's not gonna have NASA computers that adjust to every parameter, and mazda is not gonna waste their resources tuning different models for different states, especially because I'm sure California is a HUGE market for these and they would not want to exclude it because of available fuel...
93 won't hurt anything except fuel mileage, but fir this car in relativly stock form it's not gonna help

I use 93 because its the only option available at 95% of the gas stations. There is 1 Sunoco station, (that or its shell), that offers 91 but its literally only a few cents cheaper than the 93. Like $1.91 to $1.94
 
I do own an ms3 and running nothing but 91 with the VERY occasional octane booster when I drive it REALLY hard I have never had even a hint of a knock...
If people want to waste their money on fancy gas that offers little protection and poorer fuel mileage that's fine, but its not going to help performance.


"If people want to waste their money"???? So why do you even bother with the VERY occasional octane booster?? 93 is only a few cents more per tank.

...and I know MS3's knock at stock, so I'm very surprised you don't get any. My brother and my friend own an MS3 and they knock all the time, like 99% of the other stock MS3's.
 
Even at stock, MS3's will knock bad every now and then... I don't own an MS3, but from reading around, I think 93 would benefit the MS3's to help avoid, or at least lower, the knock levels...
So you don't own a MS3 yet your making comments on it. Based on what, hearsay? No offense but you have no direct experience with this. I run 91 on mine (with mods) and am getting no knock. I run a Dash Hawk too and check in on the vitals. As of now I don't see any problem...
 
There's a station right around the block from me that actually sells 92 which I'm assuming is a blend. I go there a lot because I figure 92 is good enough and seems to be fine as far as I can tell and usually has good prices, not to mention being close to my house.
 
I run 89 quite a bit, sometimes it gets better mileage than 93, sometimes not. I can't tell much difference. I don't usually drive hard though.
 
95 or 97 in my turbo miata.

I'm gonna HATE using stateside gas again.

Your 95 octane in Turkey is actually an equivalent of 90-91 octane here in US. The US gas is not worse than European gas, they just use different calculations to determine octane number - RON(Research Octane Number) in Europe and (RON+MON(Motor Octane Number))/2 in US.
 
Strange no 91? So it goes from 89 to 93. I guess it's another way for the oil companies to rake us over the coals...ha.
 
So you don't own a MS3 yet your making comments on it. Based on what, hearsay? No offense but you have no direct experience with this. I run 91 on mine (with mods) and am getting no knock. I run a Dash Hawk too and check in on the vitals. As of now I don't see any problem...

....wait a sec... my brother owns an MS3 and my friend own an MS3... both an 08.5... so, direct experience, I do have... so base my argument on that... this being said, I could confidently agree with with all MS3 users when they say they knock at stock.... If you don't knock at 91, than that's great, but most MS3's do and there would be a benefit to getting 93.

and like I said, there must have been a reason for you to seldomly use an octance booster...
 
mine NEVER knocks... one that knocks 'bad' isn't going to last very long... hard detonation kills engines.

and on-the-fly engine tuning by the computer isn't rocket science... it has a KNOCK sensor..... it adjusts timing related to knock. less knock = more advanced timing = more power..

regardless, i'm only going to run 93 in mine.. :)
 
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