Fuel additives- strategies?

Hey all!

I live in the West and am forever jealous of the rest of the nation with your delicious 93 octane fuel! Until recently, we had a local station in Reno that had 100 octane VP Racing fuel in the pump, but it was sold to another company and discontinued. It was somewhat easy to make my own 93 (really 95) by adding 4 gallons of 100 to my 91.

Has anyone come up with an additive or other octane booster that is useful? I made the mistake of adding a can (5 gal) of VP 100 octane and switching the map on my 335 to 93 octane and realized that I should not have to suffer with this crappy gas!

I was looking at http://race-gas.com , does anyone have any experience with this or similar products?

Know anyone with a small plane? 100 octane is available on airports. All planes have fuel drains (to check for water), so you don't have to get it form the pump, just buy it from the guy. Not legal to take it off the airport of course...

Actually I thought there were multiple stations in the Reno/Sparks area that sold VP Racing at the pump, not just one. Although the one at Plumb/Lakeside doesn't anymore apparently, I tried to find it there, too. The others were listed in this thread on the Reno SCCA forums but I haven't checked them.

There's also CFL station near the Carson Airport that advertises they're selling Sunoco racing fuels, but also not at the pump.

I'm just curious how much power your 335 is pushing so that you need more than 91 .

The Prater location was the only one with 100 at the pump. It is now owned by another company and the owners don't speak english as a primary language- not sure they are big into tuned vehicles.

I saw the same thread- unfortunately no longer the case. It's a pretty big hassle to add 5 gallon cans to a street car.

I have a cobb on the 335- probably only about 330 or so (dyno's tend to show about a 30 HP gain on the generic tune), but the magic of readily available 93 octane on the 335's means that you can run a tune that nets you about 80 HP versus about 50 HP on 91.

I will be adding a pro-tune to the car soon, before I send the data tables in, I want to understand my fuel situation to maximize the tune.

Note that most aviation fuel is still leaded, it will poison catalytic converters and 02 sensors.

Isn't there something in the paint aisle that works well for this? Toluene maybe?

Xylene or toluene both work as octane boosters. Check these out:

http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/misc/octanebooster.html

I used to use xylene back when the gas around here was really awful low-octane stuff.

http://www.fusefuel.com/Accelerator.html

I deal with the supplier of Fuse in the USA. But I don't sell Accelerator and am of the opinion that if you need race fuel, you need to be a bit more precise than dumping a couple of gallons of each in.

However, if using that method, I don't see why the Accelerator would not be the perfect product. Too much of a plug? Let me know GRM overlords, I'll remove the post. Like I said, I'm not involved with Accelerator, I just know it works as intended/described.

If your needing a higher octane fuel look somewhere else then at an airport. Soon the 100LL (Low Lead) will be discontinued per EPA wanting to reduce the introduction of lead into the air. I haven't heard anything about leaded racing fuel going away but it may happen at some point.

In reply to jimbbski:

As I recall 100LL avgas isn't really that much better in terms of antiknock than 93 pump gas anyway (beats 91 though), it's rated differently. The big advantage is it doesn't boil anywhere near as easy as modern pump gas. This will still be true when avgas goes unleaded, nobody likes vapor lock at 10,000 feet and there are requirements in the specs to keep it that way.

I thought av gas octane ratings were measured at a specific altitude, and the higher rating doesn't directly relate to car fuel ratings?

Desert 2009 wrote: Hey all! I live in the West and am forever jealous of the rest of the nation with your delicious 93 octane fuel! Until recently, we had a local station in Reno that had 100 octane VP Racing fuel in the pump, but it was sold to another company and discontinued. It was somewhat easy to make my own 93 (really 95) by adding 4 gallons of 100 to my 91. Has anyone come up with an additive or other octane booster that is useful? I made the mistake of adding a can (5 gal) of VP 100 octane and switching the map on my 335 to 93 octane and realized that I should not have to suffer with this crappy gas! I was looking at http://race-gas.com , does anyone have any experience with this or similar products?

Just out of curiosity- are you boosting your engine?

Otherwise, your 4500ft altitude will take away power (and the need of high octane fuel).

If you can make 330hp on a sea level rated calibration of 335hp, you are doing pretty good.

I'm amazed no one suggested ethanol, E85, especially if your engine is turbo.

Looks like it's available Reno E85 locations

alfadriver wrote: Just out of curiosity- are you boosting your engine? Otherwise, your 4500ft altitude will take away power (and the need of high octane fuel). If you can make 330hp on a sea level rated calibration of 335hp, you are doing pretty good.

This is true. When I was a kid and we went on family drives to high altitude areas, they didn't even offer high octane gas due to the low air density.