Just wodering what octane does everyone feed their TC's? im about to get my first tank of gas in soon... i had a 98 honda prelude type SH before my TC and the manual on the first page said nothing lower than 91 octane. i read in the TC manual nothing lower than 89 octane... i live here in TX and we dont have 91 octane we have 93 :mrgreen: so my prelude for 3 years till i totalled it had nothing but 93 octane...

 

I'm still running on the gas that the dealer gave my tC :D
I figure I would put in a couple more 89 octane and then go to 92 to see if I can "feel" a difference.
If I don't feel any diff. then 89 should do.....damn gas prices anyway.

I know that running 92 octane made my old Jetta run better... :?

 

I only run sunoco 94 octane in mine

 

im pretty sure if i remember correclty that it said no lower than 87, which i run..

 

btw, theres an old post about this whole octane thing

 

don't be a monkey. the manual specifies that you use regular.

 

Why waste money?

 

RTFM...which says 87 octane. Like the others said, higher-octane gas will do nothing but waste your money. Higher octane is only better if the car you put it in is designed to take advantage of it...

 

People always say higher octanes do nothing for a car and I believe them. But why. when I put racing fuel(which is higher octane), in my SRT-4, does it run better times at the track? I'm not questioning anyones logic here but wondering if anyone can give me an explanation.

 

It's not that higher octane gasoline does nothing for ANY car...it's that it does nothing for a car not designed to take advantage of it. The SRT-4 apparently is; according to the manual (and my own 2-week experiment), the tC is not. I trust the Toyota engineers on this one.

 

The reason why you had to use high octain in your Lude is because its a pretty high compression motor.

87 is whats recommended. Of course running higher octain isnt bad. Although the car could get use to the higher octain and then when you want to save money and put lower octain you may have knock. Then big bucks will be wasted.

Im sure running 93octain once and a while would be bad. It would clean the motor out.

Race fuel is different, not to mention its going into a turbocharged car. Turbo cars and race fuel are a good combo. Race fuel is just a slower burning fuel, it lets you run more boost safely without detonation. Race fuel is great with higher compression motors too.
Race fuel also gives your motor a good cleaning. It is recommended that you change you spark plugs after race fuel. If you take them out after you've ran it you'll see what I mean.

 

check out www.howstuffworks.com
click on auto stuff...then click how engines work..then producing more power..you'll find the stuff on octane rating under increasing compression ratio...some pretty good basic info there.

 

You're actually robbing power from your TC using higher octane gas.

The higher the octane, the harder it is to combust. Basically the octane rating tells you how much the gas can be compressed before igniting on it's own without a spark.

Which is why high octane gas is needed in high compression engines i.e. Boosted cars or the RSX, S2000, Prelude engines.

And at the same time low octane gas is needed in the lower compression engine of the TC.

 

Just like everyone else just said Unless you have a high performance, high compression engine anything over 87 doesn't really do anything benefitial for the engine. IF it did wouldn't you think peope would be saying "Dude i ran my car on the dyno after putting 94 in and it was a HUGE difference"

As far as "cleaning out" the engine All gas has relatively the same amount of detergent in it. Brand to Brand that might change (Mobile vs. Joe's Gas and GO) but grade to grade inside a brand would be that different detergent wise.

I've had several Mechanics tell me that putting higher octane in doesn't mean much but running a bottle of injector cleaner through your system every other tank will do wonders.

 

My mom's got a Infinity G35 and she uses premium gas because her car requires it. Her engine is more for performance. If you really think about it we have the same engine as a Camry. Would you put premium in a Camry???

Didn't think so... don't waste your money, 87 works just fine.

 

i use 87 no need to waste the money on other grades unless you go supercharger or turbo then you will need better gas

 

they told me 87 when i was at dealer

 

thanx everyone for the info... yeah my prelude did have a higher compression then the TC... im sold, 87 octane it is.

 

Octane ratings are really a fuel's resistance to detonation. The higher the octane the higher resistance to pinging. These motors do not require higher than 87 octane. Just keep your ears open for pinging. It sounds like marbles being shaken inside of a coffee can. If you hear that sound, stay out of the throttle and use higher octane fuel. Should never happen in a stock motored tC.