The fact and science behind premium gas and Octane rating
May 15 '01
The Bottom Line higher Octane rating means that your car can run under higher compression ratio. So it has no impact on your MPG or car performance. Just use the MFG recommended rating.
There have been a lot of confusions around Octane rating in gasoline.
Let me just tell you that it has no impact to MPG or cleaning your engine.
Octane rating indicates how much octane additives are in your gasoline.
Before I get to what Octane does, let me just explain how your car engine works.
You engine compresses the fuel/air mix in your cylinder and then starts combustion with an ignition. The combustion pushes the cylinder blocks and that force runs the car.
Higher your engine compresses the fuel mix, higher the power. However, as higher compression occurs it produce higher stress on your engine. Also under higher compression, gasoline has a tendency to self-ignite. This cause pinging. And this is where Octane comes in. The Octane additives help fuel/air mix to be under higher compression ratio without self-ignition and in turn more power.
This is why you see higher octane rating requirement for sports cars and other high performance cars that runs higher compression ratio.
So do you actually get more power or MPG with higher Octane?
In short, no. When engine is built, it is designed with a specific compression ratio in mind. Using higher octane will not make your car run at higher compression ratio.
So now you know that running higher Octane rating will not do any good for your car. Just read your car manual and used the recommended Octane rating gasoline.
Now there are two exceptions to this rule.
1st, if you replaced the computer chip or performed engine modification, that forces the engine to run at higher compression ratio, you will need higher octane gas to compensate for that. If not, it can self-ignite under higher compression ratio and will ping.
2nd. if your car is really old, it can develop some deposit around the cylinder wells. This in turn will reduce the volume available for compression and in turn actually increase the compression ratio. This is why you hear pining in older cars. Higher-octane gas will solve this problem. However, in this case, I recommend you actually go ahead and clean the engine cylinders with cleaners.
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