staticlag

Okay so I headed off to Autozone to pick up an oil filter so I could change my oil.

My car has roughly 11000 miles on it, and I try and change every 3-3500 miles.

So I am looking at the oil filters and notice the "octane booster" shelf. Interesting, I think, and wonder if these bottles are cheap infomercial products that will make my car explode, or are strictly reserved for ricer high school kids.

So I pick up a few bottles and read on.

I come to one that says:

Lucas Octane Booster is a racing formula that contains specific upper cylinder lubricants that ensure easier piston travel and valve seat protection. It also ensures maximum life and performance from pumps, injectors and carburetors and eliminates spark knocks, pinging and dieseling while promoting clean fuel burn for fewer emissions and more MPG. A genuine performance enhancer suitable for use in fuel injected, carbureted, throttle body and rotary engines. Use with each fill-up. 15 oz. bottle of Lucas Oil Products Octane Booster.

Directions: Pour entire bottle into tank, then fill with any grade gasoline

* Treats up to 25 gallons of leaded or unleaded gasoline.
* Safe for turbos, oxygen sensors and catalytic converters.
* TESTED - Three times more boost than most other brands
* Official Oil Product of NHRA
* NOT STREET LEGAL

A few words catch my eye. The first are: Rotary Engines, the next are: NOT STREET LEGAL.

Yeah :D It must be good if "the man" doesn't want you to use it around town. I buy a bottle... ~ $8 I believe.

So I go home, change my oil to my standard RP 5w20 and take it out for a drive to test for leaks, etc.. I figure what the hey, and decide to try the stuff. My tank was already 3/4 full of BP premium, so I just squirted the stuff in and topped it off, figuring a few corners should mix the stuff throughly.

55 degrees, dusk.

Frankly I was scared of what the stuff would do, but hoped for the best. So I took it [the car] out, and after the first couple miles, I really begun noticing less hesitation, and a bit more power, it felt like everything was just running smoother. It could have been the 55 degree cold spurt, the new oil, or the additive, or a combination of all three. But I can honestly say that from experience with fresh oil changes and frequent cold, that there was definetly more kick to the engine. I took it to about 105 on the freeway for just a quick test of accel, it felt really really good. Everything was just smoother than usual, the engine just seemed to run through the revs faster. I tried to find a suitable deserted road to really take her to the max, but couldnt find one tonight, besides I feel much safer going fast when I can actually see my surroundings, ah tomorrow.

I don't know too much about the product or exactly what it has in it, but if I was to guess I would say that the lube in the additive really helped reduce the friction of the engine, it was the same kind of feel that I got when I changed from dino to RP, a smoothness that really bought a new kind of efficiency to the engine. A fast efficiency.

Seeing how I haven't been able to really flog her, the jury is still out. But I did run her up to 9.5 on a few shifts and there was definetly something new there.

Maybe someone else can try a bottle and see if they get similar results?

Wurmfist

I don't know much about fuel additives but my eyebrows always raises in question when I see things like this. I always wonder about what the long term effects are to the engine. The rotaries already mix oil in with the fuel and I wonder how the additive works with oil. (since there is a small amount of diution of fuel into the oil.) I'm very leary to using anything like this. It seems like most of the additives are made for older engines that need a "pick-me-up". I will be curious as to what some of the other folks here say. I'm not an expert to any degree, but I was always raised with a "don't use any additives" philosophy.

PUR NRG

One thing to note about any octane booster is when they say it boosts octane by X points, each point is 1/10th of an octane rating. So a 20 point boost will take 91 octane to 91.2 octane.
________
Digital vaporizer

MassiveAttack

I would only try a bottle if someone sent it to me for free. The fact is, if you could add this stuff to a tank of gas and *truly* get better performance, there'd be a gas station chain out there that would use it as an additive it to begin with, increase the price-per-gallon of their gas and stuff all the money into those cool aluminum suitcases you see on the movies.

If you're not running into detonation problems, octane boosters only serve to make your wallet lighter, and if you shed enough weight from your wallet to allow your car to accelerate faster, then you paid too much.

Besides, at $8 every 1/2 tanks, you'd have to get a significant increase in gas mileage for this stuff to pay for itself.

Finally, you'd have to have at least a 5% (realistically, 10%) improvement in performance for you to notice any changes with your butt dyno. If this stuff could do that, they'd be selling it for more than $8...

dmp

Remember, More Octane makes gas 'harder' to ignite. The only time I've tried high-Super-High Octane pump gas (In canada, 96?98? octane) I got 16 mpg - ON THE FREEWAY...

khtm

dmp, you were driving in Canada? ewwwwwwwwwwwww!! I hope you showered afterwards :D

On a serious note, I'm also interested in this additive, and whether or not it's just a placebo effect...

Bindon

Pshhh, I take dips in Purell every time I go to the states :-D

Wurmfist

There's a couple Shell gas stations (i think it's shell) where I've seen them sell 110 octance leaded gas. LOL...Wonder what that stuff would do to the renesis....I for one, don't want to find out.

draco067

errr, wouldn't 20 points make it 93 octane? :D

zoom44

no

staticlag

Uhh, 20/10 = 2

.1 = 1/10

.2 = 2/10
.01 = 1/100

Math errors here, unless the formula is incorrect.

Second impressions, day 2:

Engine feels smooth, gas mileage is unrecored till I actually fill her up again, but I can tell just from being familair with the tick marks on the gauge that mpg is probably going to get 1-3 mpg worse than my standard 17mpg half city some highway driving. But then again I am running it harder just to test her out.

Listening to the idle a bit more, the engine seems a bit quiter, but the vibration pattern does seem a bit different than normal a bit more spaced out between wave fronts, and at idle the rev needle is just below the 1. I dont think that the "octane booster" component really had any positive effect, but I am basically continuting to test this to see if the lube component helps the engine perform in any way.

On the matter of power, I don't want to spend money on a dyno for this, but there is a big hill probably 1/2 a mile in total hypotenuse height by my house. I think I'm going to walk it using gps to map the elevation change and exact footage and take my car up it using the good ol tried and tested horsepower = work equation. Bad thing is that I can only get a total hp # for my car and have no idea of what RPM hp increase/decrase is felt.

Overall, I think that the largest gain that I felt in driving was from the fresh oil.

Can anyone feel the fresh difference in performance when running fresh oil/filter combo? I sure can... Not in total power fully, but in the sound of the engine, the responsiveness of the pedal, and its response to WOT.

That is the kind of feel that I am getting from this product, smoother operation. Now I only wish I would have conducted this experiment a bit better(at first it started as a larf), with a baseline HP #.

XDEEDUBBX

i've tried c16 in my engine mixed with 91 octane...it felt good..

MassiveAttack

It's all psychological.

Any lubricating capabilities of this additive are unmeasureable, at BEST. In a 15.7 gal tank (ours), there's approximately 2000 oz of volume, only 15 oz of which are accounted for by this additive. That means there is 0.75% additive in the fuel. Now, the fuel is injected into the engine while in open-loop mode at--oh, let's be pessimistic--10:1 AFR. So, 0.075% of the stuff taken in on intake is this additive, and an even smaller portion of that is going to be lubricating (since some of it has to be the chemical used to boost the octane).

And, a negligible amount of that 0.075% of chamber volume will end up on the surfaces in the combustion chamber because the air and fuel have to mix, not stick to surfaces, to allow proper combustion to occur. The oil metering pump is injecting oil to lubricate the surfaces, and in much greater volume. If there's something in this additive that could help lubricate a rotary engine with greater efficiency than the oil is doing by itself, the place that additive belongs is in the oil.

But, you'd like to do tests, so you should. In this case, a dyno is the only way to go. There are too many variables otherwise (tire/ambient/surface temperature, wind velocity, humidity, etc.). Have someone who doesn't know what additive is or is not there do the dyno pulls, too. Repeat on a different day, changing the order of with/without additive. Measure percentage changes.

--Massive

RPM6500

I would stay away from the "over the counter" octane boosters mainly because they are a waste of money. Just head to your local paint store and pick up a few gallons of toluene. In the Audi world we called it "Rocket Fuel" in respect for the 1.5L turbo'd F1 cars as they ran a mixture of toluene and n-heptane and prodeced upwards of 1500hp at 5bars of boost.

If the RX-8 is capable of taking advantage of 92 and 93 octane fuel then upping the octane in the tank will be helpful to those of us in Cal running 91 w/ methynol. It was especially helpful on cars without knock sensors and turbos (my old Ur-Q for example)

I used to run 2.5 gallons per tank in the UR-Q, (23.8 gal tank) and 1 gallon in the Neon which raced D and G stock. Both Cars would run noticably smoother at idle and the Audi could have the boost turned up a touch to get more horses. I believe the rules allow for these additives as well if you curious as to SCCA legality. But I would have to look that up again to know for sure. It is mentined in the book as far as I remember I just don't remember what it said.

If anyone is interested in more info a google search for "audi rocket fuel toluene" should bring up some good info. I can answer some questions as well if needed.

-RPM

RotaMotion

Thank You! This is one of my soapbox items It seems that the myth of higher octane always = more power is perpetuated everywhere. Normal pump gas that is higher octane does not have any more energy (power) to it. However, since higher octane gas is more resistant to blowing up, you can run higher compression and/or more timing advance which results in the engine producing more hp. Without those mods, you're actually retarding your timing (and wallet) by putting higher-octane gas in the car than the engine is designed for and as specified by the manufacture.

111

Your math is way off., and Zoom44 is wrong too, the "net" is full of bad info

2 points is 0.2 or 91.2
20 points is 2.0 or 93.

draco067 and Staticag are dead on with the math and their answer.
The LUCAS booster is around a 30 point boost (3.0) or 91 up to 94 (so they claim).
...most are 4-7 points or 0.4-0.7 or 91.4-91.7.
The NOS RACING formula with MMT says 7 points on it (0.7) but it was tested and actually came closer to 30 (3.0) points.
I have also seen some new packaging for the NOS RACING off road formula and it said 60 points or 6.0. That could boost 87 up to 93 "if" it's for real....seems like a stretch though.

Fanman

Yeah, Sport Compact Car ran several octane boosters a few years ago, and a few of them showed about a 1-2 point gain. The NOS Racing Formula showed the most improvement with a 2.5 full octane rating gain (91.2 to 93.7). I got some of this but it is about $6-$8 a bottle, not like the 99 cent octane booster that you get at Pep Boys.

It would be pointless to use octane booster to push up 87 to 93, as the cost would far outweigh the extra 20 cents a gallon you could pay. Only at 91+ does it make any sense.

maybeashinka?

go to ace hardware, buy a gallon of Xylene for 6 dollars. I dont drive my car without it. get into an rx8 with a tank with 12% xylene, make it go. then do the same thing in your rx8.

StealthTL

iTrader: (1)

Mr. Maybeashinka is right on.

I make gas for a living, (30 years and counting) we use the toluene and xylene to make hi-test out of regular.

My refinery uses about 50 tons of toluene an hour, and would rather sell the stuff to the plastics plant next door, for big bucks, but when it's time to make a tank of Premium, the blender takes a few hundred tons out of our tank and blends it in with the cheap regular stuff. Presto, 93 octane!

For blending your own, use 112 octane for toluene (sometimes sold as Toluol) and about 120 for Xylene (if you can find it).
Then it's straight math - 9 gallons of 93 = 837...+ 1 gallon of xylene @ 120 = 957.../10 = 95.7 as a conservative octane estimate (some isomers of xylene go over 150 on the scale, but you can't be sure how pure your gallon is!) it is not quite that simple, but you will be on the safe side, using those numbers.

The sad part is, after much experimentation, (trust me!) the high octane doesn't make any difference I can feel, to my NA Renesis.....

S

maybeashinka?

The only time I can really feel it, is when I get on the freeway and mash on the gas..my head makes a bigger indent in my head rest. I like to think it works. ....

staticlag

This thread is sad

Yeah lucas octane doesn't work, yeah I did discover xylene a few months ago, yeah I have ran 98 octane mixing my own from premium, yeah it didn't do anything on a n/a

Next time I dyno I might try adding a few gallons of xylene while on the dyno to see what happens. who knows....

kartweb

Higher octane won't do anything for a stock Renesis.

Oxygenation + higher heat of transformation (cooling from vaporizaion) will.

Try Nitrotoluene. Brings along some O2 as well as bumps the octane. Just don't get any on your skin, the O2 is considered a free radical as in carcinogenic, and it will absorb into your skin. Once it's in the tank you don't have to worry.

It will take the ECU a few start cycles to adjust.

It really drives the FI guys nuts.

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

What would compel a super-newb to resurrect this thread when there are so many others with better info?

dastallion951

if u actually read the ingredients of any octane booster bottle........out of that 12 oz or 20 oz bottle whatever size it is......the only ingredient that actually raises ur octane is maybe 1 oz or 2oz per bottle, the read r just additives they add that dont do much........

@617DRFT_RX8

I be gettin hella backfire using this ****.
Been using it ever fill before i go out for a run.
My backfires are def way louder and more violent compared to just using Vpower alone.
Probs isnt good for the motor in long terms, but screw it. Renesis blow up when its their time of the month anyway.
IMHO i say its not a bad idea. But it doesnt work miracles. Still only got 230 wheel lol