Octane Boosters
 

Are octane boosters safe to use on the RX8, read an article on them specifically the NOS octane booster, hasanyone used them, felt any difference on the car, etc??? :confused:

Octane is just basically "detonation resistance" and is entirely separate from the energy content of (X) amount of fuel. 93 doesn't have any more bang than 87 and actually burns slower IIRC. Unless you're having problems with detonation on 93 octane, adding octane boost is pointless and you will make the same or less power.

Also when you see "104+ Octane Boost raises your octane 9 points!" or some such claim, that's really misleading. First, because "104+" is the brand name of the product itself, not the octane rating you end up with. Second, in marketing-weasel-speak, a "point" is apparently considered 0.1, not 1.

If you did want 104 octane gas for some strange reason, you'd have to buy xylene or toluene from a paint store and mix it in (then you'd have higher octane and energy content, actually). If you wanted to do it without paying through the nose, get a 50 gallon drum, but it's still pretty expensive.

Had a big article on this in the last Sports Compact Car. The NOS "off road" version did raise the octane about 3 points. Only reason you would use this is if you have a turbo & want to turn up the boost & decrease the chance for detonation. With an NA engine it is effectively useless & would give you no increase in hp.

Also in the article you can't go over a certain percentage of Toulene otherwise you risk damaging your engine. They had it at 30% & said anymore & the engine might get damaged.

One benefit of aromatic hydrocarbons like Toluene and Xylene, is that when fully burned they only produce CO2 and water, thus easing the load on the catalytic converter. In the 8, this would lead to lower cat temps and less timing pulled due to high cat temp. However, the 8 runs very rich, and most likely you'd not get a full burn. This results in benzene derivatives being emitted, which are extremely bad pollutants. I'm not sure how effective the converter is at breaking down complex hydrocarbons. If I were heavily boosting a 10:1 compression (or higher) motor like the 8, I might add aromatics to be safe, but for natual aspiration I don't see the point. Timing logs might tell you if timing is being pulled due to knock, but the ecu will pull timing for high converter and high coolant temps also, and could be misleading.

Bah, if you really want higher octane (and I doubt the '8 needs it) just find a Sunoco station selling GT100. 100 octane unleaded, and it smells fabulous. Oddly enough, its *still* 5 bucks a gallon around here... price hasn't crept up like all other grades.

The best octane raiser/cheapest most efficient way is just to get 100 octane gas... cheaper than those additives in the long run -.-

so would getting 100 octane gas give us any performance boost? would it do any harm to our Renesis engines? curious....

No performance boost to a non turbo engine. Should not cause any harm but why spend the extra $$$ for zero gain?

Not true. At least 100 octane will show some gain according to this....
http://sportcompactcarweb.com/roadte...san09_zoom.jpg


http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/fe...cc_350znissan/

Well I found a lot of reaction to octane in my old Type R B18C ( in the DC2 Integra), I found the higher the octane, the more responsive at above the VTEC zone (>5800 rpm).

But I found nothing like this in the rotary. I guess this high rev is different from the other high rev engine. :o

Great news for 350Z owners! But I have a non-piston RX-8

http://europeancarweb.com/tech/0503ec_techboost/
"Higher octane fuel only helps you make more power if your engine is at the verge of detonation"
Our ECU keeps that from happing.

Does this mean I can get through emissions with this knowledge??? LOL

ok then, not quite a dyno sheet but at least its something.

http://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=336513

I use the NOS booster in my tank from time to time. In the 8 it sometimes feels zippier--but I'm sure its a placebo effect. Now they do appear to make more of a noticeable difference in boosted cars--I used it in my FD, my mom's SLK (which uses a similar blower as the Millenia S), and my Millenia S.

Ok, since gas is so expensive in Calf.

It would be way cheaper to buy the Octane booster at the 99 centstore and buy regular gas.

That's .26/gal more x 14gal = $3.50 savings - .99*1.08 for tax or a total saving of $2.42 per tank.

Of course I have seen premium at a much higher price so we would even save more.

What do you think?

Would the Octane Booster compensate for using regular gas?

Plus are you telling me that rotary engines burn fuel differently than a conventional engine? Its still a 4 step process.

Doesn't work that way. In testing there were very specific products tested. Many of them supposedly the strongest Octane Boosters on the market, and even the strongest one of the lot still added only 2 points. Other ones barely added 1 point. The 99 cent stuff might not even do that.

Yes, fuel does burn differently in a small cylinder as compared to a long chamber.

You are forgetting what Octane means.

“The octane quality of a gasoline is its ability to resist detonation” Octane has nothing to do with power. Higher Octane doesn’t mean more power.
If your car does not knock / have detonation on 91 then putting in 100 will not make any difference. Now if you have made changes to your engine, have poor quality gas then things can change. Here in New Jersey premium gas is 93 Octane on avg. So I am running 2 points above Mazda’s recommended 91. But all things being equal if your 8 runs fine on 91 it will not run any better on 100 (boosted)

Care to explain, I mean as long as there is air, fuel, and spark what is different? It still burns. That’s all I meant.

Nissan also recommends 91 for the Z. I’m sure Nissan USA programmed the ecu to have pretty good resistance against detonation on 91 octane because that is a big chunk of what we will be using in this country.

Now I guess until we can find an actual dyno sheet of an 8 performing better with higher than 91 octane we can't assume there isn't detonation. Perhaps that’s the difference in the JDM 8's horsepower rating and ours. :confused: