I have a 92SE 5 spd, when I first bought it I would use 91 or above octane gas and it always ran fine. So somewhere around last summer I decided to start using regular gas from Chevron, my car got to be almost undrivable. Has anyone else had a similiar problem I have now switch back to higher octane gas and the problem seems to be getting better. As soon as I put in fuel injection cleaner and high octane gas by the next day my car is running better. Friend of mine has a 90SE and says he uses regular gas, but I'm thinking it's because of the different engines these cars have. Any thoughts.

 

On the gas cap it says use high octane gas or somthing for maximum performance. I use 93 never anything less. Basically i think you need the high octane to burn hot so you dont have detonation or somthing that makes it run bad.

 

I've got a 93SE and I use regular unleaded gas and the car runs fine. I do notice when I put in super unleaded (91 octane) I have more power and accelerate faster, etc. However, my car is far from undrivable when I use the cheaper gas.

My father (had the car before me) always used unleaded gas (87 octane) without any problems.

 

i thought using any gas better than the recommended was ust a waste of money? maybe im wrong but the engine was designed around the use of whatever octane, and using better than that just isnt neccessary
any thoughts?

 

Did a search for using higher Octane gas and came up with this result. Uncle Sam knows best right

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/autos/octane.htm

 

hmmmmm......interesting article.....I'm sticking with 93

 

It could be that the knock sensor is kicking in with the lower octane gas and retarding your ignition,...hence the lower power. Theoretically the lower the octane you can run the more power you will have(because it burns easier),....but likely the lower power you can squeeze out of your engine(since it burns so easy you will likely get detonation). Since our engines are quite high performance, they practically must have the higher octane. That will also alow you to tune for hotter settings on fuel and ignition. They can somewhat accomodate the lower octane, but when it detects knock it retards the ignition to a quite lower "safe" setting rather than keeping it right on the edge. You should notice quite a bit lower performance from this.

Gene