Well I just found out the previous owner has been using 89 octane for the ENTIRE time she had the Maxima. Should I be looking out for something? Do I need to change anything?

 

Your knock sensor was probably bent over puking the whole time. Do it a favor and put it out of it's misery.

 

Thanks. I guess theres no question that it needs to be replaced so I don't have to bother checking the ECU. Haha.

 

No way, check to see if you have a code first. Then take it from there. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Hopefully she didn't drive hard. Knock gets worse under heavy loads.

 

I have been running mostly premium gasoline this winter with octane rating of 91 or 92.
Historically I run 89 octane most of the time with absolutely no problem. I filled up in Blaine, Washington with 89 octane Chevron about a month ago and the car ran like crap. I believe Canadian gasoline has more additives than that of the US and constantly hear about problems with lower octane US gas.

Does anyone have any knowledge about this? I guess what I'm saying is that Canadian 89 octane gasoline is better than US performance wise. I know someone who bought a 1999 Maxima 2 years ago and he has never run anything but 87 octane and he has no problems with his car. I'm not suggesting I would run with 87 but he has never experienced any knocking. His car has about 87,000 miles on it and runs fine.

 

Wow I guess I will check it then. She was an old lady, I guess she would have no reason to be running it high. But you never know...

 

i used to use 89 then i got that dreaded 0304 code

 

I know my knock sensor went bad cause my mother filled up with nothing but 89 octane for about 80k miles.

she never ran it over 3k RPMs tho, so in other words she really babied it. As far as the KS, it was cracked in half when i replaced it. Should i be looking to change the harness becuase of this? this might aply to the original question...

 

wow dude, wow.

 

I ran 89 about 90% of the past 2 years because of the gas hike, checked my ecu the other day and only get the 55 code. That's not to say damage hasn't been done, but everything checked out okay, I run 93 now.

 

I run 89 about 90% of the time as well, for the last 10,000 miles. I drive moderately hard and have no knocks or pings coming from the engine. Dont have the CEL on either.

I didnt even knew 91+ was recommended until i had driven about 5,000 miles on 89, and at that point I had never noticed any problems so i just stayed with that. I tested a few tanks of 91, but no gains.

 

Wow cracked in half. That has to be bad. I indeed pulled a code, so I guess I get to look forward to the "bloody stump". Unless of course I can borrow the tools from someone i know.

 

I have used both 87 and 91 and find it shifts a lot better at low rpm with 91
Stikine

 

$2.59 for 93 Octane Gas, right by my house.

 

Same here man. Never used anything less than 93.

 

I think i might start using 89. This is not good since i drive about 100 Mile a day. I thought Iraq war would make huge diffrent.

 

lucky. i wish i lived in the east coast. i went to Santa Barbra on Thursday night... gas prices $2.99 91 octane.

Los Angeles - expected to hit $4.00/gallon this summer. 0_0

 

this sucks. Sorry to hear that. Driving Fast is getting expensive.

if you have to fill up, let say your gas tank is empty. At 2.99 a gallon, it usaly takes 17.5 to fill it up, that equals to 52.32 to fill up your car.

 

I have been using 89 octane since i got the car. never a problem. Using lower octane would not damage your knock sensor. That would mean the knock sensor is damaged by functioning properly.

The reason the knock sensor is there is to prevent detonation due to low octane and inferior gasoline. Your timing is retarded a little and your engine runs as it should unless you really like to drive fast.

If you do use 87 or 89 octane and floor the pedal all the time nothing will be damaged necessarily. What will happen is that the timing will be retarded so much that it will generate a lot more heat and a rotten egg smell will come out of your cats.

So dont change your knock sensor unless you have a code. That would be like changing your engine because the previous owner did oil changes at 10,000 miles instead of 7500

 

my max was a victim of 89 octane c/o my brother (was original owner), switched to 93 and nothing but 93 since I got it back from him last year, KS finally crapped out at 117K along w/ one o2 sensor, now w/ almost 121K, another o2 sensor is kicking the bucket

 

The Iraq war will not make the price of fuel go down for many years. The refineries are running at low capacity since Saddam blew most of them up. Also if they are running, the insurgents blow the pipelines at times, causing further problems.

The rise of gasoline is more due to the Chinese economy consuming 30% of the world demand for fuel. I'm sure we've all heard the term, supply and demand. Ten years ago, China was only consuming about 12%. So with a population of 1 billion people in China, and the growth of their economy, further increases are likely in store. China's economy has exploded within the last two years.

The only thing that can really bring the price of fuel down in the short term horizon, is if the economy in China or the US goes into a depression. China would be a more likely place of economic depression due to their fiscal policy.

Maybe 5-10 years we may see an increase in supply with the possibility of political stability in Iraq, the new supply of oil in the Alaskan wild life preservation, and/or the Canadian oil sands increased production.

Strap on for the long haul, prices at the pump are likely to remain at around this level or increase. We do pay less than most of the world (ie. Europe $5.00 a gallon)

Between my wife and I, we do about 3000 miles in a month. About $400 a month. I'm hurting too. Especially since both our cars have high compression engines and premium is recommended.

 

is there a difference if we get 91 or 93? gas prices are really going crazy...i feels orry for the westcoasters...

 

91 is fine. 93 does feel a little better in pedal response IMHO.

 

Man, am I glad I live in GA. BP 93 Octane is $2.22.

 

I only get gas at sunoco, and it's at 2.50-2.60, costs about 35-38 per fill up each week. The jump in price, which has been about 20 cents over the past couple months didnt effect it that much, yea its 20 cents more, but only ends up being 1 or 2 bucks more total when you fill it up... I dont know some people complain a lot about it, but I'm used to it. Now filling up the nitrous bottle is a different story...

 

Dude I just read in the newspaper today that gas prices may actually DOUBLE! Something about Peak Oil. I'll look for the article online to post up in general forums or something.

 

^ cool sig ! yeah 93 rules !!

 

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....=1#post3865780

 

They call it Herbert's peak. Some guy (probably named Herbert) predicted in 1956 that Oil production in the US would peak in 1970. He was right. US production peaked in 1970, 9 billion barrels a year. It's at 6 billion a year right now.

He "calculated" that it would peak in 1970 and then slowly decrease over time, so gas prices would logically go up. Apparently some contries took advantage of that in 1973 and we all know what happened. The end of muscle cars, hello Honda and European cars. 70s and 80s mostly sucked for cars and no real return to big horsepower until the late 80's.

Hell, gas prices are not as high today as they were in the early 1980's, if you consider inflation.

Anyway Herbert said that sometime after the US production peak (1970), the worldwide production of oil would peak, and that's when the gas prices would go REALLY up the pole. Scariest thing, this "peak" hasn't happened yet. Greenpiece hippies say that the peak is reeeeeaaaaallly close (some even say we might have already reached the peak, but we don't know about it just yet), while others say it will happen sometime in the near future (I read that most estimates are 2010-2035).

But they are a bit alarmist... these calculations are based off current KNOWN oil ressources, we could discover huge oil reserves tomorrow. Never know. They'll still f*ck us over at the pump anyway

 

Lol before every time for 15$ i was getting 6 gallons now im getting for 15 4 gallons this is unbelivible

 

Like the owner's manual says, if you drive at higher altitudes then you can probably use 89 or 87 with less problems, because the ambient air pressure would be less, therefore the compression in the engine is lowered a tiny bit. So lower octane would run fine, works for me in PA mountain area, I guess, i've never had a problem with lower oct. gas.

 

my friend drives his maxima with 87 octane all the time, and he drives hard every day. no problems with his car. that being said, i fill up with 91, cuz the manual says to, and i dont have to pay for it

 

I agree. Oh well i guess we wait and see what happens.

 

i wish mommy and daddy took care of me too

 

Not to split hairs here, but the population of China is a **** load more than 1 billion, that was true back in the 80's maybe, but India itself (the second most populated country) hit 1 billion in the late 90's. China has close to 2.5 billion people. And as far as the Alaskan oil reserve, recently 'opened' by congress, it could still be shut down, and it would take close to 15-20 years to open the state-of-the-art refinery and hook it up to the pipelines that are still being built.

That being said, the U.S. only gets about 10% of our oil from the middle east, as big a deal a people make of it. Most comes from South America, and here at home, and some from Russia. Prices are rising here mostly cause South America is now selling more of their output to Japan and China. So less for us, more for them, means higher prices.

 

Actually, China has about 1.5 billion, my bad, typo

 

I typically run 89 octane most of the time, but in the last 4 months I have used premium most of the time. I have never had a problem running Canadian 89 octane gas, but have had crappy performance from 89 octane Chevron gas bought in Washington state.

A friend of mine just bought a new Mustang GT V-8 pushing 300 hp. It has a 9.8 to 1 compression ratio, versus 10.0 for the Maxima. His drivers manual calls for 87 octane in that car. Why is it so imperative the Maxima run on 91 or higher. Quite frankly I don't buy it. I was told by the stealership, when I bought the car new, to run 1 tank out of 3 on premium in order to keep the fuel injectors cleaner. Is that BS as well?

 

If you have an aftermarket ECU in your 4g, or have a 5.5g and timing advance .. then it's a must ... IMO.

 

i ran 89 for about 2 years with no idea i should of been using 91 or above and i made the switch a few months back and have been using 93 since... i noticed a little better gas milage and it feels a little quicker in the butt dyno

o yea i filled up with 93 this morning in south jersey for 2.17 which sounds pretty good compared to some of the other prices posted

 

adithus, the chinese gov aint gonna go into no depression any time soon, They are in they bubble phase right now, people there still are in money shock, they just started realising wow i have a buk or two in my pocket. If anything i say its gready @ss OPECs fault. They should increase there production rate(which I may add is slowed on purpose) O yeah you guys know this gas hike crap is all bs, during my stay in china gas prices where falling there, its all bs