A few of us will be hitting the drag strip tonight. Is it ok to run racing gas from the track, any known issues running it?? Or is it not worth the 3 dollars or so a gallon?

 

For your car there is no benefit at all. The high octane of racing gas is for reducing the likelyhood of detonation in very high performance engines and specifically engines that are TUNED to use racing gas.

Race Gas may actually hurt your car.

 

But if you insist on using it, only put in about a gallon. Some peeps do this to richen the "regular" octane gas....

 

Absolutely not. Race gas is higher octane fuel which is used by cars pushing super high compressions due to turbos, SCs, nitrous, and high compression pistons. The Maxima has a relatively high compression for stock, but it's nothing that necessitates the use of 94+ octane. High octane fuel DOES NOT equal high performance. Higher octane fuels are more resistant to igniting. Why do high compression race motors and boosted cars run high octane fuel? To reduce detonation. Because the high octane fuel is more resistant to burn, it will not detonate under high compression like a lower octane fuel will.

YOU WILL RUN SLOWER WITH RACE GAS

High octane fuels also have high levels of lead (increases octane) which will burn out O2 sensors and clog cats. If you see a guy filling up with race fuel at the in his non-boosted with a internally stock motor, laugh because he knows nothing about performance.


Dave

 

If you have money to burn you could spend $5 on some off-the-shelf octane booster. It may help your car run better (not necessarily faster) if it has a sensitive knock sensor or if there is poor gas in your area. I notice that my max runs better on the occasions that I have used octane boosters.

 

Good thing nobody was looking...



Made this mistake last time at the track. Needed gas and didn't think much of it at the time. My times weren't even near average. Since then I've read a couple things about it including this thread. Wish I had read more about it before. Life is learning right?