Octane Boosters

Coyote Jack said
Don't bother with an off the shelf octane booster. At best they would take your full tank of 87 octane and make it 87.1 octane. If you really want to raise the octane of regular gas you have to use 3 parts 87 octane to 1 part toluene (sp). Do a search on it. You will find all kinds of recipe's.

Jack

Back about 10 years ago I had a trans-am with a "hot" olds 305 in it (bought it that way - cheap). It wasn't that strong, but it would detonate bad when I used regular gas, so I tried boosters, never helped much. The place I worked at had a huge tank of toluene used to thin pain, clean paint guns, etc. I started putting 1 gal of toluene in 18 gallons of regular, ran great. About that time I bought a beater grand-am to get better mileage and started putting toluene in it as well, even though it wasn't high compression and didn't need it. It ran like a scalded dog. One day I was almost out of gas and was afraid I might run out before I got to the gas station 2 miles away, so I dumped in a gallon of toluene and filled up with gas 2 miles later. It ran OK for about 15 more miles, then blew a head gasket (I think). It never overheated. I think the reason it worked well at first was due to the "variable timing" on that engine ('85 4-cyl)? I never got into that car too much, just know I couldn't adjust the timing manually.

If you run high octane in a standard or lower compression engine, you are just leaving horsepower and mileage on the table. The octane makes the gas less volitile, requiring more pressure to fully ignite. Unless you have high compression, you'll actually run faster, cheaper, cleaner with regular.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it.