'65 Barracuda FS 273 4bbl 10.5 CR on pump gas in CA

Personally, I haven't been able to run straight pump gas (91 octane) and stock ignition timing in my stock '66 273 4bbl. and not have it ping. To get it to stop pinging, I had to back off the timing to the point where performance and gas mileage suffered. It also ran hotter, so, to heck with that. I decided to just add some race fuel to each fill up to cure the pinging and keep the timing and performance up to par. Pump gas is pretty much crap around here. Luckily we have a few gas stations where you can get race fuel right at the pump. Any rebuilds I do now for a cruiser, I keep the compression ratio down to 9.0 to 1, so, I can run regular 87 octane. If I need the performance on a high horsepower rebuild, I just bite the bullet and run better (expensive) fuel, install aluminum heads, or both. On full modified engines, run a turbo.