Octane boosters

[bad_panda]

Anyone got any experience using octane boosters? I'm after something I can just add to my tank to essentially turn a tank full of 95 RON unleaded to a tank full of 98+, as my E92 M3 doesn't like 95 RON fuel and all of the local garages seem to have sold out of VPower or equivalent.

I presume it's going to work out pretty expensive but as a temporary stop-gap I'll take the hit (but not the knock...get it?)

[Deep Thought]

bad_panda said:

Anyone got any experience using octane boosters? I'm after something I can just add to my tank to essentially turn a tank full of 95 RON unleaded to a tank full of 98+, as my E92 M3 doesn't like 95 RON fuel and all of the local garages seem to have sold out of VPower or equivalent.

I presume it's going to work out pretty expensive but as a temporary stop-gap I'll take the hit (but not the knock...get it?)

We used them here in NI when we had our 370Z GT. Its optimised for 98RON and here in NI you can only get 97RON max (and sometimes only 95RON)

We used Millers but theres probably cheaper / equally as good available.

I dont think it worked out that expensive overall.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millers-Oils-Petrol-Ecoma...

Edited by Deep Thought on Monday 11th October 20:25

[Haltamer]

I feel like I've seen rumours of catalyst issues with extended use, but wouldn't expect it to grenade the engine with a few uses.

[liner33]

https://lucasoil.com/products/fuel-treatments/luca...

I always used to keep a bottle of this in the boot in case i got stuck with my tuned cars and no super , it did turn the turbo internals orange but didnt harm anything and got rid of the soot . I didn't have a cat so wasn't an issue

[rev-erend]

My E92 also does not like regular unleaded.

Driving gently to just use it up and avoid the marackers you get under load.

[Paul_M3]

I just bought some octane booster for the first time recently. I had a track day and premium fuel simply wasn't available.

After a bit of research I went for Nitrous Formula Race Octane Booster.

https://nitrous.com.au/nf-octane-booster/

There is a bar graph showing the affects of added to different base fuels. Assuming the data is real, you only need 1ml per litre to bring 96 octane up to 98.5 octane.

The higher the octane of the base fuel, the more you need to add to have a significant effect.

Caveat: I struggled to find any real testing data on any of these octane booster that could be considered scientific.

What I can say for certain is that my Exige definitely did not feel down on power compared to the previous track day I did just using premium fuel. (Speed at the end of the back straight was slightly higher with a tank which probably contained a mixture of normal 95, 97 Ron and Octane Booster at that point)

[bad_panda]

Thanks for all the replies. I've just ordered some based on the recommendations here. Hopefully I won't be using it for long enough to risk knackering the 2 remaining cats...