Which octane booster?

[breakbeat]

My car is an import and hasn't been mapped for our super unleaded, so I'm currently just putting in Tesco 99 or V-Power and hoping for the best. I know it's meant to be running on 100RON though, so what would be a good octane booster to be using and how much do you need to put in to a tank of V-Power to get it to the correct RON?

[AJI]

v-power or tesco 99 will already be ok for your engine.
Just don't run it on the shytey 95RON stuff.
Your engine timing will be able to adjust easily enough for the 1RON value difference.


Octane booster only really work for the 95RON fuels to bring them upto 97ish... so they claim. They practically do fook all for the higher octane fuels.

[breakbeat]

Thanks mate, didn't know that. I've read that V-Power varies from 97-RON to 99-RON...how do I know what I'm getting?

[ScoobieWRX]

Your best bet is to get it remapped so that it can use 99RON. More than likely it has a knock sensor somewhere and that will be telling the system to pull timing somewhere along the line, however it won't run as well until it's been mapped. Equally running high knock values over time will eventually kill the engine and blow a piston at some stage.

Using certain Octane boosters over a long time like Millers CVL Turbo Octane Booster will damage the cat converter if it has one, although they do an octane booster you can use long term and that is suppose to boost 99RON to !00RON or thereabouts. Personally speaking, with the cost of 99RON and then regular amounts of Octane booster on top of that it might be false economy to keep using the Octane booster in place of a good remap.

What are you driving??

[breakbeat]

A 1996 1600cc Toyota Levin, with the 20v 4A-GE engine.

Just been told by the guy I got it off that it'll be fine on V-Power but I'm still paranoid.

Will octane boosters do any harm?

[liner33]

http://www.lucasoil.com/products/display_products....

I run my Skyline on this if i cant get V power , makes a big difference to the knock readings

[mr p1]

boosters wont harm your car but get the right one NF is about the best not the sh** you get from halfords that gives 3 points a bottle NF gives up to 6 Ron 10 points per ron you can get it from roger clark motorsport was around £13 a bottle 300ml you will only need 50ml a tank but v power is good stuff

[dnb]

Agree that NF is good - I use it all the time due to lack of any form of SUL near me. But I find it needs something like 70ml per tank.

[AJI]

what octane boosters don't tell you is that they are aimed at the low RON fuels.
Usually adding a 3point booster to 95RON may (in the correct mixture) raise it to 98RON. BUT adding a 3point booster to 99RON would most likely not raise it by much at all, if anything. It may go up by 1 value but thats it.
Higher octane fuels already have booster substances within it, in the correct mixture. Adding more really doesn't do all that much.

As mentioned, go buy yourself a piggyback chip to go onto your ECU so that any mapping can be stored for your current RON fuel.
(Don't know if on your current car whether your stock ECU would be able to remember any maps or whether it would constantly overwrite them).


v-power is stated as 99RON.... and should always be that from the pump. It will however drop in RON value if its left in your tank for long periods of time.
But then how does the public test and confirm any of the RON values sold at petrol stations ??