octane

what kind of octane should i put in my v6 camaro? the manual says 87 and above, would 93 make the engine run better or worse?

In the case of my LS1, I need to use premium, otherwise it develops a knock of sorts, it did it when I first got it. Has never done it since, so now I use 92 or 93...

what kind of octane should i put in my v6 camaro? the manual says 87 and above, would 93 make the engine run better or worse?
why dont you try a s/c too?

i put 89 in my car but thats cause my timings a little advanced...putting higher octane in your car wont necessarily hurt anything, but it wont help anything either

i put 93 in my car and noticed the gas mileage got worse, before i had 100 miles from 3/4 of the tank, now its more like 60-70. i think it performs better, but im not sure. is 93 'cleaner' than 87? i wanna use whatever is gonna keep my engine running longer, since i got like 178k miles on it and need it to last till spring when ill swap it with a v8.

Octane just measures the knock tendancy. If you want to find the energy a fuel releases take the lower heating value (LHV) of the fuel and multiply it by the molecular weight of air (MW), then divide that by the air-fuel ratio (AF) so:
(LHV*MW)
-----------
AF

octane is basically the flash point of the fuel. 93 takes more heat to explode thean 87. Thats how I get 27 psi of boost out of 118 octane without knock. the 118 can has to get hotter in order to burn. Slect your octane by wour compression and by your timing. 93 will burn just as clean as 87 and vise versa.

when i had 93 in my tank, the 'service engine soon' light went on when i do 60+, and fuel economy went way down, now i switched back to regular, the light doesn't go on anymore, and fuel economy went up a lot, i got 60 miles from like 1 quarter of the tank, thats almost 4 times as much as i had with 93.
so my question is, if 93 takes longer to burn than 87, why was my fuel economy so shitty w/93? the rpms were higher w/93 too.

it isnt any cleaner...the refining process is the only thing that has to do with a fuel's "cleanliness." your economy could have worsened because of two things: because the higher octane requires more energy to combust, its possible that you were getting complete(or atleast the most efficient) burn possible. or because you noticed a slight performance difference, you drove your car harder and didnt notice it (this happens to me all the time, whenever i get a new part i drive the car a little more spirited for a few days or weeks and not realize it)