What has been your experience with race gas?

[steviek]

Well I have never put leaded race gas in my car before. I know it's supposed to be bad for 02 sensors and catalytic converters but I was wondering if anyone has had any experiences (good or bad) with it. IE you used it and you didn't fry anything or you used it and your car exploded. I was also wondering about how much extra boost lbs/min or psi/turbo you could safely raise and what were your ultimate time gains at the track?

[Black99GST]

i know several people with DSM's that have run race gas. it doesn't "kill" your o2 sensors and cat, it just isn't as good for them. regular gas is bad for them also, but race gas is just worse, its like smoking, light cigarettes every day, but throw in a camel "no filter" every time you go to the track. also tuning on race gas is the same as regular gas, watch for knock as usual, the best tune you can get is the best tune you can get. hope that helps.

[spyderturbo007]

My experience with race gas, is that I can't get freakin' race gas around here!!!!!!

[MazdaX]

Easy way to substitute "race fuel" is go to the airport and get some 110 octane fuel. about 1 gallon added to 91 octane will give you a small amount of kick. Burns faily nice as well..i've never had an issue then again..i've never put it in a DSM only a prelude.

[BoostedSpyder]

it's expensive. you should really be logging to tune right too.

i have used 101 avgas as well as 107 [i think it was] cool blue race gas.

both times i was near empty so it was very 'pure' if you will.

in general, once you get over ~350hp it's pretty hard to keep the wheels sticky in the first couple gears [gst, obliviously], but in the high RPM range i got up to about ~24psi. i had no idea what my fuel situation was looking like and i figured that if i heard/felt anything strange i'd back off. i was pretty much tuning the EBC by hand the whole time [great thing about Profec's! especially the Type-S in this regard, stupid easy.]

super wow holy shit fast. i just kept mashing 4th gear. boost hits and it slamed me back in the seat. pretty much the same reaction for both types, it's really hard to tell from seat of the pants type HP reasoning at that speed. and remember we are stuck on 91 here in CA so 101 is about pretty big increase.

it's fun to toy around with, just remember to be safe as possible and don't over-do it cranking boost.

but damn is it expensive! and for all it's worth we are talking about ~7 miles to a gallon on that shit. it's kinda cool to leverage it out, like 90/10 tanks etc, but you have to keep it up and get the tuning right for that setup, or else you end up tuning over and over again. i'm sure with DSMLink you can save setups and perhaps get over the re-tuning thing, making it easier. but damn that shit is expensive! [i'm saying that as i'm paying $3.75 a fucking gallon in wonderful SoCal. cost me 85 bucks to fill my tank friday. and i'm averaging 14 mpg on my car.]

[kjewer1]

Reach a little far back on this one, but hey, I'm whoring up the forums tonight and it comes with the territory.

I run race gas at least once a week at the track. I prefer to only run actual automotive race gas. The formulations for aviation fuel aren't necessarily what a turbo auotmobile engine needs... That being said, my local track sells Sunoco race fuels, my usual choice is the 118 octane version at 11 bucks a gallon. There are lower octane options, starting with unleaded 100 octane at ~7.25/gallon. Above 104, it's all leaded.

If you can provide enough fuel for your airflow, and have the means to tune properly, race gas like this will allow you to just about max out your setup. The knock resistance is unreal. To use my EVO as a current example, I run 25 psi on pump gas with about 8 degrees of timing advance. With race gas I run 32 psi with ~15-16 degrees advance. I haven't had a clean run on race gas this year due to some small issues, but I expect it to trap 122-124 on race gas on the turbo, and it traps 116 on pump gas. That's a nice solid increase. On the dyno it was a 50 whp difference, having some high boost issues. I expect it to be a 80+ whp difference when it's maxed out. To use a typical DSM example, you'll run about 15-16 degrees on pump, and ~21 degrees on race gas, plus much more boost. I have always been able to pick up approximately 5 mph and 5 tenths at the least, that's about 50 whp at our weight, on my various setups.

To give an idea of how hard you can push it on race gas with proper setup/tuning, I was running the EVO with the wastegate actuator line removed (WG doesn't open at all) for maximum boost, plus a 75 shot, with 20 degrees of timing.

I head up to the track with no more fuel than I can pump out into an empty 5 gallon jug. I keep a seperate 5 gallon jug for the race fuel, which I dump in after pumping out the pump gas. After I'm done racing I pump the race fuel back out into it's jug and dump in the pump gas. I typically get 4 gallons back out, so each trip up I only need to buy one gallon to top off the jug. Easier on the wallet and the O2 sensor.

Cats will die with about 1-2 months of wekly race gas use as described above. The O2 sensor will last quite long if you give a new sensor at least about 1000 miles of pump gas use first. The pump gas presumably coats the sensor protecting it somewhat from the lead contamination. I usually get a full year out of each sensor.

Hopefully this is the info people were looking for.

[steviek]

Kevin you're automatically allowed to revive any thread as you see fit...
that being said I am glad you revived this thread it is always a pleasure reading your encyclopedia of information