I was at the pump to day and across from me was a civic si hatchback not the new 195 hp one, but anyway he was using 91 octane and i asked him why was he pumping 91 in his civic and he tell me in the owners manual it says that you get the best performance with 91 octane. It sounded like crap to me, but i went home and checked it out and he was right. I was just wandering i looked all over the web and could not find my answer, would the z24 get better performace with 91 octane? I know some people are going to be like pump and find out yourself, but gas is high as hell and paying 3.25 to see a little change in performance is not worth it.
nope, all cavaliers were designed to run 87
Ill make a sig someday
some motors, including certain honda B engines were factory tuned to run on a higher octane gasoline.
higher octane gas may help a stock motor run a tiny bit more efficiently, but won't get you any more noticable power. like rhoda said, cavalier motors were designed to run on 87 octane.
however, if your motor is heavily modified then yes a higher octane fuel will be better, as long as you have the hardware to modify the factory tuning to your own.
from looking through HP tuners GM has a high octane and low octane timing setting for this, done abit of reading and apparently if you use high octane fuel the ecm can learn this and use the better timing table. i'm sure shifted will chime in on this one as he knows alittle more about this ecu stuff.
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** Flat Broke Racing Inc.**
In my Z24, I did some testing while I lived in California. I started out with 87 Octane for a couple of weeks. I then went to 89 Octane. I noticed a little bit better performance and fuel economy. After a few weeks I went to 91 Octane. I got better performance and was paying the same per week for gas as I was when I was using 87 Octane. This told me that the gas mileage was better using the 91 than the 87 and 89. As stated above, our vehicles will run properly on 87. I don't use 91 here in NM since the gas prices went high. I am back down to 87. Use this information to come to your own conclusions.
98 Z24
RIP Specks
usually higher reving cars need a higher octane fuel or they start running bad. it's all about the burn. my pops tells me not to use 91 octane because in the long run it will hurt my car
