I live close enough to the hurricane stricken area that getting gas has gotten to be a problem. My 01 coupe is my DD and I ended up have to put reg in it. Is this going to cause any problems?
Thanks

 

Absolutely NOT. No matter what they say the BTU content of 87 is identical to 93 all that is different is the anti knock additives which allow more spark advance which can give more hp. Just don't hot foot it and listen for pinging. However, the C5 handles it well. I have run regular my current C5 for the past 40k miles with no problem. With my C4 I did it for 195k miles only switching to mid range in the summer months. The C4 couldn't control it as well as the C5.

 

[Corvette00Car]Absolutely NOT. No matter what they say the BTU content of 87 is identical to 93 all that is different is the anti knock additives which allow more spark advance which can give more hp. Just don't hot foot it and listen for pinging. However, the C5 handles it well. I have run regular my current C5 for the past 40k miles with no problem. With my C4 I did it for 195k miles only switching to mid range in the summer months. The C4 couldn't control it as well as the C5.
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Interesting..............Very Interesting

 

It should not damage the LS1, but it will lower the hp and torque, and more likely than not, it will ping, especially, under acceleration.

 

does regular gas burn quicker? I have been running 87 and no change... the manual says its ok...

 

IMO you wont notice a difference if all you are doing is puttering around town and sitting in traffic.

Getting above 25% or so throttle during accelleration and you may notice a difference though.

 

Oh, I didn't mean to say you wouldn't notice a difference. You absolutely will notice a big difference in performance. Sometimes when I know I will be driving on the weekends and not in Washington Beltway traffice I put in a tank of premium. When the computer advances the spark you get the full, well sort of, capabilities of the engine. I figure that with Premium and my stock engine I get about 290 HP (Listening to the other threads) and with regular probably about 240 HP. You know for daily driving that's plenty. OMG did I just say that on this forum. I'm about to be flaimed.

 

If your car is not pinging then no damage is being done. The higher octane rating means the gas is less explosive. This allows the engine to advance spark. If your engine senses a knock ie (not enough octane in fuel) it will retard the spark. This will decrease the power of your engine but will not hurt it to the point that the engine can compinsate.

 

Allow me to offer a slight correction. Higher octane gasoline is not less explosive, but it is slightly slower burning. Lower octane has a faster flame front spread. When used in a high compression engine under certain load conditions, a very high combustion chamber pressure is produced which results in a pinging sound.

 

A little curious why you would intentionally run your C-5 on a steady diet of 87 octane. At 20k mi anually, averaging 20mpg, you would save about $200/yr or less than $4/week, figuring 93 octane at a $.20 price premeum over 87 octane. That's chump change, especially when you know 93 octane will get you all of the perfomance you're $50k Vette is capable of, with no worries of potential engine pre-ignition. In a pinch, I would run 87 to get home. The factory recommends premium fuel, that's good enough for me.

 

My car has 57,000 miles on it and I have never put reg. in it but right now that’s all that is available and the station that I buy gas at says they don’t know when they will be getting any. I buy gas at the same station because since I started getting it there I haven’t had a problem with my fuel gauge. Several other places I tried the gauge would start screwing up.
Any way, thanks for the advice.

 

Spend some time in the forced induction world and you'll know that by the time you can hear pinging (marbles in a can) on modern cars, you are doing some serious damage. Most knock sensors can only pull so much timing (which they do in response, not predictively), and ultimately when the engine is revving you can't hear anything but the most severe pre-ignition (or whatever you want to call it). We had a buddies car on the dyno and he had been running with a mail-order tune assuming it was fine, only for the shop to lift the hood while it was doing a run to point out the sound and how it was hurting power (and damaging the engine).

And the engine isn't really advancing the spark, its running directly off the tables as its supposed to... from what I have been told, the engine doesn't adjust the timing until the knock sensors notice a problem. Try putting in higher octane than the factory designed a car for and see if you get any gains... you won't, but you can with a chip that advances the timing... engine doesn't do it on its own.

Anyways, just drive around normally and it should be ok. And don't mess with the octane boosters, as many third parties have tested them and none have raised the actual octane of the gas more than half a point (again they'd be very popular otherwise for people running boost at the track). Now mixing in some toluene will work... but not so legal.

 

Ahh! The voice of knowledge! Way to go sxe60!

 

There is no way that I would use that crap in my Vette