On the subject of the legality of putting race gas in a street car, I say:
> In any case, buying it isn't the problem; putting it in your car might
> be.
Gerry@speedy.att.com replies:
>That's what I thought, until I started buying CAM2 from my loacal Sunoco
>dealer. The attendant always fills my tank with CAM2, even though the
>car is a street registered vehicle. I looked at the pump and it did not have
>any notices saying that the gas could not be pumped into a regular car.
>(Although near Pocono Raceway, there is a Sunoco dealer selling CAM2,
>who will NOT pump it into a regular car - may PA and NJ laws are different).
Remember, "Your mileage may vary, California mileage will probably be less."
Out here where Proposition 65 requires all businesses to post a sign stating
that something you might be exposed to on the premises has been known to kill
rats if packed in 50-lb containers and dropped on them from a height of 12
meters, I've had gas station dorks -- uh, attendants refuse to let me pump
gas into a plastic fuel jug. This is, after all, the state referred to in
all those high-performance parts advertisements as being the place where it's
not legal to sell or use their stuff.
The answer is probably some operation on the following two observations:
- Laws regarding what fuel may be legally pumped into a motor vehicle
are known to vary from state to state
- What you can actually get away with at a gas station is known to
vary from station to station
I could probably pump leaded CAM2 into my catalyst-equipped '84 GTI if I
found the right place and spent $40 on a fillup. Note, however, two
observations that we've been skirting:
1. Pumping leaded fuel into a car with a catalytic converter might be
illegal, and will definitely render the converter useless. Even a
single tank of leaded gas is said to cause irreparable damage to a
catalyst.
2. Using more octane than required by your car's compression ratio and
timing is a waste of money. Gerry's car needs 100+ octane because
the compression is so high; my race car needs CAM2 for the same
reasons. Octane will not add power to your engine; it will enable
an engine designed for use with high-octane fuel to generate all the
power intended out of it.
The only exceptions in modern cars are some turbocharged vehicles with
knock sensors, in which case a higher-octane fuel will reduce the tendency
to knock and can let the ignition computer run the spark advance and the
turbo boost up to the preset limits. Ford's late SVO Mustang, for one
example, used a knock sensor and a two-position switch that let the
driver choose "unleaded" or "premium" settings. In "unleaded," the boost
was clipped to 8 psi and the ignition timing was retarded to a fairly
conservative standard; on the 1984 version, power was restricted to about
145 bhp. If you got a tankful of high-octane gas and selected "premium,"
the knock sensor still made absolute determination of when to clip boost
and how much advance to add to the spark, but the limits were much higher,
up to 14 psi and a significantly higher spark advance which resulted in an
advertised 175 bhp. Hitting the switch in mid-acceleration was fun, too. :-)
I never ran anything higher than 92 octane in the SVO. It would be interesting
to make a couple of timed runs, one using 92 octane unleaded and another
using CAM2 or anotehr 100-plus octane fuel. I suspect that the stock settings
were probably optimized for the 92-octane gas, which is the highest generally
available nationwide, and that it would require engine modifications or
modifications to the spark and boost electronics to take advantage of the
higher octane in racing fuels.
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