So, the past couple of times I have used fuel injector cleaner I have noticed how much smoother and just better my engine runs. Once I am done with the tank of fuel that had the cleaner, it reverts back to a "not as smooth performance".

I think the gas I have available to buy in my area is not as good as it should be. I have tried gas from Shell, Chevron, and others...no difference.

So, I am considering getting Octane booster and adding to my gas with each fill up.

Does anyone else here do this? TIA

 

G'Day,

I havn't tried it, but my friendly puts injector cleaner in at the yearly service.
What product are you using, I like to give it a try.

Cheers

Christian

 

The product is called "Gumout". There are several versions of the product, one of which is octane booster. Yesterday afternoon I added a bottle of Gumout fuel injector cleaner which also boosts octane.

Going forward I would just use the Octane Booster with each tank.

 

FYI, it's mostly JP5 Jet fuel; see the composition information at the following link:

http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov...ds&id=16004021

 

Thanks for the info, I'll try to get the stuff here in Austria

Cheers

Christian

 

Seafoam is by far the best injector cleaner... The rest are snake oil by comparison. A full bottle in a half tank of gas will clean up the entire fuel system. Just put amfull bottle in at half tank and then run the car hard for the rest of the tank an it will clean everything in the system

As far as over the counter octane "boosters", almost all of them are a joke. The only real octane booster comes in full gallon jugs. Toluene is what you want, one gallon will increase the entire average octane in the entire gas tank. Two if you really want to be aggressive. Its about $15 a gallon but its 114 octane lead free race fuel basically.

 

The Question is - do the increase in octane is even useful by our cars?

 

Your S might. The earlier V12's don't even have knock sensing. I doubt you'd notice it though. I certainly can't appreciate any difference between 91 and 94 with my S. To be honest, I've never noticed a difference with any car I've ever owned, NA or forced induction.

 

There is a noticeable difference with my car when I add the fuel injector cleaner. The car idles smoother and accelerates better.

As some one posted above the Gumout fuel injection cleaner is mostly Jet Fuel. I don't have any knowledge (having not researched it before) as to what long term effect(s) running something like this often would have on fuel components, spark plugs, O2 Sensors, Cats, o rings, fuel pump, etc.

I have not tried the Octane booster alone (any kind). But I adore the way my engine runs with this stuff in it, and I want to continue running it this way as long as doing so will not destroy anything.

As far as the gas is concerned that is available to me, the way my engine was running reminds me of an incident a friend had a couple years ago. He was on a trip in his BMW (forget which one, but was 6'something...) and he was forced to use some regular gas because of where he was. I actually rode with him one day back at work before he had driven out the fuel and his car was performing almost exactly as mine before I put the Gumout in my last fill up.

 

Interesting. What octane fuel are you using (AKI) and what brand? I would think that fuel quality from major brands at well frequented stations throughout North America would be fairly uniform.

 

I'm wondering if there isn't something wrong with your car. Your description at least makes it seem as though it runs well below normal.

Can you add more description (I realize how difficult this is, please also describe the taste of butter)? But seriously, is it rough at idle? Does it vibrate at some revs and not others? All you've given us is that it feels "rough" in comparison to how it feels with the cleaner in it. So it's difficult to know what's really going on.

Also, I'm not sure who on here is an internal combustion engineering specialist, but that seems like the level of knowledge that would be needed to really sort this out.

 

A buddy of mine uses "go juice" (as he calls it) in his modded 996TT. He swears by it, but hasn't done any actual tests - only butt dynos. I put injector cleaner in my tank on occasion, but I'm definitely not consistent. I notice more of a difference in the way my car runs by changing gas stations than I notice with additives. For example, I can't use Sunoco around here because my car runs like crap on it. Using Exxon, a couple blocks away, it runs great.

 

[QUOTE=
As far as the gas is concerned that is available to me, the way my engine was running reminds me of an incident a friend had a couple years ago. He was on a trip in his BMW (forget which one, but was 6'something...) and he was forced to use some regular gas because of where he was. I actually rode with him one day back at work before he had driven out the fuel and his car was performing almost exactly as mine before I put the Gumout in my last fill up.[/QUOTE]

So.. you are of the tough that using 101 octane will increase Car drive vs using 93 for example?

 

JP5 (kerosene) is not avgas; it is more suited for CI engines than SI engines; in large percentages, is is harmful to SI engines.
The Gumout octane "booster" is 95% kerosene and less than 1% "octane booster", whatever compound that may be.

I did a little searching and found the following postings on another site;
it's just another point of view:
-----------------------------
Some thoughts on octane ratings from a chemist:

1. Linear, non-branched alkenes have very low octane values. Low octane means the substance ignites very easily under compression heating (either by the cylinder or spark ignition flame front) to produce pinging/knocking.
2. Aromatics like toluene have very high (above 100) octane ratings. However, they contain less energy per volume than hydrocarbons.
3. Alcohols such as ethanol and methanol have high octane ratings
4. Pure kerosene has a low octane rating as it is composed of mainly linear hydrocarbons. However, in a diesel engine, you want this and low octane rating generally equates to a high cetane rating which is desirable for diesels.

Overall, you have to look at these octane boosters with a careful eye as you are doing. It is generally FAR cheaper and FAR more effective to buy higher octane gasoline than to add this stuff which may at best give a few tenths of a point increase in octane value.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You need to Google alkenes and octane rating. I am not going to give an organic chem. course on this forum on alkenes combustion characteristics; they are complicated. Suffice it to say that globular alkenes are harder to get burning and therefore have higher octane ratings. Most octane improvers are JUNK and that is why they contain kero. They are designed to separate you from your money. Just run higher octane gas. If you start brewing up your own, you can run afoul of getting the RON and MON too far apart and that causes MAJOR problems as Mercedes and others found out in Germany some years ago when fuel was allowed to get that way.
---------------------------------
As others have suggested, perhaps you should try different brands of gasoline and find one that your engine runs best on.

 

There are two different things being discussed here: engine cleaners and octane boosters.

Gumout isn't an octane booster, it's an engine cleaner. Carbon buildup accumulates over time and eventually hampers performance. Audi's FSI engines have a serious problem with that - it happens very quickly on those.

Cleaning additives are supposed to clean out carbon buildup (restoring performance) and keep them clean by continued use of the additive (maintaining performance). Cleaning additives are very common and used as part of regular service by lots of companies (BMW and Aston Martin, for example). Top-tier gas companies use cleaning additives in their gas (each calls it something else, but it's basically a brand name they use - Shell and BP both market theirs quite a bit, and I think it's Chevron that provides the OEM additive that BMW uses as part of their maintenance program).

Octane boosters are supposed to increase octane ratings (supposedly increasing performance). These are almost always just snake oil - they do nothing.

Side note: I'm fairly certain I've got a heated, long-winded rant about ethanol in fuel around here somewhere...