Does anyone have an opinion as to which Octane Booster additive is best. I just started driving my car after 3 years of rebuilding. The compression ratio is 11.4. And I live at 8,000 feet.
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I can't remember where but I recently read an article on commercial octane boosters. It basically said that they don't do much, especially for the money you'll spend. If they claim it will raise your octane by 7 points, what they mean is from say 87.0 to 87.7. Using more was a formula of diminishing returns ie: using 4x as much booster won't give you 4x the octane boost. If you're worried about detonation, you might want to try alcohol injection. It allowed me to advance my timing a lot without the pinging. My set up is on the "under construction" of the Paradise Panteras web site.
I used that stuff that comes in the black bottle for years and it worked just fine. It was eight bucks a bottle though. My new engine runs on regular so I save a ton of money.
After an engine rebuild about 5 years ago I also was experiencing some pinging. I was shooting for 10.5-1 compression with a set of closed chamber heads but we must have gotten a little more after all was said & done. For quite some time I just mixed about 25% of 110 octane racing gas with our 91 octane pump premium & that stopped the pinging under all conditions. About a year ago I installed an MSD variable timing control on my 6AL ignition & now can just retard my timing on the fly and it works like a champ. Makes me a lot less apprehensive about damaging the engine on some of todays "crap" gas
My 71 is high compression too. I have installed the MSD timing control. I now have a knob on the dash and I can retard, or advance my ignition timing while driving and under load. It will adjust up to 14 degrees.