Premium gas for better gas mileage
 

Has anyone experimented with premium gas to increase gas mileage. When gas was $2.00 premium was 20 cents more. Now that its $4.00 it's still only 20 cents more. Would premium gas give me 1 MPG?????

Probably not, unless you got a tuner. These trucks are made for 87 I've been using 88 Exxon, truck seems to like it. No noticable mpg increase.

I agree with Canstacker, unless you have a tuner your truck wont know what to do with the added octane. It could cause more carbon build up etc.

I think you may feel a difference using 93 octane over 87/89 octane in the throttle, as for mpgs you could get an added 1 mpg, but nothing greater. I used to only run 87 or 93 in my '02 F150 5.4L 2V and I did notice a slight difference in mpgs (.5-1 mpg), but it wasn't too significant. Also depended on my driving style on that tank of gas too. Haven't tried it in my '06 F150 5.4L 3V though, as I only run E85 now.

Like most, get a tuner and you may see a lot better improvement when using 93 over 87/89.

Save your money! The best bet is to be lighter on the gas pedal and you'll notice an increase in your mpg. Just to be sure, I watched how I accelerated from a stop, and held it to 60 on the interstate, and just under the limit on the two lane. My mpg went up almost 2 mpg. No quick starts, no 5-8 over the limit, just using my head.

That is probably the wisest suggestion.

Premium fuel will do nothing for you unless you're switching to a tuner or forced induction.....save your 20 cents and buy an extra gallon every six years (that ought to be about how long it'd take to save up for a gallon of gas these days....LOL)

I agree but how many of us can lighten our lead foot? I try but when a dodge is next to me it's not that easy. :-fire

Like previously stated, the added octan will do nothing for your truck.
Only way it'd help is if you had a tuner to tell the engines computer to take adavantage of the extra octain.

I played around with this when I drove a tanker truck and people would ask this all the time. So I tested it out and what I found out is with low grade fuel your MPG was low,Tried mid and it went up about 3MPG when I did super the mileage was the same as the mid. So shot for the mid. and you will come out on the better end. This was tested out on a 83 ford turbo T-bird for 6 weeks. Two weeks on each fuel grade.

This doesn't apply to non-forced induction vehicles. They don't benefit from premium because they don't have the compression, nor the ignition timing advance to take full advantage of premium. Turbo charged and supercharged vehicles do.

If the vehicle can optimize for premium, it will run better....
 

...but a Turbo T-bird is tuned for premium gas, right? In that case, I would expect mileage and performance to drop off with a lower grade than the engine was designed for (and I'd personally be VERY concerned about putting regular into any car with a turbo for fear of detonation and melted pistons).

My son's '97 BMW 318ti is tuned for premium but also detunes itself to run on regular. In this car, premium does give an extra 2-3 mpg...BUT that is because the engine tunes itself to take advantage of the premium. If an engine is tuned to run on 87 octane, it is unlikely to do better with premium...although I could see some engines doing a tad better on 89 octane vs 87 if their tune will allow a little more ignition advance with the latter.

George

I posted this twice already, so I'll post it again. maybe one day we'll make it a sticky.

Octane is flame retardant. That means the higher the octane, the slower/less violent it burns. An engine designed for 87 octane will allow a window so long and will compress the fuel/air mixture so hard to get as much as complete burn as possible out of that gasoline burn. Engines that have higher compression ratio and that often require higher grade octane, will basically compress the air/fuel ratio mixture more, and thus obtain a more violent reaction out of the slower burning gasoline. Bumping the compression ratio is hard to do as you would need to swap out the pistons. However, you can change the window of time that the engine allows for the gasoline to burn, in order to take advantage of a higher octane gasoline. Your stock ignition is likely set to 10 degrees before top dead center; advancing that a few degrees can make your car take advantage of this extra octane. This can be done via a tuner.

When an engine is capable of using higher octane (aka tuned for it or simply has the compression to handle it at a stock tune and doesn't detune itself like it would in the case of the BMW above on lower octane), it will make more power. Assuming same driving habits, basically results in a more efficient engine; requiring less gasoline to produce the same amount of power output, or the same amount of gasoline to produce a higher power output - so you either accelerate faster and gain no mpg, or accelerate the same and gain some mpg.

Putting higher octane into an untuned vehicle designed for regular, is basically pissing your money away.

Couldn't have said it better. The reason people use higher octane to stop pinging is beacuse it takes a hotter spark to ignite it. The hot spot in your engine will not cause early detonation (pinging). It is not better gas, just takes hotter temps to burn.

Trust me, it won't do any good. You could post it in flashing red letters and there will still be posts about how premium is a magic potion with more power and better mileage! :-X18