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Originally Posted by Gary in BR
So I can assume that 103 does make more power but may hurt o2 sensors?
I will just put some cutouts in before my o2s run some 103 and see what happens?? 
I dont like hurting things so I will just leave the high octane stuff to the guys that can fix their own engines. |
Hi Gary
103 wont hurt your o2 sensors, unless it's LEADED 103 which wouldn't make any sense for the manufactuers to make anyway. In fact, you can go to VPracing.com and look for their streetblaze 100 formula which is marketed as very friendly to OBD II based components.
So far general consensus from 6speed from the 996TT/GT2 section has been VP racing MS 109 to be the pill of choice when it comes to unleaded race gas. Those guys have provided thousands of miles logged on MS109 (which is their most potent unleaded race gas) with no ill-effects to their o2 sensors. Keep in mind that they really don't want to hurt their o2 sensors since they use a highly sensitive and very costly o2 sensors (relative to ours, theirs cost 500+ since it's basically a wideband).
HOWEVER, even they along with all the other turbo shops will concede that if you want the most fun out of your turbo set up would have to be the use of leaded race gas like VP C16 (Leaded 117 octane) or VP Import (Leaded 120+) . These fuel's WILL eventually kill your o2 sensor and plug your cats
Oh yea in order to take full advantage of running higher octane gas, a tune would be needed. Not that it would blow up the motor, it's actually just to raise certain peremeters such as higher boost or more aggressive ignition timing or both which you can do safely at higher levels because race gas burns slower.
The really cool thing about newer and newer DME's is that they've gotten very good at not killing themselves from knock or being lean. The motor doesn't have the capability of knowing what octane your putting into it. What it does know is that your getting X amount of airflow, so it puts X amount of fuel at X time while monitoring both the knock sensor, o2 sensor and MAF sensor.
All it can really see is that your putting this much air into it so it puts in this much fuel. If your putting in something with lower octane then what it's supposed to be used, it'll see this because regardless your engine will knock. When it knocks it'll switch over to a less aggressive timing map and maybe throw in more fuel till knock is lowered to an acceptable point.
Joe