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Originally Posted by eightsandaces
I occasionally like to run octane boost, it seems to make the car smoother. I have used 104+ and the stuff made from jet fuel, both work well. A recent trip to the dollar store and I found what looks to be toluene booster, is this stuff safe to use?
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Hate to burst your bubble on this, but Jet-A is basically kerosene, and has absolutely no place anywhere near a piston engine. Furthermore, if you actually look at independent tests, the most you will ever gain by either adding toluene (up to about 20% by volume) or pretty much any of the variety of store bought octane boosters (used at their maximum concentration), is about 2 octane points. However, since these methods work by raising octane at the expense of combustion quality (they create a slower burning fuel), you'll actually make less power, especially on a high revving engine, and in some cases, the fuel burns so slowly that it will still be burning as it exits the exhaust valve, which is a great way to destroy O2 sensors and cats.
There's a huge difference between high quality (racing fuels, leaded AvGas (for piston aircraft), high octane gasoline, and "modified" street fuels. Start pricing out cans of "Jet Fuel Octane Booster" or toluene (per gallon, at a high enough concentration to make a difference) and you'll quickly find it's cheaper to just run 100 unleaded race fuel if you have a car that needs it (which if you have a remotely stock Boxster, you don't).
What I'm anxiously waiting for, is the aviation world to switch over to a 100 octane unleaded fuel (and AvGas is rated on the MON scale, which is conservative compared to the R+M/2 scale used in the auto world in the US, so the 100UL AvGas will actually be around 104 octane R+M/2.