What do you guys think about Gas+Toluene?
 

It was posted on www.renntech.org that adding toulene to gas increases the octane on gas. Is this legit? Has anyone ever done this? I'm very interested because although te car might make a whopping 1whp more it makes it more responsive. Lets say if I had a turbo i'd notice a huge difference. I'll post the link for I don't know if its allow to copy paste material from other boards. Here is the link and hope everyone enjoys christmas.

http://www.renntech.org/forums/blog/hudnu46/index.php?showentry=74

I just did a search on it and read on a BMW forum that it will work, but finding 100% pure toulene is not easy. The poster said that toulene from Home Depot had other additives in it. He also said he did some chip tuning to keep his ECU from changing things around in response to higher octane fuel.

I tell you this though... if you want more power out of your boxster, save up for a set of aftermarket headers. You'll gain 15-18 hp and a bump in torque the butt dyno will pick up right away, and eventually, it will pay for itself vs. burning higher octane fuel.

Just a thought for you (since no one has chimed in on your request).

Yes, that's the understanding that I've had for years is that the little bottle of NOS octane booster you can get at the auto parts store is really just toluene. I think the fuel injector cleaner is really kerosene too.... Never done it because I've never really seen the need. Why would a higher octane give you more power? Isn't octane just a measure of the anti-detonation characteristics of the gas? Your car needs at least 91 octane gas so that it won't detonate with the 11:1 compression ratio it has (high performance engine). If you ran 93 octane gas (available in some states, but not Cali) would you think you'd see a performance increase? I don't think it would be anything significant, just less of a propensity to detonate or knock. My two cents, for what it's worth.

Actually I thought it was other way around: These engines are made for 93oct, but they run with min of 91oct with performance decrease.

Am I right??

I've heard that all cars sold in the US must be able to "run" on 87 octane.

I don't know if the Boxster "must" run 87 octane, but I do know that it can in a pinch. If you put 87 octane gas in, the engine will knock. The knock sensors will detect this and will pull timing until you don't have knock. It kind of goes into a self preservation and protection mode to keep you from blowing up the engine due to bad gas. Performance will obviously suffer as a result of this.

I don't see any mention of this on this board, but I've got a KnockLink system in my car that uses its own knock sensor to detect knock and then displays it for me via colored LEDs in a box I have installed on my dash. This way I know when I'm getting knock and how much.

Nver heard of such a "requirement." All engines will run on 87 but some, not very well indeed.

:D