What is the octane of premium gas in your area?

**elagache** · 03-07-2011, 01:43 PM

Dear Team Buick members,

I'm trying to settle upon the compression ratio for the Buick 430 engine that I'm starting to have rebuilt. After getting many helpful lessons from the gurus on Team Buick, I know that I cannot push the dynamic compression ratio too high or the engine will suffer from premature detonation. However, that in turn depends upon octane quality of the available gasoline. After cruising the Internet a bit, I've found that in the United States the accepted threshold for premium is only 91 octane. In California that is the highest commonly available octane since 2004. Nonetheless, according to folks on V-8 Buick, there are still many parts of the country that have 93 octane gasoline.

Now that I've found how to conduct a poll on this new forum software, I thought I would ask folks on Team Buick about what sort of premium gasoline they have commonly available around their neighborhood. Please do post a comment to this thread if you know something about this topic that would help folks assess what kind of gasoline to expect in the future for our high-performance engines.

Thanks in advance for participating!!

Cheers, Edouard

**UndercoverObserver** · 03-12-2011, 02:09 PM

I have a 62 Skylark. The original 215 V8 the car came with new, has never been out of the car and never been taken apart. Its quickly closing in on 100,000 documented miles. I run Premium gas in it. It knocks and pings and falls flat on its face with any other grade fuel. I run 92 octane fuel in it.

When I do its oil I only use valvaline 30 weight motor oil and a new Wix filter.

Its a daily driver for me.

If you make life hard on your car , your car will make life hard on you

**Airy Cat** · 03-18-2011, 07:37 PM

The highest octane that I can get is 91 and it's crap. I can't even light my bar-b-que with it. If you want to liven up your performance, run 1/2 tank of 100LL Av gas and a 1/2 tank of 91 octane.

**elagache** · 03-19-2011, 08:57 AM

Dear Airy Cat and Team Buick members,

Indeed the situation of "at the pump" gas is rather discouraging these days. Since my dream is to make a "road trip" cruiser, the car will have to cope with what's out there and the engine design parameters will have be diminished accordingly

Not that it is much hope, but as part of one's "car enthusiast education," I came across this article in Motor Trend about Butanol as a "more better" Ethanol.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/e...nol/index.html

If technology is truly going to get us out of the mess we're in - it will take ideas like this. Alas, I just don't see the Esprit de corps in folks these days to make such concepts a reality.

Oh well . . . . .

Cheers, Edouard

**carnut** · 04-13-2011, 06:19 PM

If you can make it up here we have Sunoco 94 octane. Yeha!

**Airy Cat** · 04-21-2013, 09:26 PM

91 California

**Ponch** · 06-14-2013, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Airy Cat

91 California

Ed. The last time I was in contact with you, you were going to keep your Station wagon as close to Stock as possible. That was on V8Buick. Now yer all over the place. I suggested an Aluminum Radiator from Jegs that I've been running for 8 Years now with no problems. What's up Man?

PONCH Oh, 93 Oct in Flint MI.