Fuel brands for 4AC engines. (ethanol?)

[li21]

Hi all.

I always have been filling with Caltex Premium vortex (98 RON).

I coudlnt find a Caltex on the weekend and had to use Shell VPOWER. I felt a difference. It made my weak little 4AC seem slightly more responsive and seemed to climb the revs better.

Has anyone else noticed this on a 4ac?

Ive tried BP ultimate but that was no different to Vortex.

Now my other question is.. would VPOWER Racing do anything at all? I know i shouldnt expect anything more from a 4ac.. Vpower Racing has 5% ethanol in it. Is that at all bad for an old 4ac engine?

thanks

[Course_Out]

4ac's would run on kerosene i reckon.......lol

Usually you would have to change the timing for fuel to make a difference to performance (assuming the engine isn't pinging its brains out or running on kerosene). I fill up my ae71 with fuel from pretty much anywhere, always 98 octane if available and to behonest i've never really noticed a performance difference between brands.

Then again your local Caltex might have watery petrol (don't laugh, i've seen this happen, not cool at all)

[li21]

Does advancing my timing lead to any additional wear and tear and how much diff would i notice?

I wouldnt be surprised either

[Poobrown86]

haha, you've got too much money! running decent fuel thru a 4AC is just a waiste! your better off just runnin normal fuel and putting the money u save away for a decent motor... every penny counts! i tried the super dooper fuels in my 4AC a while ago and the advantages really wasnt worth the cost.. the biggest performance advantage u can get out of your 4AC is keeping the oil up to it so u can have the smoke screen.. haha, i'm sure a few people know what i mean.. who needs rings!

[Hen is a total nutcase]

It's a 4AC. Who cares what fuel you put in it. Anything more than the cheapest available is a waste of money.

If you want to extract power from it you could run it on 98 and advance the ignition until it almost pings (low revs, full load and a hot day will be the time to tune it). The effect may be minor, and I think you'd be way better off just running it normally and saving for something better.

And no, extra advance will cause no extra wear in a motor UNLESS it stanrts to ping, in which case it is not good.

Hen

[ke70dave]

get the cheapest

just dont get that ethonel stuff

it eats old fuel lines

also when i put that ethanol in my KE70, by mistake, it ran like crap, was really hard to start in the morning, and would idle really bad. i chucked 10$ of optimax in there to even it out, and seemed to "fix" the hard starting and rough idle. and have just run normal unleaded ever since, and runs fine.

[bahnugget]

jet engines run on kerro! whats wrong with that



i agree though, its a 4AC man plain unleaded is fine, the cheapest u can find eeheheh... just don't get it from caltex, they're gay.

[li21]

I agree the 4ac is not to bother with.. But since its so weak already, I might as well squeeze all i can from it.. and I really think Vpower (ron98) makes a diff in my car.

The manual also state 98RON is required? Dunno...

[mc68]

ur all wrong, 4ac's should only be run on hopes and dreams.

[mattysshop]

even if you don't notice a power increase.. at least you will get slightly better fuel economy..

not sure about the others.. but BP ultimate is about 8-10c per liter dearer depending on where you go.. so say you put 20 L in at $1 per liter.. $20.00 yeh.. 20 L @ $1.09 (average) = $21.8... and you might get another 50km's out of the tank.. if not more (my magne gets about 90km more than 3 others i know in my click.. they just refuse to see the facts)

so $1.80 so say you put in 20L of petrol each week.. that seems pretty average.. over the course of 1 year your paying $93.60 more than normal crap 91 octane unleaded.. your engine will thank you and over time you should have a noticable difference in fuel economy, hell even my mates excel makes a noticeable difference!!

and if you always run 98 octane, you should be able to run a little more timing (a few degrees), but be carful.. running too much will still cause the old 4AC to ping.. IMO pinging is the 2nd largest killer.. second only to lack of maintanence or prolonged service intervils.. you hear about all those turbo engines with heaps of mods on a dyno blwoing thier engines??? either leaning out, or too much ignition timing... not enough fuel can make the temps peak, which causes pinging, and too much timing is just the most obvious reason.. however i have heard of an engine being run on 17:1 (increadably lean!) but running quite retarded in the timing department.. didn't kill itself..

anyway.. if you don't know what pining sounds like.. picture a really hot day, and an automatic Hyundai sonata driving past you up this hill and it sounds like there are little rocks getting thrown around the engine internals.. it is an unmistakeable sound.. and makes me cringe when i hear it..

i don't care what engine i have i always run 98 octane.. even my old dirty RN41 with a 18RC (now 18RG) got 98 octane.. it loved it! never missed a beat! and when i tore down the motor.. inside didn't have anywhere near as much carbon build up as other 18RC's i had befor.. could be coincidence, but most of this 98 octane fuel does help break up carbon deposits like a fuel injector cleaner.. (just some additives they use)

my 2c...