My husband insists that my 2010 Honda Civic will have a longer engine life if I use the highest octane gasoline available rather than the lower octane the users manual recommends. This is a car we hope to keep for 200,000+ miles and probably 20 years. Hard to argue with him as with using only hig…

An engineer, eh? No wonder he’s being difficult. Okay, here’s a more technical description. As the pistons in the cylinder compress the fuel mix, the mix heats up. All matter heats up when compressed. In engines that have high compression pressures, whether the cause is the compression ratio of the…

I’ll give your husband this: it used to be that some high octane gas had more detergents than ‘regular’, resulting in a cleaner fuel system. I don’t think that’s the case any more, as shown by Shell and the ‘Top Tier’ gas group putting pretty much the same detergents in all grades.

See my earlier post-- it’s illegal for them to put different detergents in different grades now. IMHO, the practice you see nowadays of some stations having ethanol-free premium (but ethanol-containing regular and midgrade) is pretty sleazy.

Octane is a measure of how fast the fuel burns. Too fast and it can damage the engine. Higher octane burns slower. Higher than what is needed, will not do anything to or for your car. Octane does not measure additives, power, cleaning ability etc. Diesel cars like mine measure the same thing us…

The only engine I ever destroyed ran out of oil.

Chances are, the second owner (or third) of your Civic will have it towed to the salvage yard when the TRANSMISSION fails or the timing belt breaks…High octane fuel won’t help at all…

You’d be better served by using the recommended octane and spending the extra money if you want on putting a can of injector cleaner in it once in a while, and using synthetic oil at oil changes.

at 25 MPG, and a $ 0.20 price differential for premium, it will cost $1600.00 over 200,000 miles. Absolutley insane. Follow the mfg recs.

I think that you’ll find that those things don’t usually pay off either.

Methinks the original poster has left the building.

Longest New Car Life with High Octane Fuel?

Power/Fuel

lion9car April 3, 2010, 2:51am 23

The engine needs the lowest octane that prevents knocking. Any higher octane makes no difference to the engine.

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Longest New Car Life with High Octane Fuel?

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