Is it beneficial to purchase (either occasionally or regularly) a higher octane than called for in your owner’s manual?
No. if your car runs well and you maintain it according to the owners manual, you are wasting money.
No.
No. There is no benefit of using higher octane than specified.
If your owner’s manual “recommends” high octane, then using the higher octane will generally give a little more power and a little more mileage, but likely not enough additional mileage to make up for the difference in cost.
yes!a higher octane is beneficial in newer cars ,because the engine computer can adjust the timing to suit the fuel,giving slight power gains and also less chance of the engine pinging .i personally use 97 octane here in england instead of the lowest 95 octane,and noticed my 2002 ford to be more responsive.i know your octane ratings are lower in the usa,but why not use the best?its only a little more expensive!
The octane rating system is different in the US so there is no direct comparison. In any case, not all the US cars adjust, but most do. But there are limits to that. Few cars that don’t recommend or require high octane will benefit from it in a meaningful way.
Stephen you only benefit if the car can take advantage of the increased octane and not all cars can do that. Newer cars look for detonation and then retard the timing as needed when pinging occurs in an effort to compensate for lower octane. If a car is optimized from the factory for 87 octane then there is no benefit to running anything higher.
Also, our octane is not lower here than yours we just use a different system of measurement here.
There is no benefit. If the car’s computer is set for specific timing advance characteristics under specific condition using 87 octane and pings, the knock sensor will sense the shock waves and retard the timing to prevent preignition however the timing will not be advanced to take advantage of the higher octane’s lesser predetonation characteristics (lesser tendency to preignite).
In short, the computer will not even know the higher octane is in there.
Higher octane in engines with high compression in the cylinders (via high compression ratio or boost from turbo or superchargers) need high octane because the heat created by compressing the fuel mix can be enough to cause regular octane fuel to ignite without the spark plug firing, but regular engines don’t need it.
No. It’s a waste of money. The extra octane won’t help anything. Higher-octane gasoline is not “better” than regular gasoline, it just has more octane, and if you’re car doesn’t need the extra octane there’s no reason to buy the more expensive gasoline. Save your money!