Good FREE information.
Good FREE information.
Hi all,
I want to get some information out there to you guys that if used correctly should save a bunch of you from damaging your engines. You can do what you want with this information and I am not posting it to argue with anyone.
Tuning. Everyone has a different way of doing it. Everyone probably thinks their way is the best. Many different ways of making power, lean, rich, lots of boost, medium boost, lots of timing, little timing. Many ways. Problem is no matter how you tune the car to get the power if something goes wrong damage can happen.
What I want to do is supply you guys with a simple guideline for octane that you need to keep in the back of your head.
A car that has been tuned to run on 116 octane with a maximum amount of timing for a certain boost level needs to have that 116 octane to stay in one piece. You cannot run this car on 110 octane and expect it to stay together, it might work once, maybe twice, but sooner or later it is going to get you.
So here is the formula. It is fairly well known but obviously there are many of you that don't use it or know it.
Octane X gallons. 116 octane x 5 gallons=580
Big deal you say.
Now add in the pump gas that you never bothered to drain when you added in your race gas.
Octane X gallons. 91 octane x 5 gallons=455
Now add the two totals together 580+455+1035.
Divide the total gallons into this. 1035 divided by 10=103.5. That is your actual octane.
103.5 octane!! NOT ENOUGH to keep a car together that was tuned on 116 octane.
Recently I tried to figure out what the hell could have happened to a car I tuned. Seemed like detonation, but that was impossible, I knew how I tuned the car. What could have gone wrong?!
Well we figured it out. The car was tuned on 110 octane fuel. We had the low fuel light on, tank was very empty and we dumped in 5 gallons of 110 on top of 93 octane that was in it. Figure there was a gallon left, use the formula above. That gave us 107.16 octane.
What happened after the car left here was the car had 91 octane in the tank, unknown amount but low, probably not as low as the light was not on. We'll figure 2 gallons. Then 2.5 gallons of 110 were added in. This gave a total octane of 101.5. The 107 was tuned about as far as it could go SAFELY. Dropping the octane another 6 points with no knock control on (Race gas maps don't generally use the knock control) was just a little too much.
Luckily there appears to be no damage, car runs well.
I just wanted to point this out to all of you and try to possible save you from damaging your own car. I want your money but I don't need to get it from mistakes like that.
Good luck, hope this helps.
David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com
I want to get some information out there to you guys that if used correctly should save a bunch of you from damaging your engines. You can do what you want with this information and I am not posting it to argue with anyone.
Tuning. Everyone has a different way of doing it. Everyone probably thinks their way is the best. Many different ways of making power, lean, rich, lots of boost, medium boost, lots of timing, little timing. Many ways. Problem is no matter how you tune the car to get the power if something goes wrong damage can happen.
What I want to do is supply you guys with a simple guideline for octane that you need to keep in the back of your head.
A car that has been tuned to run on 116 octane with a maximum amount of timing for a certain boost level needs to have that 116 octane to stay in one piece. You cannot run this car on 110 octane and expect it to stay together, it might work once, maybe twice, but sooner or later it is going to get you.
So here is the formula. It is fairly well known but obviously there are many of you that don't use it or know it.
Octane X gallons. 116 octane x 5 gallons=580
Big deal you say.
Now add in the pump gas that you never bothered to drain when you added in your race gas.
Octane X gallons. 91 octane x 5 gallons=455
Now add the two totals together 580+455+1035.
Divide the total gallons into this. 1035 divided by 10=103.5. That is your actual octane.
103.5 octane!! NOT ENOUGH to keep a car together that was tuned on 116 octane.
Recently I tried to figure out what the hell could have happened to a car I tuned. Seemed like detonation, but that was impossible, I knew how I tuned the car. What could have gone wrong?!
Well we figured it out. The car was tuned on 110 octane fuel. We had the low fuel light on, tank was very empty and we dumped in 5 gallons of 110 on top of 93 octane that was in it. Figure there was a gallon left, use the formula above. That gave us 107.16 octane.
What happened after the car left here was the car had 91 octane in the tank, unknown amount but low, probably not as low as the light was not on. We'll figure 2 gallons. Then 2.5 gallons of 110 were added in. This gave a total octane of 101.5. The 107 was tuned about as far as it could go SAFELY. Dropping the octane another 6 points with no knock control on (Race gas maps don't generally use the knock control) was just a little too much.
Luckily there appears to be no damage, car runs well.
I just wanted to point this out to all of you and try to possible save you from damaging your own car. I want your money but I don't need to get it from mistakes like that.
Good luck, hope this helps.
David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com
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Only one question, why wouldn't you use knock control for safety sake? Race gas should produce lower knock then you tune it back up to a normal knock level so why not use the knock control for a safe guard? Don't know just asking so please don't take the question the wrong way? I am tuning myself and this is how I am trying to look at things.
I tuned the car with the 5 gallons of 110 on top of maybe a gallon of GOOD 93. That is what I had in the car the day I tuned it for race gas. I could have tuned it for 1 octane if that what it was at the time....
Actually the car was never to be run on less than 110 octane, that is what I was told. Problem is, the customer, like many of you, didn't know how quickly the octane got diluted when there was pump gas left in the mix.
A couple of reasons you don't generally need to tune with knock control on with race gas. Number one is race gas is usually fairly consistent. It isn't like the **** pump gas we are forced to use and get ripped off on. You can go to a local gas station and think you are pumping in 94 octane, truth of the matter seems to be more times than not that you aren't getting what you pay for. With race gas if you buy a drum of 116 octane fuel or buy it from some guy selling 116 octane fuel chances are you are getting 116 octane fuel. With the chance of getting poor fuel quality pretty much out of the way you can tune more aggresively and leave the knock control off. Could you run knock control on race gas for safety? Sure. Do I know anyone who does it? No. We have NEVER hurt an engine on race gas from detonation and have never used knock control while running race gas. I do start some of my tunes with the knock control on when tuning with race gas. Just a safety margin as you are building the tune and the boost to high levels. When it is all done and I have the tune right I shut it off. It is hard to tune with it on. As it retards timing or adds fuel you have to watch to make sure the lack of knock you are getting is from the good tuning or from the knock control helping you out. You also have to watch you aren't tuning a rich spot out of the map when it is actually a spot that knock control is adding fuel for you. This is the same when tuning pump gas but since you aren't on the edge as far not as likely.
David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com
Actually the car was never to be run on less than 110 octane, that is what I was told. Problem is, the customer, like many of you, didn't know how quickly the octane got diluted when there was pump gas left in the mix.
A couple of reasons you don't generally need to tune with knock control on with race gas. Number one is race gas is usually fairly consistent. It isn't like the **** pump gas we are forced to use and get ripped off on. You can go to a local gas station and think you are pumping in 94 octane, truth of the matter seems to be more times than not that you aren't getting what you pay for. With race gas if you buy a drum of 116 octane fuel or buy it from some guy selling 116 octane fuel chances are you are getting 116 octane fuel. With the chance of getting poor fuel quality pretty much out of the way you can tune more aggresively and leave the knock control off. Could you run knock control on race gas for safety? Sure. Do I know anyone who does it? No. We have NEVER hurt an engine on race gas from detonation and have never used knock control while running race gas. I do start some of my tunes with the knock control on when tuning with race gas. Just a safety margin as you are building the tune and the boost to high levels. When it is all done and I have the tune right I shut it off. It is hard to tune with it on. As it retards timing or adds fuel you have to watch to make sure the lack of knock you are getting is from the good tuning or from the knock control helping you out. You also have to watch you aren't tuning a rich spot out of the map when it is actually a spot that knock control is adding fuel for you. This is the same when tuning pump gas but since you aren't on the edge as far not as likely.
David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com
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