Is there a decent octane booster on the market? More importantly, is there one to avoid?

 

None, and all of them. There are some chemicals you can mix to boost octaine, but I just get race gas and cut out the uncertainty.

 

You can use water injection or Meth, I think they work better than "octane boosters".

 

you can use torco... its not an octane booster but a racing fuel concentrate...

 

Meth will, im pretty sure all water does is lower the intake temps.

 

Water injection also cools down cylinder temps so you can run more heat aka more boost which yields more power. It does this by cooling the air fuel mixture as it's being compressed during the compression cycle of the burn.

 

Xylene and Toluene are the best octane boosters. Xlyene is 117 octane and Toluene is 114 octane. There used to be and Excel spreadsheet running around that would calculate your overall octane by inputing the amount of regular fuel and either of these solutions to give you your average octane for tuning purposed.

You can find them at places like Home Depot or Lowes but for really good prices you can get an account with Sherwin Williams Paint Stores and buy the Xylene in five gallon cans. I wouldn't use more than a gallon of Xylene to about 10 gallons of 93 octane...

 

go meth injection, don't bother with octane boosters or buy some 100 oct and mix...

 

+1 lots of vette guys use it on their cars with blowers and turbos.. my buddies also use it, on there blown gtos.

 

i use torco it made my idle a little rougher but it did reduce knock a bit

 

I buy the Champion 15 point octane booster (92.5 octane after filling up with 91 octane) from Walmart for $3.50 per bottle. I use one bottle per each fill-up and I notice the difference.

 

I think the recommendation is to pretty much stay away from the off the shelf octane boosters found in auto parts stores. Although they shouldn't do any damage, they do not raise the octane that much (usually between .3 & .7....so, to 91.4 and 91.7). I have never heard of the Champion one mentioned above....

 

i use NOS race bottle it increases 60full points or 6 full numbers

 

You're better off with either meth or water injection.

 

if you wanna be "core" do the tolulene route, but SCC did some convincing tests and concluded that octane boosters work. NOS Racing Formula was the best, it will boost 16 gallons of 91 to 93.7 octane. if you don't need a 100 octane mix then its an e-z way to get all the 280 hp the evo 4g63 is capable of.