Increasing Gasoline Octane Overseas
 

I have recently moved to Turkey due to my job and have discovered the gas on base in only 90 octane. I have been researching ways to increase the octane and have come up with two choices either mix the 90 octane from on base with the 93 octane off base or use octane boosters to increase it. The issue is gas off base is extremely expensive roughly $9 dollars a gallon. Thats my sticking point. So which option would you suggest? And if it is a octane booster which one would you suggest? I do have a Uprev tune from
Z1 for both 93 and 91 octane. Thank you for your help/ advice.

Retune for the octane you have access to. Octane booster doesn't do anything. It would take gallons of the stuff to make any difference. Unless you have access to toluene there, you're not going to be able to boost the octane any appreciable amount.

torco accelerator works but you would need a quart or more per tank at $21 a quart plus shipping. cheapest route is almost always toluene or xylene if you can get a source for it.

:iagree:

Toluene is a bit better. If you run Xylene you need to run something like Marvel Mystery Oil as well.


How much is gas on base?
Also, is your octane getting rated the same as it does here in the states because almost no where else does it the same. (Here it's AKI, which is [RON+MON]/2, I believe most other countries use RON OR MON)

First of all thank you all for the the advice and direction. I have been searching all over trying to find a alternative way to get into the right octane range. The gas on base is not to bad roughly $4 dollars a gallon since they use liters over here. On base the rating is 95 FRG which I tried to research and had difficulty finding anything in that unit. Off base the gas is 95 Ron which is equivalent to 90 octane in the US. I will see about finding some toluene. Any issues with running toluene as a additive? (Injectors/ fuel pump and lines) If anyone knows the ratio off the top of their head that be great. If not I will do some digging. I am not not looking to run race gas just get it up to 91 at least if possible.

No risk. It's used to raise octane anyways

Toluene has an AKI of 114, so adjust accordingly to the octane you want


Wouldn't octane boosters be a BITCH to get btw?

Mix some Marvels Mystery Oil in with the toluene and gas. Otherwise it may dry out seals and o rings.

Also, are you allowed to store hazardous chemicals on base?

That's with Xylene Chuck!

Toluene is good to go, but a little/lot of MMO never hurt anyone.
I love MMO and SeaFoam

That's right. Had my paint thinners mixed up :rofl2:

I have been reading all about toluene for the last 20 mins haha Looks like this will be the option I will have to go with now to find it... Things here are very hard to find not like there is a autozone or walmart down the road. So looks like some local sourcing. Actually they sell one kind of STP octane booster on base which as you can imagine is sold out. I did go to amazon and there is a list of about 10 they will ship to me. But I am sure i would have to use multiple bottles to get enough toluene. As far as hazardous chemicals go, I have a house so I could keep it there. So as long as I get Toluene 100% concentrate I should be good to go? You mentioned paint thinner, is there any additional chemicals in that mix or is it pure? I could have a lot of paint projects in the near future ;) haha

toluene is a paint thinner it is also sold as toluol and a couple other names. The stuff that says automotive grade is what you want which just means there is nothing else in it.

Never seen that, lol. It used to be at Home Depot (they made it illegal in CA)

Just read the back and check the ingredients. I can't imagine 1% of soemthing else would do much. But last I checked... Some of is work at a company with many, MANY scientists... (AHEM, me) and if there is something else in a can you find, just post it up.


And look for Xylene as a backup, you will have to mix other stuff in with it, but maybe it's more available

I ran toluene in my ATV for a couple years with no issues. It does add a sort of race gas smell to it!

As an FYI we can only get 91 here. I really doubt 90 is going to be that bad. I know people that run Z's and G's on 87 and have no issues. One guy on the MYG37 has posted his gas milage for years and makes sure every knows he runs 87. I think the last time I saw he had well over 80k on the car. He swears everyone is nutz for paying for the extra octane. Me I use 91 as that is as good as I can get. If I could only get 90 I would run it and not worry unless I was going to be racing the car.

The stuff i used to get from sherwin williams said automotive grade right on the 5gal can and it was like 33 bucks also it works best at 5%

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I recently watched a BMW dynoed with 93 and then again with 93 with Boostane added to it. While it took a few pulls for the car to react to the change when it did the car went up just under 60whp. I've never had any faith in gas additives but Boostane definitely increases HP.

it was probably a turbo car

Just as an FYI, unless it only had a gallon of gas, and the car was tuned for like 100 octane, the dyno pull you saw was a sham.
Either the operator was doing something or maybe the car wasn't warmed up in the first run. My car gained 10-15 WHP from the first pull to the last pull when oil temp went from 180 to 210

Unless it was one of the turbo ones, :iagree:

Even then I probably still :iagree:

Looks as though I will have to go downtown to find the toluene. I checked on base at a couple locations with no luck. Apparently the local city used to carry 97 Ron but since it wasn't being used as much as the 95 Ron they discontinued it. I will keep you posted on my finding and DEpointfiveO when I find the paint thinner I will run any additional constituents by you and see if they will have a harmful affect. Thanks again for everyone's input. This is why I come to the 370z side of the house way more performance based :driving:

Depending on how long you'll be there and how much your total fuel cost per gallon is after adding the toluene, it still may be more cost effective to get another map to run the pump gas over there. That way you could have your 93, 91 and then a low octane map. That would also come in handy if you're evey in the middle of nowhere and don't have the option of good gas.

I will be here for a year longer then Germany for three years. So I just have to get through the next 12 months in this dilemma. Then I am sure Germany will have all the octane ranges I could ask for. Good point with the tune and that maybe another route I will check into if this fails or the cost ratio just is not going to cut it. It's not like I am drag racing here or running FI. It's more of a piece of mind with breather mods / factory gasoline octane guidelines.

I really want to see someone tune in an 87 map so we could see just how much power you lose going down to regular.

It was a M3 so yes it had turbos and Z1 posted similar results recently on a turbo car. If it helped gas on a turbo why wouldn't it on a NA car? I've never owned a turbo car so fill me in if I'm missing something.

The higher the octane the more you can advance the timing. The more you can advance the timing without getting knock, the more power you can get.


On an NA car the hypothetical gains that are possible aren't that high because there isn't that much going on I guess.
On forced induction it allows you to force more air and more fuel AND advance the timing



Correct me if I'm wrong guys. I know it's a bit more complicated than my crap description, but I tried to keep it simple

One of the new M3s? Cool.

You can run more boost with higher octane. Higher octane won't have as much of an effect on NA cars.There's only so much air you can get into a cylinder while staying NA.

yup more octane lets you adavance the timing which gives you power, eventually there is a point that regardless of octane you cant advance the timing any more and still make power, you will actually start to lose power. An NA car only needs enough octane to get the timing to that point. With boost since higher octane doesn't detonate as early, you increase the boost and the timing and for a whole hell of a lot more power.

With a higher octane you could typically run a little less rich as well which will net even more power. On a car with high boost instead of running 10 to1 afr you could run 11 to 1 afr since you don't need as much of a safety factor.

But if it did that wouldn't it help the OPs fuel problem? The shop that works on my car always has cool cars in it, the owner tuned GTRs in japan for a while. Look up NUR Performance on Facebook some time. There is a GTR Alpha 9 and a Alpha 7 at the shop right now.

yeah but the real question is, is it cheaper than toluene?

I wouldn't think so.

Just a small status update. I have already been researching the toluene option and looking for paint thinner but as I said before this place is like searching for a needle in a haystack if you want something. I have already been to the turkish version of a home depot and the best I found was stripper that was 40-50 % toluene using the MSDS with a couple other chemicals which i know wont cut it. I have searched google for any paint thinners in turkey but that has proved little success as I have researched the few products that came up with little to no toluene. The chemicals here are nothing like in the states brand wise much less able to read the label. I have inquired to Torco and another supplier for the accelerator if overseas shipping would be possible so i am waiting to see on that. Is there a second or third octane booster recommended? Seems my options are getting slimmer and slimmer to retuning again or getting a legit octane boost which may not be possible.:shakes head:

Not really... You can give us the names of the other chemicals in the various paint thinners, I'll try to help you out.

I assume they don't use any alcohol there to raise octane.

In that case... You could run up to 10% of your favorite 100% alcohol, 1-Propanol, 2-Propanol (rubbing alcohol), ethanol, methanol (although I wouldn't want to run that much methanol)
And I'd still recommend something like MMO as a lubricant

So one company I have found is Polisan brand MX Primera thinner. This seems to be the most promising but they do produce other thinners but not with toluene.

2-butoxyethanol- 1-5%
2-methylpropanol-1 - 1-5 %
Methanol- 10-15%
Methyl acetate - 30-40%
Toluene - 30-40%

Looking into Methyl Acetate.

As of right now, I think your best bet is to take your tune off, reset the ECU, pump 90 on base, drive slowly for a tank or so to let the ECU learn, then drive with that

Xylene is ok too, you'll just need to add an additive like MMO

Or see what logs look like driving gently on the 91 octane tune.

I guess. I don't know how flexible the tunes are that a tuner puts on, but I'm willing to bet that the stock tune can fix the car to 85 octane without breaking a sweat as long as you give it a tank or two without beating on it

It depends on the 91 tune. If it's super aggressive, no. If it's a fairly conservative tune, he might be better with that than the stock map. That's why he should look at some data logs and see how it looks.