Re:Do I need to use premium on road trips?
 

toluene is like $8/gallon. hell, you can get race gas for 1/4 of that....

Re:Do I need to use premium on road trips?
 

I buy toluene for $4/gal when I buy the tin (the one that looks like a big can of paint thinner). (gonna check for bulk price)

Guess it's time fer y'all to move to the derty souf...

Re:Do I need to use premium on road trips?
 

yea but you are dilluting it. and getting a boost retard with an afc hack isnt really solving the problem, since the hack advances timing down low

Toluene works
 

Cheaper than race gas, huh? Maybe, depending on your octane needs.

Toluene works, so far for me anyway. I'm working through my first full tank of it. You can buy it at automotive paint stores - Sherwin Williams sells it right on the showroom floor - look for the rectangular 1 gallon white & blue can that says TOLUENE in big blue letters. The Xylene is right next to it.

I paid $6 & change for it last week in the gallon can. So, say $6.50 in Toluene, $18.81 in premium fuel ($2.09/gal here) = $25.31 for 10 gallons of "fuel". That's $2.53 / gallon. How much is unleaded race gas again?

I mix 10% Toluene with premium pump gas (that's 91 octane where I live) - 1 gallon Toluene, 9 gallons premium. According to the math it makes our premium fuel 93.3 octane which keeps my beast detonation free - A JRSC D16A6 running 9psi with a 9.6:1 CR and no intercooler of any kind. No detonation is all I care about. Any additional octane beyond non-detonation is a waste of your money.

Formula:
(gallons gas * octane rating) + (gallons toluene * 114) / total gallons = octane rating (R+M)/2

Example:
(9 * 91) + (1 * 114) / 10 = octane rating
(819)+(114) / 10 = 93.3

Buying Xylene just because it has a higher octane rating does not mean you are making your car faster. Your car will only be as fast as it is when it's NOT detonating and when you can run maximum reasonable timing advance. This is a case where more is not better.

I've read not to mix Toluene any stronger than 30%.

I encourage anyone who's interested in Toluene as an octane addative to do a Google search on it. I found several informative pages about using it as "fuel".

Some a couple I found:
http://www.elektro.com/~audi/audi/toluene.html
http://www.theoldone.com/forum/topic...hTerms=toluene

Read as much as you can find. I found a couple sites that say it's a waste of money - both of them included the opinion of Tim Wusz who represents 76 Racing Fuels I believe. Of course he's going to say it's not worth it...
He quotes some figures using a 1:1 Toluene / Gasoline mix, which is WAY more than you'd ever use.

Re:Do I need to use premium on road trips?
 

When i go on road trips what i do is lean it out in the 3500 to 4300 rpm range to -45 cause thats like 75 to 85mph on the si tranny. I run boost as well with a t3 with premium and got 35 mph.

Re:Do I need to use premium on road trips?
 

If you are using a chipped ECU you can actually have your tuner come up with a regular gas boost map. I was surprised how much boost and how much ignition timing you can actually run with regular gas.

Leaning it out a little in the cruise range is a good idea but if you do you should have an EGT probe as leaning it out too much for long periods of time can easilly lead to burned valves.

-Michael