What fuel? 87 or 91

just got my new 09 taco and just wondering what fuel you guys are running, because it does not specify in the owners manual thx...

 

Gentlemen, I want a clean fight. Protect yourselves at all times. No funny business. At the sound of the bell, I want you to come out fighting. You ready? You ready? LET'S GET IT ON, COME ON!

 

Ding ding!

 

87 is fine....

 

In all honesty, I've been using both. I find I consistently get 1 mpg better with the premium but I don't see a huge advantage to using it.

 

high compresion engines should run premium. in this case the v6 tacoma should run it. if not the engine will act funny and not run at its optimum eficientcy. but regular runs well.

 

^Yupper. I want all of my 236hp. I did fill up with regular on Friday though (not because of the storm; because I was on fumes) but these freaking turds around here are gouging us. Average price in the area was $3.55 on Thurs and a guy up the street had it for $4.45 on Fri. Unbelievable.

 

This is my post from my Higher Octane thread in the 4 cylinder forum….

I ran 91 for my last fill-up with some interesting results. Keep in mind I drive mostly city and mountain passes, so no easy highway cruising. With regular my last mileage was 19.10. With 91 my mileage jumped up to 21.11. If you plug the numbers into a spreadsheet it works out that it cost me $3.29 more to fill up with 91 but because of the better mileage I got an extra 33.2 miles out of the tank or $6.13 worth of gas. So my net savings was $2.84 for a tank of gas. Plus I think the truck runs stronger up the mountain passes.

 

I have been running 87 for 3000 miles now and seems to be doing very well. 23 highway and about 20.5 around town and off road with 4x4 engaged. I have been wanting to do the 91/93 octane test on my next road trip.

 

I've run 87 for almost 3 years now without problems. I ran 89 for a month to see if there was a difference. Bit more power and little better MPG, but the $/mile amounts were the same. No real advantage to me. Ended up basically meaning I could fill up about 30-40 miles later with 89, or 1 trip to work or back home. And the fill up would cost more at that point. So I don't bother unless I'm towing. If I know I'm going to towing I try to run higher octane just for the extra help pulling the trailer, but it doesn't usually happen! I usually don't need to fill up when I hook up to the trailer, or someone else is paying for the gas.

 

I just putt around in my truck around town (usually never get above 2k RPMs) so I run 87. But if you are using the whole RPM range or towing I would use 91 or 93.

 

my truck runs horrible on 87, so i used 89 for a while but truck pinged and ran rough, after running 93 now for a while truck runs much quieter and much smoother. just my experience.

 

I use 89 only for my 1st gen taco and there was no engine sludge buildup or performance problems. As a result I'll use 89 for my 2nd gen.

 

87 octane, 20-21mpg "Houston" driving. ProDry S, no secondary air filter. My understanding is 87 is fine to run, for a little xtra, you can run premium or plus.. Towing as a benefit.. (just what I heard)

I have never run anything else, no reason to..

-Sam

 

91 gets a bad rap in the media because none of “experts” no how to do the math to see if it pays off. A cursory estimate is good enough. If you get 30-40 miles more for a tank that is 1.5 to 2 gallons worth of fuel at 20mpg. So at $4 per gallon this is $6 to $8 worth of fuel. Now compare that savings to the extra cost of filling up with Premium. If your 20 gallon tank is empty and premium costs 20 cents extra then it will cost $4 more to fill up the tank. So you have saved between $2 and $4 by using premium. Even if cost wise it’s a wash I think it’s better to run premium than regular, especially in the V6.

 

me and my father both have 08 dclb and we run 87 in ours all the time with no problem

 

BTW the best reason I have read about why 91 is better than 87 was written by Ridgerunner. Here is what he had to say….

“There is a marginal yet factual difference in performance between 87 and 91. You have 'knock sensors' in your engine. When you run 87, your ecu will retard your timing to eliminate knock ("pinging" or "detonation" are other terms for it) thereby losing a small amount of power. when you use 91 (I wont use anything else) you are running full advance timing and are utilizing all the power your engine has. The price differential to me is small. IMO, and this is MY opinion only, if you run 87 and the timing is being retarded by the ecu resulting in slight loss of power, then you will tend to use more throttle to get to speed, hence mileage will go down slightly-hence more fuel burned. IMO, it is better to run 91 at the slightly higher cost because the benefit is the maximum timing”