Premium fuel in non S/C Tacoma

Workman always uses 91 octane. Workman gets 21-23MPG, always.

Workman always chooses gas stations that carry Non ethanol gas.....Workman can't stand ethanol.


Workman

 

Lol

 

You can put anything in your tank as long as it's 87 octane gasoline or higher (and more importantly clean) and you're not doing your truck any harm. If I've got the extra 5-10 bucks to fill up with premium I usually do. Anyone who says it's "bad" to run "better" fuel in your truck obviously doesn't know what they're talking about..

 

when i got my '08 dealer told me to put good(shell,mobil) 87 in it
no need for premium. i do understand he wants me to come back for a new truck asap,
and i have no sport or performance anything on my v6.
so i follow directions well, esp. if they save me money
the only thing i avoid is no name stations and Stewart's, i dont trust that guy as far as i can throw one of his stale buttered rolls

 

Haha i would never use what the dealer "tells" me, went with my mother when she bought a KIA and they said "shell", there fleet cards are for shell and it distroyed the engine 4 weeks after she got it...... they tryed to fix it 5 times .....

 

Shell did not destroy the engine. The engine had a problem from day-1.

That has been a nasty myth about Shell for over 30 years. "Shell will burn up your engine".

 

Engine management does not “learn” it has no artificial intelligence it only “adapts” to a lookup table it can’t and won’t respond to any thing out of the range that is programmed into it. Until I am proven different I will say it will not test the waters and inch the timing up because higher timing tends to increase the NOX emissions. It will adapt to engine knock and retard the timing from the preset standard of 87 octane to eliminate the knock so in the case of extreme usage high test will help because the timing will not retard due to knock but the effect will be minimal and only if it detects a knock. Once the knock goes away it will then adapt back to the preset timing. You can teach an old dog new tricks so if any one has "manufactures" information about engine management adaptation I’m all ears there is a lot of wives tails and speculation on this and I would like to hear from the horses mouth.

 

Workman should change name to Simon. Unless Simon is already workman's real name...

Anyway, I don't like this ethanol nonsense.

 

I'm never sure what 'proof' will work in a forum like this. I've even seen people dismiss dyno charts, so the following comment is probably only good for bumping the thread. But here goes...

I think you're correct that DME's choose from among options that are within a set of parameters. However, it's not a correct assumption that the default maps for every engine are for 87 octane. For a cars that are, premium is a waste of money. But based on Toyota's own numbers for this engine, my suspicion is that its default map is for 91 octane, which means that it's running in an adaptive state on 87. This is, of course, absolutely unprovable, but 12 extra ft/lbs of torque for running premium certainly points that way.

And, again, every engine is different in this regard. I've owned cars (all German, interestingly) that ran so differently on regular and premium that you could tell which was in it just by looking at the soot in the tailpipe. And I've had others (mostly Japanese, ironically), where even the most hopeful butt dyno could detect zip.

That's what makes this debate so endless on enthusiast forums. Nobody is ever proven right or wrong.

 

I guess my point is that the engine was sold as using 87 and some one said that Toyota has dropped the higher figures (I'll have to look at my manual) that leads me to believe that they like other truck makers love to spout off about their HP. The extra figures are a small percentage the actual gains are pretty slim. I have tried in vane to find info on how adaptive the systems are but you maybe right they may start high and go down and there testing was done with the slightly higher timing. The figures I'v seen for the gains of high test still have not convinced me of any savings for the extra expense of 97. To be fair to the OP his question has been clouded with speculation while his answer was simple No it won't hurt to run high test in any thing except maybe your pocket.

 

I've always wondered what the difference is between Canadian and US premium. The guys who I bought my Mustang parts from (and now Tacoma goodies) build race cars, and were telling me if I don't want to run 94, I could back down to 91, because ours is different. And on the Diablo site, the company that makes my programmer, they, too, say you can run a lowere octane. I've heard this countless times all over the place. I also know years ago I had a car that demanded premium, and when I filled up in the US, I could see a difference in the way it ran. So, is ours metric octane or something?

 

Sort of. Octane ratings in the US are (RON+MON)/2, while most places outside the US are RON. If you're not up on those terms, find your favorite search engine and read to your heart's content .

 

Not sure, but the only 94 available here achieves its high octane rating by having a higher ethanol content. So they can technically advertise the high number, but it doesn't mean your engine is going to see it that way.

A few years ago, I had a BMW that I would run Sunoco Ultra 94 in exclusively. The exhaust pipe was always sooty black inside, which I never questioned. Eventually, I upgraded the exhaust, and my tuner told me that this particular car's knock sensor reacted to the 'sound' of ethanol combustion as though it was pre-detonation. He told me to switch back to 91 without ethanol. I did after I got my new exhaust system, and the tailpipe stayed clean for the next four years I had the car. One car, one story, believe it or don't. But it was a lesson in how there's more to fuel than octane, just as there's more to performance than horsepower.

 

Just filled with premium cheveron at $4.16/gal vs $3.88/gas 87 oct. Wouldn't want it any other way.

 

haha yeah the diffrence in price is so small in reality that in can be personal choice as long as it doesnt hurt anyhting, and the conclusion is that it will not.

 

FWIW...I've run nothing but 89 w/10% ethanol the past year. I've got little/no knock and pretty decent MPG numbers. Spent the first 3 months I had the truck experimenting with dif octanes (87/89/91, a month each) and couldn't get a noticeable difference in performance/mileage so I stuck with the cheapest. Price this morning is $3.65 for 89w/10%eth vs $4.01 for premium. Hit my best MPG/tank last week...379.9mi 19.9mpg w/2.05gal remaining.

Feel free to check my Fuelly in my sig...I'm calling ambient temps as the biggest factor as mentioned already by Chris.

 

+1

 

Premium on V6