Should I be using premium gas in my Tacoma?

I live my life 5 gallons at a time....

 

Once tried klotz nitro additive in an old lawnmower...ran really good for a couple minutes then sized up.

 

I remember when I used to run with 110 octane fuel. One day I realized if you can't spare a few pennies to go up to 118 octane fuel, maybe you should consider changing your vehicle. I only run 118 octane and haven't had any problems. 500k+ miles

 

I use the one with the green nozzle.

Green means good & go fast.

 

And green means good for environment. Plants love the green exhaust!

 

folks that run premium and pressurize thier tires with nitrogen are funny

 

the difference between 87 and 91 is how advanced the ignition timing is. it does advance more on 91 versus 87. whether it's worth it or not, is up to you.

 

If thats the case...why does my truck run worse on 92 vs 87? Gotta be other factors involved.

 

My 2nd gen runs good with premium in it. 370,000 miles and it still gets up and goes when I need it to.

 

I will with non ethanol 92. It runs better on 92 than 87. The low rpm light load run smoother, like when the truck is doing 40mph at 1100 rpm, and then you slightly accelerate and it doesn't downshift.

Yes I know it doesn't make any sense but I've switched back and forth, multiple times, both my and my gf felt the difference.

I would love to data log the truck and see if there's a timing difference, somthing is causing it to run better.

 

Nope . Unless an engine requires it , they are designed to perform flawlessly on 87. There is no quantifiable benefit. But it makes some people feel better. Its been argued for years so whatever.

91 / 92 is better fuel if your engine is setup to perform better on it , yes. But thats not the case with Tacomas.

 

I'm getting help with tuning the timing and the valve timing and what I can see is that stock ecu timing is too advanced compare to what I'm testing. I know that 87 performs adequately, but in 5th, 6th gears under 60-75% load and rpms around 2000 on stock ecu I was getting -6 -7 on knock feedback and the ecu would retard timing by a few points.
Besides timing, there is valve timing that affects the performance.
Just my observation...

 

118, 119, whatever it takes.

 

I would think these tacoma's are tuned properly by the manufacture to run their best on 87. Anything higher you won't see any difference to a point the octane used is so high performance suffers. At least my v6 feels that way. Seems 89 e10 is the cutoff in higher octane before the truck runs worse on anything higher.
I guess for some its the old adage that if it runs good on 87 then more octane is much better.

 

Since when did a mechanical device develop "feelings"?

 

Well... actually your fuel economy will improve so it will cost you less money overall. With 118 octane, you will get at least 300 miles per gallon.

 

Yes people can poke fun all they want; I've been tuning my personal fun cars using dsmlink and hondata for 15 years now, I'm not some idiot who simply thinks the more expensive gas equals better.

This engine runs better at those low rpm/ light to mid light loads. If I had to guess there's a bit of low speed pre ignition and the computer is pulling a bit of timing under very small rpm window, above 2k rpm's Not noticeable. I'm sure I could prove this if I had the ability to data log but I'm not going to spend the money, as it is 92 octane isn't that much more expensive.

 

I propose a race of two identical Tacomas with different fuels. Our local airport sells av gas, last time I looked it was $ 5.89 a gallon and 100 octane ethanol is 113 octane. Light air craft pilots have the ability to alter the fuel mix using ex gas temp or air fuel ratio. There is more heat energy in 87 than 94 octane fuel. Days are long gone when you could twist a distributor to advance the timing.

 

Based on below sure seems like a Tacoma could benefit from it. I don't personally think running 93 is worth it (its a dollar more a gallon here). But pretty clear evidence a higher octane can help in some situations.