Civic-EG.com Forum 3.3.1

[suspendedHatch]

- Fri Feb 04, 2011 6:26 pm #237092 This is silly.

By "good tune" you mean that there is a serious compromise made to the ignition timing. You are not making maximum torque.

You want to run at least 91 (USA) even when tuning a stock engine so you can find max torque. A dyno shop will have race gas for tuning a built motor even if you plan to run it on pump gas. Once you find max torque, you can back off the timing for engine safety. The last thing you want is to start having random pinging when you're trying to tune the motor.

- Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:52 pm #237568

This is silly.

By "good tune" you mean that there is a serious compromise made to the ignition timing. You are not making maximum torque.

You want to run at least 91 (USA) even when tuning a stock engine so you can find max torque. A dyno shop will have race gas for tuning a built motor even if you plan to run it on pump gas. Once you find max torque, you can back off the timing for engine safety. The last thing you want is to start having random pinging when you're trying to tune the motor.

No that's a "conservative tune" a good tune is one that takes the best of both worlds. It manages to give you a good balance between power and survivability. At least that's how I would define a good tune. Yes you can tune on the ragged edge to extract every last drop of power and torque from the engine, but then you run a higher risk of catastrophic failure. And yes you can tune it so there is little to no risk of anything ever going boom, but then it's no fun, because it doesn't make any power. A good tuner will find a balance between these two especially if you are looking to make a DD. In a race car, you might not be nearly as worried about survivability since the engine is probably going to be rebuilt every season anyway, and breaking something is kind of par for the course. But for the most part you will want to have a good balance between "Wheee" and "worry".

Too much "whee" and you worry too much about "boom" to have any fun.

Straight lines are for sissies.

[suspendedHatch]

- Thu Feb 10, 2011 5:00 am #237859 That's not the same thing as what was being discussed in this thread. What you're saying now is basically what I said. You're describing how a car is tuned. You find max torque and then back the ignition timing down a bit for safety. Set up knock protection. Smooth the map so you don't have any sudden changes in timing from one cell to the next.

Running low octane on a built motor can only result in compromised power and risk to the engine. There's no getting around it. There's no magic tuning.

- Tue Feb 15, 2011 2:33 am #238541 Power wasn't being discussed at all. The OP asked what octane was needed. I was merely stating that he didn't need to run 93 octane depending on how the car is tuned. I didn't say it was the best way to go, just stating that there are other options and then I gave my reference, which shows that you can make good power and torque on a higher compression motor (than OP) using low octane fuel.

Straight lines are for sissies.