Does A Higher Octane Fuel Give You Better Gas Mileage or Performance For High Compression Engines?
My street bike (2004 R6) has 12.5-1 compression I believe. I have always ran 91 premium and so has the owner before me. So for it’s whole life… always had that.
I was on a forum and one guy said that when he used a higher octane fuel, his gas mileage increased. And also, Yamaha calls for the bike to run on atleast 93 octane. I’m not hurting it by running 91 right? Runs perfect… just curious if the next time I fill up I should use a higher octane fuel to see if that does anything that will spark me to use that from now one. After all, gas is really cheap now anyway.
Yes. With a high compression engine you need higher octane fuel. With your 12.5:1 compression ration you definitely need at least 92 octane fuel.
The octane rating is the fuel’s resistance to spontaneous combustion under compression. The higher the octane rating, the more compression it takes to make the fuel spontaneously ignite.
A high compression engine requires higher octane fuel to prevent detonation. Detonation is a condition where the fuel air mixture ignites while being compressed before the spark plug fires. Detonation can cause serious internal damage to an engine.
The link below will tell you all about how gasoline works. The 4th page of the article explains octane.
Yamaha R6 Forum run, southeast PA
