You are 100% correct. Brother in law is retired petroleum engineer. Worked in that big huge refinery in Newark. Told me exactly the same thing. He started out at the bottom ranks of management and was a junior executive when he retired. I believe him, he does know his stuff. He has never run anything but 87 in every vehicle he has owned. He did say racing applications are way different and sometimes the fuels for them have to be "tweaked". But not the average computer adjusted main stream factory engines. When I was a locomotive engineer for the railroad we used to laugh at people who would tell us gasoline at station "A" was Sooo much better gas than station "B". What they did not know, in Grand Junction (and most places) the fuel ALL came in on rail from the single factory in Commerce City, north of Denver. It's all the same gas. Some individual stations and brands would require a hand pour of different additives at the transfer terminals (where the big trucks pick it up at). Usually, nothing in those additives had anything to do with performance, although that little fable was used in marketing. Truck driver friends would tell me the same thing. People would always come up and tell him they liked this particular brand of gas much better than the other station and brand down the road. Mostly, he never told them that when he left this station, he went right down the street and pumped the same gas in their tanks. As the old saying goes, "you don't always get what you pay for" All of this said, I did run 90 or 93 in both my Porsches. The newer one, owners manual said it was required or warranty would be void! Lots of people here in Idaho run "clear" gas as they have a lot of older vehicles that don't so well at all with the ethanol gas.
For best performance run 91 octane as the engine is mapped for that fuel, however the engine will run on 87 octane due to computer magic to prevent pre ignition.
Go ahead and try it. I switched to Shell V Power from 87 octane about a month ago. Seems to help with the low RPM bog "drone" I was experiencing. I will continue using the V Power. Also, it is supposed to help prevent carbon build up on the valves.
I think each little bar on the gas gauge is about two gallons. Next time I was down two bars I’d top off with premium.
Maybe that's the answer.
I'm not in the debate about fuels, just correcting a previous contributor's erroneous website link.
So "regular" gas is going to generate 0 to 225 horsepower.
PSA:
This guy is not the one to follow.
