Don't waste your money on Premium gasoline
AAA, just finished a survey on gasoline the public uses. The result was 270 million drivers needlessly use premium fuel! What vehicles need to use premium? Those that have engines with turbo chargers ...
Forum Discussion
GordonThree wrote:
Why do pilots bother with high test aviation gas in their high compression piston engines, when 85 octane will do? Those engines are computer controlled too, the knock sensor should sort it out right?
Only the very newest of planes are FADEC (computer controlled). Most planes are 30-40 years old and the technology even older (magnetos instead of distributors, etc). Mechanical fuel injection is in roughly 25% of aircraft engines. Most aircraft piston engines run on 100 octane leaded fuel, although some have gotten the authority to run on 93 octane unleaded as long as it doesn't contain ethanol. There is a push on to switch AVgas over to 93 unleaded, but there are a handful of large piston engines (over 550 cu in) that absolutely need 100LL. Also remember that most aircraft engines are air cooled and the mixture is usually pilot controlled, so they tend to run hotter than auto engines.
