S
SUN RA KAT
Guest
While I'm waiting for the Roe VEC2 to be sent to me in a few weeks, I still drive my Viper if/when the road conditions are safe for a short jaunt of 50 miles or so to charge the battery up.
I've made a discovery concerning octane. Normal premium gasoline in Ohio is 93, a few stations sell 92, and Sunoco sells 94 octane. I normally fill up with 93 octane of pure gasoline - no ethyl alcohol diluted gasolines for me*. I have my VEC1 set to 0/0 and the MSD Boost Retard box set to 1.5 to 1.67 to eliminate pinging. There is a noticable loss of performance going from 1.5 to 1.67, but I started to get a slight ping at 1.5 so I adjusted the MSD to 1.67 to eliminate all traces of ping.
I decided to try Sunoco 94 octane at my last fill up and found out that I could adjust the MSD to 1.33 without any pinging. I also experienced a quite noticable increase in performance. My Viper also sounded much more mean to match the new found power.
The lesson learned is that high octane means less ignition rertard and more power. I probably will tune my Viper for 93 octane, though, since Sunoco gas stations aren't always when and where my tank needs to be filled up and other states may not have 94 octane even at Sunoco.
* I found out many years ago (in the 1970's) that alcohol has half the BTUs of gasoline and it lowered substantially the gas mileage of my 1970 Duster 340. I've tried to avoid gasoline diluted with alcohol since then.
I've made a discovery concerning octane. Normal premium gasoline in Ohio is 93, a few stations sell 92, and Sunoco sells 94 octane. I normally fill up with 93 octane of pure gasoline - no ethyl alcohol diluted gasolines for me*. I have my VEC1 set to 0/0 and the MSD Boost Retard box set to 1.5 to 1.67 to eliminate pinging. There is a noticable loss of performance going from 1.5 to 1.67, but I started to get a slight ping at 1.5 so I adjusted the MSD to 1.67 to eliminate all traces of ping.
I decided to try Sunoco 94 octane at my last fill up and found out that I could adjust the MSD to 1.33 without any pinging. I also experienced a quite noticable increase in performance. My Viper also sounded much more mean to match the new found power.
The lesson learned is that high octane means less ignition rertard and more power. I probably will tune my Viper for 93 octane, though, since Sunoco gas stations aren't always when and where my tank needs to be filled up and other states may not have 94 octane even at Sunoco.
* I found out many years ago (in the 1970's) that alcohol has half the BTUs of gasoline and it lowered substantially the gas mileage of my 1970 Duster 340. I've tried to avoid gasoline diluted with alcohol since then.