Fuel for LO 206

Had my LO 206 a couple of months and Initially we bought LP 110 Racing Fuel, can we use any other Fuel? but if we do will it affect performance.

Our club requires 87 pump :man_shrugging:t4:

I’ve been told the lower the octane (within reason) is better. Since the the 206 having such a low compression, running a high octane fuel is a waste and may make less power than the cheap stuff at chevron. The absolute best though would be any ethanol free gas. For the sake of the carb.

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Essentially it will “run” on anything. Including 87. But, like others said, avoid ethanol and other forms of oxygenates.

You can find non-oxy pump gas near you at pure-gas.org

They have a mobile app too.

Briggs recommends 87 pump gas with out ethanol.

Well we put 87 pump gas in and got DQ,d apparently our Club only use Racing Fuel . my bad for not reading the rules.

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That is something you should take up with your club, but yea, obscure rules can be very annoying.

At our track last year the fuel was spec’d to a specific pump at a specific gas station. I see the point but then I would have to go and make a special trip out of the way to get fuel. My question was what if they get new batch of fuel between your purchase and the baseline fuel tested. Prior to that it was a specific fuel from the track pump.
If someone were to experiment with different fuel I think they could come up with a little bit of tuning advantage at times. The problem would be legality and getting DQ’d. The other would be the time and resources it would consume. You would need to keep good data and be able to turn it into info you could extrapolate. I’d bet chassis tuning would yield better lap times. I would put a fuel advantage as one of those final frontier tweaks only if most every other setting was optimized.

We always planned getting fresh fuel on race day/weekend for just this reason.

I would hope that the spec station is located conveniently to the race track.

I also made sure to save a separate receipt just for race gas.

That’s a bummer. Often the decision to use racing fuel is for consistency of blend as well as simpler, more decisive testing.

That said, racing fuel doesn’t have to be a high octane, or leaded either. I know some tracks specify leaded racing fuels for the 206. While it certainly does no harm to the engine I’m becoming increasing aware of the use of leaded gas at our tracks.

Typically they work with the gas station to avoid this. Also they will go with non oxygenated (ethanol free) gas wherever possible.

I’m surprised the moved away from the track pump. Push back from racers on cost? Given how little gas a 206 uses, I don’t understand why some racers kick up a fuss.

James,
I don’t know why they got away from the track pump. I lot of non-communication in the past. Each year I look forward to the new regime with a positive attitude. Some things get better, some go the other way. Any way, I really liked being able to buy a bit of fuel and going get a bit more if needed. I am not a big fan of keeping a lot of fuel on hand for safety. As far as cost, even if it was $4 a gallon it is still cheaper than the $10-15 or more per gallon race fuel. Good question is what fuel are we on for 2019.
As far as complaints, some are valid, some are “out there” and some just don’t affect me. I have come to learn nobody cares if my class gets screwed, only if their’s does. I do find some racers just seem to fight the management by default. I have also come to not depend on people for parts or service at the local track. If I don’t already have the spare I consider it not available. If I can’t do it I consider it “ain’t gonna happen”. At least not in a time frame that would work for a race weekend. I keep a lot of those 50 cent parts that will have you dead in the water if you don’t have them on hand.

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Tech should be getting fuel samples every race day. Badger requires spec gas from a local gas station. The Head of Tech for that day will get samples of regular for the 206 classes and premium for all other classes at the start of every race day, so you’re always good to get fuel that morning.

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I use non ethanol 87 fuel. Never had green in the carb or bowl. I have ran different races that has spec fuel for 87 from a certain pump. Yea I didn’t get my fuel from them and passed every time. Some tracks require 90 that I race and I haven’t tried the 87 non ethanol since their fuel is also non ethanol. I might try to get it tested this year just to see if it passes. If it does it will save me $2 a gallon

We learned the hard way. Always get fresh gas the day of the race. I used 1 week old gas from the same station the track specced and got a dq.

Any 89-91 octane is fine. The stock LO 206 is not a high compression eng that does not need 110 octane fuel

About how long do people expect non ethanol fuel to stay race worthy?

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I use fresh gas for every race, what’s left gets put in the truck

Club spec is 93 octane from the track. (Carbs get gunked up if you don’t clean it out)

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I thought that using non-ethanol fuel prevented this from happening.

Pretty sure our tracks fuel is marked as non ethanol. But have seen countless carb issues this year due to lack maintenance. Myself included. I drain bowl after the day, and clean jets before each race now.