How much tonque and horesepower are we talkin’ here Gary?
Depends on which octane and what you are using now. We have a dyno from a Mustang 500 hp car on 93 pump fuel. We added Mach 116 and got 91 hp and 72 lbs of torque. I would guess a couple of hp on the smaller kart motor. Torque is what you would want the most increase in, so you could pass. The shipping charges are crazy. HazMat fee of 33.00 on a 5 gallon jug. Plus it weighs almost 60 lbs. What most of our customers are doing is chip in buy the first 5-gallon jug. Run it …Then they place an order over $3000.00 where you would get free shipping on a single octane,
A couple things to think about here is that most kart engines don’t run a high enough compression ratio to get a benefit from race gas. I remember back in Yamaha our engines actually ran better on 93 pump gas at the club than they did on 110 race gas. I believe engines like an X30 do need 110 to run well but I don’t know specifically which engines prefer 110 vs 93.
Another thing is most series have a spec fuel to run. Our club has a specific gas station they get fuel to test from, and the traveling series all have a spec gas, usually either Sunoco or VP. If you wanted to get more sales in karting (which isn’t nearly as much per person, we’ll go through maybe 5 gallons in a typical weekend) you would have to go through the race organizers to promote your gas, not the racers here. We really don’t have a say in which fuel we run at a track.
So I am going to wave my admin flag a little bit, because although the thread topic is about different types of pump fuel for karts, we try to stay away from hype posts/trying to get people to buy stuff. (IE: ‘Our stuff is great. Order now.’
Not a huge deal in this case, just something to bring up.
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I use 93 octane pump gas and Phillips66 Injex in my Leopard - no problems to report so far. I take the header off once in a while and shine a light on the piston through the spark plug hole to check the mixture, but it’s pretty forgiving fuel. I remember using 87 octane Gulf pump gasoline in my Rotax Max and gaining a few hundredths per straightaway over the legal MS98L, but the jetting is a little harder with the ethanol in that fuel and the possibility of detonation - it always felt “soggy” because it had to be enriched.
Coming back to this from a while back, but I just realised North America measures pump gas octane different to everywhere else in the world. Europe uses RON (research octane number) on the Pump. North America uses the average of RON and MON (motor octane number) which is typically 8-11 points lower.
So if its reads 93 on the pump its probably about 98 RON which is more then acceptable for every TAG motor out there. We used to run that stuff most of the time in Formula A with almost free timing and head volumes. My only caveat would be try and use a popular gas station so there is quick turn over of the fuel in their tanks. You want to avoid stale fuel.
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You didn’t have to run that fancy Atol control fuel? Lucky you ha.
Again, my main concern is that we’re only looking at the octane number… it’s important to take the composition into consideration too. It’s less of an issue in UK\Ireland where the temp swings are not bad, but in the US they ethanol content can vary a lot.
When everyone found out Atol was the same as pump fuel it all sort of fell apart. But we did run the Atol fuel at Super 1, yes.
What are thinking, like composition of the fuel to run at low temperatures, and/or detergents etc. They are different from brand to brand but almost certainly won’t be present in a race fuel right.