They put 87 in my car. About 50 miles into the tank I put a bottle of "The Outlaw" octane booster and topped it off with 93. I've been good about staying out of boost, maybe only once or twice I actually boosted a little. I plan on documenting it with the Sales Manager when he returns from his vacation. My question is, is there anything else I should do until I run through this tank? I have contemplated another bottle of octane booster but I didn't want to go nuts with it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated... thanks

Pump the damn gas out of your tank!

How?

How do you know? I say run it until the needle is below E then fill up with high octane. Half way through the new tank reset your ECU.

When I picked up my car my sales person said, "They let me drive it down the street to put the gas in it. I filled it up with the good stuff for you too." He said that as if he was doing me a favor. So I asked him if he knew that the owners manual specifically states 93 octane. His response, "Ohh, no I didn't." Apparantly there is nothing on the car when it arrives to remind the people doing the PDI that it must be filled up with premium. Very disturbing in my opinion. I almost think that there should be something like a 93 on the fuel gauge as a reminder, especially for those that might be letting others drive the car.

Keith

if ur really care, there's a drain for the gas tank underneath the car. You can see the bolt for it near the gas-tank guard.

Don

Interestingly enough he told me even the best dealer's gas is worse than 87 from a reputable gas station like Exxon. Nonetheless, I want to fix this correctly. The engine is too new to go screwing around.

Ok, maybe I'll stroll up to the local Suby dealer and get them to drain it since I have no safe place to do so myself.

Dude don't get paraniod about it. Just run through the tank and fill up with the proper stuff on the next fill. nuff said.

That Outlaw octane booster is basically useless.

Drain the tank if you can do it safely. That's a lot of gasoline to dispose of. :(

Otherwise, a few things come to mind. If you can find a Sunoco station nearby which sells GT 100, run your tank down to about 2/3 full, being very careful to keep away from wide-open-throttle conditions or high boost. Top off with GT 100. 2/3 tank of 87 octane and 1/3 tank of 100 octane will mix to about 91.3 octane, which is better than most "premium" pump gas in California. Drive the car to the side of the gas station, park it and shut it off. Bounce the rear end up and down a couple dozen times to mix the old gas with the new gas. Wait ten minutes. Drive away.

To find locations that sell Sunoco GT 100: http://www.racegas.com/gt100locals/default.asp

If you're seriously in a hurry to bring your octane up, use about 3 gallons of fuel from your car and then add 3 gallons of toluene or xylene to the tank (buy it at a local paint supply store, around here it's about $8 a gallon for xylene). Shake and stir as shown above. :) Toluene and xylene have octane ratings around 114-118; you can increase octane number significantly with just a couple gallons. 13 gallons of 87 octane mixed with 3 gallons of toluene/xylene will give you an effective octane number of 92-93.

Hehe, hard not to get paranoid about such a big investment.

But ok, I'll just be gentle.

Just drive it around with light throttle until you use up the gas.

So the salesmen had a chance to beat the crap out of your car before purchase?! Suck for you I guess. Id report everything you told us to SOA.

I'm not sure where you inferred that from. The car had exactly 6 miles on it and was in the showroom when I took delivery, it also had no gas in it. They didn't even get the chance to beat it up.

a note on octane boosters...stuff like outlaw and others claim an increase of 1 or 2 points of octane...this is what they mean be a point...it will rasie 91 to 91.1 they are talking tenths of a point...that stuff is a total joke....follow other adive given here...

for those of you who have not yet picked up your car, just ask the salesman to let you go with him when he fills it up. I was lucky enough to get a voucher for a tank of gas and did it myself.

Boy that is complete crap now isn't it :-)

I'm going to be a good boy and run it down. I haven't even given it more than a 1/3rd throttle yet. It seems to be burning fast and I think by this weekend or early next week I'll be ready for a fillup.

The Subaru dealer local told me I should be ok as well if I'm not stupid.

I did inform my contact at SoA though and asked them to start informing dealers of this.

Just curious, but are you hearing det.?

hokiewrx: I speak from car dealership experience. Seeing the amount of miles other cars have had 6 miles on the ODO was plenty of time to hit WOT up and down the street a few times.

Heck, he could have let it bounce of the rev limiter for 10 minutes straight if he wanted and that wouldnt show on the ODO.

No, I have not heard any detonation. I have completely stayed out of boost and only 1/3rd throttle.

Originally posted by ciper
hokiewrx: I speak from car dealership experience. Seeing the amount of miles other cars have had 6 miles on the ODO was plenty of time to hit WOT up and down the street a few times.

Heck, he could have let it bounce of the rev limiter for 10 minutes straight if he wanted and that wouldnt show on the ODO.

Troll alert.:eek:

How am I a troll?

Ok, here's the fix...
Burn it all off over time!

I had similar concerns but wasn't going to go getting in my dealers face about it.

So what I did was drive the car to 1/2 tank and then top off with 93. Drive the car again and down to 1/2 tank then top off with 93. Drive the car some more to 1/2 tank and again top off with 93.

By the third top off you can be sure without much dount that what ever was in there prior is now floating in the atmosphere, at least until it rains.

As you are in a new car and still in the break in period you won't be jumping on it hard anyway (right?) so this questionable octane thing is really of no major concern.

Fill-up with good gas and enjoy your day...

- Janq

"Shut the fu*k up! A revolutionary new form of therapy." - Dennis Leary

All you lucky guys making fun of our CA 91. I have to keep so much racing gas around just to make it 94!

So am I nuts or does 87 octane burn faster hence less MPG or does the STi just burn gas like a pyro with a torch? (yes that analogy sucks, forgive me, it's early ;-))

My first tank was babied and resulted in 13.5 mpg. Since then I've seen as much as 23.9 (mostly highway) and have average 19.2 over 1150 miles.

I've seen similar results with our new Forester XT: 15.7 first, 24.3 high and 19.0 average over 970 miles.

Either the first tanks weren't actually full, or mileage makes a quick increase over the first few hundered miles.

Originally posted by hokiewrx
So am I nuts or does 87 octane burn faster hence less MPG or does the STi just burn gas like a pyro with a torch? (yes that analogy sucks, forgive me, it's early ;-))

87 burns faster.

I have been purposefully driving around wiith my cars A/C on high to maintain a high load on the engine for ECU training purposes and have found my self to be getting about 20 mpg.
Now thats nothing for a Honda or Toyota, heck my Honda Pilot SUV does better, but for a 300HP boxer engine with AWD and mechanical diffs front, rear & center...I'm dancing with glee! :banana:

- Janq

Originally posted by jbrennen
To find locations that sell Sunoco GT 100: http://www.racegas.com/gt100locals/default.asp


this has certainly interested me, as i'll be in laconia, nh this weekend, where there is a GT 100 station.

any cons to filling up my WRX with 100 octane gas? :)

peter

A potential con could be the ECU adjusting for 100 octane and advancing the timing more for example then we you go back to 93/94 you run into some potential timing/det issues?

This is just a guess, I'm interested to hear more responses.

Does anyone have the proper ratio of one gallon of toluene to the rest of the components needed; ie marvelous mystery oil? I also read mineral spirits too but I'm wondering if I need those.

TIA.

Originally posted by hokiewrx
Does anyone have the proper ratio of one gallon of toluene to the rest of the components needed; ie marvelous mystery oil? I also read mineral spirits too but I'm wondering if I need those.

TIA.

If you're using toluene as a one-time octane boosting additive, you don't need to add anything. There are plenty of lubricants, detergents, and other additives in the pump gas that you're mixing with -- enough to make up for the lack of such additives in the toluene.

The addition of "Mystery Oil", transmission fluid, mineral spirits, etc., is really only required if you intend to use toluene as your primary fuel, or as a substantial additive over a prolonged period. The F1 teams of the turbo era in the '80s used toluene as a primary fuel and were able to run boost levels as high as 70 psi, extracting close to 1500 HP from a 1.5L engine. Pretty amazing...