Best Octane Booster to use?

[donpearsall]

I installed a 40 shot wet Nitrous system on my 1979 Suzuki GS1000. I want to dyno it with the nitrous working. However the station here that used to have 110 octane does not have it anymore. Do octane boosters really make pump gas the same as race gas? Or are they snake oil? Although the engine can handle 40 more HP, I still want to use the correct octane.

Thanks

[1leg]

I wouldn't trust in on NOS. Not worth the risk, Back in the day when I drove a old Ford that had 10.5-1 compression it did help keep it from pinging on pump gas.

[Stainless1]

Don, we never ran N20 on anything but race gas...always 110 octane...  Of course that is what we tuned for, 5lbs of N20 to 1lb of gas.  I would recommend that you only run your nitrous with race gas.  Of course if the mixture isn't correct you will know it in the first couple of seconds. 

[Superhawk]

My .02 is the following and comes from direct experience.

If you back off timing a few degrees, run a colder plug, and have the correct A/F mixture (12.3 ish) you will be just fine on pump gas. This will all vary a bit with compression, cylinder head design, exhaust etc., but you can run nitrous on any motor so long as you set it up correctly. It also matters how much nitrous you are running, wet or dry, and how quickly you ramp in the shot and for how long you maintain it. Higher octane fuel is of course good, but remember that the whole purpose is to resist detonation. Run the motor on a dyno NA, then add nitrous progressively while monitoring AF ratio. On a carb engine, it is difficult to set it up so that it runs well on and off nitrous without a jetting change. Therefore a wet kit is preferred but of course the cost multiplies quickly. However, you can easily make a homegrown wet kit that will work very well. You can also use water meth to cool the combustion chamber and have higher octane. That might be the best choice overall.

DD