EmailHow Much Money Have you Wasted Buying Premium Fuel for Your Porsche?
August 8, 2008
Even with the price of oil dropping quickly, the prices at the pump reflect this change much more slowly. Premium gasoline (91 to 93 octane) in my part of the world is still well north of $4.00 per gallon. Imagine my surprise then after reading a NY Times article that it just might be that I’ve been wasting my money for a very long time. Sure, there are some performance trade-offs, but if the article is to be believed, they are very minor. Let’s explore this topic some more.
My most modern Porsche is a 1997 993 C4S. According to the manual I should only use a “premium” grade unleaded fuel with an Octane rating of 91 or higher. Because I love my car and I don’t want to hurt it, and, I had no reason to believe I could do anything but what the manual said, I have always run premium fuel in my car. In most instances 93 octane. When I can’t find 93 I put in at least 91. What is an Octane rating? Good question.
Octane Ratings Defined
According to How Stuff Works:
The octane rating of gasoline tells you how much the fuel can be compressed before it spontaneously ignites. Lower-octane gas (like “regular” 87-octane gasoline) can handle the least amount of compression before igniting.
The name “octane” comes from the following fact: When you take crude oil and “crack” it in a refinery, you end up getting hydrocarbon chains of different lengths. These different chain lengths can then be separated from each other and blended to form different fuels. For example, you may have heard of methane, propane and butane. All three of them are hydrocarbons. Methane has just a single carbon atom. Propane has three carbon atoms chained together. Butane has four carbon atoms chained together. Pentane has five, hexane has six, heptane has seven and octane has eight carbons chained together.
It turns out that heptane handles compression very poorly. Compress it just a little and it ignites spontaneously. Octane handles compression very well — you can compress it a lot and nothing happens. Eighty-seven-octane gasoline is gasoline that contains 87-percent octane and 13-percent heptane (or some other combination of fuels that has the same performance of the 87/13 combination of octane/heptane). It spontaneously ignites at a given compression level, and can only be used in engines that do not exceed that compression ratio.
For some, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about Octane; for others, it’s probably not enough. Stay with me as I’m not trying to turn this into a technical post. To sum things up, we use a higher Octane rated fuel in our Porsches to avoid spontaneous combustion that could cause knocking, thus potentially damaging our motors. This begs the question…
What is Engine Knocking and How can it Damage a Motor?
Almost all cars use four-stroke gasoline engines. One of the “strokes” is the compression stroke, where the engine compresses a cylinder-full of air and gas into a much smaller volume before igniting it with a spark plug. When gas ignites by compression rather than because of the spark from the spark plug, it causes knocking in the engine. Knocking can damage an engine, by creating excessive and premature wear to the piston and cylinder walls, so it is not something you want to have happening.
Today’s newer cars, including Porsches, have sophisticated computerized engine monitoring. These electronic brains monitor the activity in our motors and can actually advance or retard the timing (when the spark fires to ignite the fuel and push down the piston) in order to curtail any potential knocking before it happens.
What about warranty issues you ask? Won’t running lower than the recommended fuel octane ratings void your warranty. Tony Fouladpour, as spokesman for Porsche North America, was quoted in the NY Times article as saying,
“If you want the car to perform at its maximum capability, the best choice would not be 87, but we do not forbid it.”
I’m not suggesting you run out and start putting 87 octane in your Porsche, in fact just the opposite. I realize the title to this article may be a little misleading, but it is not intentional. In fact, it’s the question I wanted to answer, it just took me a long time to get there. So, how much money have you wasted buying premium fuel for your Porsche? My answer is none.
Let’s face it, sure you might save a couple of bucks a fill-up, but do you really want to take the risk? Curiously enough, Porsche doesn’t set a cut-off date for the statement made by Mr. Fouladpour. Clearly you don’t want to run anything than what is recommended in anything older than a 996 model. I just wouldn’t trust the engine control systems to do a good enough job. To me, saving a few bucks at each fill up just isn’t worth the potential of a five figure engine rebuild.
There are quite a few threads on both Rennlist and Pelican on this subject. I’d be curious to know what each of you think? What are you running for gas in your car? What about Ethanol and its effect on your motor and performance? I’ll have more on this subject next week.
[Source: How Stuff Works and NY Time online edition]
A Simple Tip to Increase the Gas Mileage in Your Porsche
July 30, 2008
Today’s post comes from guest blogger Andrew Granieri. You may remember Andrew from his great set of posts that outlined the detailing and transformation of the paint on his Porsche 944. As a refresher, Andrew is a student at Miami University, studying Technical & Scientific Communications with a double Minor in Marketing & Entrepreneurship. He enjoys maintaining his 1986 Porsche 944 and joy-riding in his father’s 997 whenever possible. Here’s what Andrew had to say…
Drivers rejoice! The price of oil recently dropped significantly, but we all know fuel prices are wildly inconsistent day to day, week to week. A poll was posed a couple months ago on this blog, asking drivers if they changed their driving habits in these strange times, when $3.89 is considered a great deal for a gallon of gasoline. I didn’t think of changing my habits much when the poll was created, but now that I commute from Cincinnati to Cleveland on the weekends, I’ve reconsidered. Over the past two months, I’ve experimented with my driving style and found that small changes can in fact, make a profound impact on my mileage as well as my wallet.
I feel I should note that I have always supported the idea of driving a car as it was designed to be driven. While (sigh) slow by today’s standards, my normally-aspirated 944 wasn’t designed with puttering around in mind. In the past 3 years that I’ve owned it, 80% of the time I’ve been behind the wheel was time spent really driving it; shifting at or past 5,000 RPMS (once up to temp, of course!), spirited down-shifts, etc. Perhaps this accounts for my catastrophic ring and pinion failure earlier this year? – nah…
Gas mileage is great for a Porsche
That said, one would think my mileage on the road is about as poor as it is on the track. Not so! I did some rough calculations from last season and found my track mileage to be in the neighborhood of 7-12 mpg, which is pretty bad! However, on the street, as enthusiastic as I am behind the wheel I’ve found I consistently get between 22-27mpg, depending on my city-highway driving ratio. While that mileage doesn’t put a Prius to shame, it’s certainly respectable for a Porsche. But I knew from the way I drove that it was capable of more, and my job in Cleveland gave me the perfect opportunity to try out a few things.
My Oxford apartment is about 260 miles away from downtown Cleveland, which makes for a lot of freeway driving. However, my daily commute to work is from a suburb 40 minutes outside of town, often in stop and go rush hour traffic, so I’m still getting a fair amount of “city” driving in as well. 944’s came with a surprisingly large 21.1 gallon fuel tank, and I fall into the elite (read: poorer than they look) group of people who can say they drive a Porsche and fill up with 87 octane at the pump. I’ve now gone through several tanks of fuel, with dramatic results, with only one major change to my driving style: throttle control.
As hard as it is to resist the urge to drive a bit faster, I’ve managed a few thousand miles this summer not shifting higher than 3,000 RPMs and surprisingly, the difference in fuel economy has been astounding. Now for some quick and dirty math: if I average my range, mentioned above, of avg. mpg — 22 and 27, I get 24.5 mpg with my typical driving style. Assuming I drive until the car’s almost empty and consume 20 gallons of fuel, the MPG comes out to 490 miles covered — very respectable, even if it’s in part to the large fuel tank. Twice now since I started driving less aggressively, I’ve put 20.2 and 20.1 gallons in with the odometer at 565 and 540 miles respectively — that’s roughly 28 and 27 mpg!
32 Miles per gallon in a 944
Not bad, you say, but my record — and this is ASTOUNDING — a touch under 640 miles and I filled the tank with 20 gallons and some change — that’s close to THIRTY-TWO miles per gallon! I’m convinced I’ll never be that lucky with fuel economy, as there were a few extenuating circumstances that week; I’d left Cincinnati for my job in Cleveland job at 2 am, which left me with ZERO traffic to slow down for so my speed and fuel consumption was slow and consistent for the 250 mile drive up and during the week I also was very fortunate to avoid the brunt of rush hour traffic. I have all my receipts to prove fuel purchases, but didn’t document the miles and forgot to snap a photo of my dashboard before resetting my odometer — should I repeat the same feat with as much success as 32 mpg I’ll be sure to take a photo, even if it’s from my camera phone. I will admit with fuel prices starting to come down, it may be hard for me to continue this thrifty driving style; time will tell.
Give us some feedback
But proving to the world that a 22-year old four-banger can be fuel-efficient wasn’t my intent with this writing. I want to ask fellow Porsche owners — what’s the highest MPG you’ve achieved in your car? I’m also issuing a challenge — spend a few weeks not riding to the red line, I know these cars were made to be driven, but if you are fortunate enough to say a Porsche is your daily driver, it is worth the patience to investigate your fuel economy — you might surprise yourself! Post your MPGs in a comment below and don’t forget to let us know what you’re driving!
This may be followed up with me attempting something similar with my old man’s 997 C4S, which I believe averages 19.2 mpg according to the on-board computer – but for me to conduct such a test would require him to willingly relinquish his keys.
A Better way to Jack-Lift Your Porsche. Brute Industries Race Ramps
June 18, 2008
When it comes to maintaining your Porsche, especially if you are a back-yard mechanic or a DIYer, sometimes the hardest part about the project can be preparing your car and getting it jacked up and onto stands quickly and safely. You know what I mean. If you’re not fortunate enough to own a lift, then you are relegated to jacking up a side, placing a jack-stand, moving to the other side, repeat, etc. etc. Most likely, this is only after several hit or miss attempts of getting the jack positioned just right and making sure you don’t damage the car or scratch your nicely finished garage floor. Lastly, you better hope you didn’t buy the cheap stands. Having your Porsche crash/crush down on top of you is the last thing you want to be thinking about when you are underneath trying to remove a stubborn bolt or hard to reach oil filter. There has to be a better way…
Race Ramps Discount Code
Enter Brute Industries, Inc. the manufacturer and distributor of the patented Race Ramp products. I came across Brute Industries one day while I was trolling YouTube for Porsche related videos. After seeing the video below (you might want to mute the volume as the soundtrack is a little annoying), I reached out to Rich Heinz, the founder and inventor of Race Ramps and struck up a conversation. Rich was kind enough to send me some of Brute Industries product for my use and review. I warned Rich in advance that my review would be objective and that if I didn’t like his product I would say so. He seemed pretty confident that this wouldn’t be the case. In fact, he was so confident that I would like the product and want to recommend it that he is offering a discount to my readers. So, after reading my review, if you decide you want to purchase any of Brute Industries products be sure to use the following Coupon Code “993c4s8” when entering your order. This coupon code entitles you to a 10% discount off your entire order of any Brute Industry product (not just the Race Ramps) and you can use it and share it as many times as you like.
Among a number of amazing products offered by Brute are the 56” and 67” one or two piece Race Ramps. These light weight, industrial strength ramps allow you to simply drive your Porsche (or any car for that matter) right onto them and provide amazing clearance (better than most jacks and stands) and titanium like strength.
My Porsche 993, while at what some might call SUV ride height, is still quite close to the ground. To determine the proper size Race Ramp for my vehicle I used one of two simple methods prior to ordering. You can use this easy to follow guide and decide for yourself.
I opted for the standard 67” Race Ramps in the two piece configuration (more on this later). The 67” configuration is perfect for most cars with lower ground clearance. However, if you have lowered your Porsche, have a Turbo, or extremely low ground clearance you will want to consider the optional Race Ramp Extenders. These simple add-ons provide the extra clearance you need to drive your car up the Race Ramps and are very fairly priced. You can see the pictures below of just how close my exhaust was to the ramp from a clearance standpoint using the standard 67′ Race Ramps.
Race Ramps are Light and Strong
My Race Ramps arrived just a few days after talking with Rich. As I watched the UPS driver pull the carton from his truck I was a little apprehensive. Given the size of the box, my first thought was, “Wow, these things are going to be cumbersome and heavy to move around.” Boy way I wrong! The UPS driver simply put the box on his shoulder and walked up my driveway as if the box was the lightest thing. Turns out it was. The entire 67” set-up was less than 30 lbs (or 15 lbs per ramp). After taking them out of the box, the set-up was a snap. I simply placed them on the ground behind my rear wheels, centered them, made sure they were aligned, started the car and backed onto them.
Backing onto them for the first time made me a little nervous, I have to admit. Because they are so light weight, it didn’t seem possible they could handle the weight of the car. As it turns out, each ramp can handle up to 1500 lbs for a maximum weight of 3000 lbs. While the ramps can handle tires up to 12 inches in width, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for error if you veer to one side or the other. If I were doing it again with my 993, for the first time, I would definitely recommend a spotter (I’m running 285/30 – 18 on the rear of my 993).
After slowly making my way up the ramp, the lip at the far end makes a nice safety catch to keep you from rolling back off of them, I was very pleased with the ground clearance, stability and more importantly the sturdiness provided by these simple to use Race Ramps. In fact, as you can see in one of the picture below, I had gone a little to one side and the Race Ramp handled it just like the car was centered perfectly. There wasn’t the slightest bit of droop or sagging on the side of the ramp. Once up on the ramps be sure to chock the wheels still on the ground for safety. You can do so with a small piece of wood or Race Ramp makes some very inexpensive and lightweight wheel chocks that work quite nicely with this set-up.
As I mentioned earlier, you can purchase either one piece or two piece ramp. The ramps that Rich sent to me were of the two piece variety. I would highly recommend these for a Porsche application. From the videos on this post and the picture below (sorry about the Corvette, I couldn’t get a good picture of my car from the side) you can see how the two piece gives you side access to your car for some of those hard to reach spots. The one piece design, while very functional, doesn’t allow this access.
I have only two suggestions for improvement on the ramps I was sent:
- If possible, I would offer a slightly wider size for cars with very wide street tires and possibly even wider track tires.
- If practical, it might be interesting to integrate a slight lip or rail on the side of the ramps to act as a guide when backing up (for those of us with rear-engine cars). This lip or rail would simply act as a safety mechanism to ensure that you are backing straight onto the ramp and not veering to one side or the other (very similar to how the rear safety lip functions).
Race Ramps are a Superior Designed Product
All in all I think the Race Ramps are a superior designed product and will now be using them instead of my jack and jack-stands. In addition, Rich has sent me a set of wheel cribs that can be used in place of jack-stands. I have not yet had a chance to try these out, but from the looks of them and my experience with the ramps I’m sure they will work just as well.
Don’t forget that Rich is offering a 10% discount for my readers. If you decide you want to order something from Brute Industries, be it the Race Ramps, Trailer Ramps, Wheel Cribs, etc. simply add in the coupon code of “993c4s8” when prompted and you will automatically receive a 10% discount.
I hope you found this review helpful and I’ll be posting another one in a few weeks on the wheel cribs.
