Racing Fuel?

[Tam Tam]

So, the shop here is selling VP brand 'C9' racing fuel - at about $12 a gallon. Anybody here ever use that in their scooter? Is it worth it every once in a while? how about for a long distance (scooter wise)ride ? I'm thinking it might cool/fun/neat to use this in the next big rally ride...even though I did see on their website that it is 'not legal for street use-only for competition'...just curious to see if folk here have used it before. Thanks

[Raiderfn311]

OK I'll take this one. NO NO NO NO. Waste of money which could possibly hurt your engine. These engines run best on 87. Ive been where you are right now. Trust me. 87. Always. Period.

[Tam Tam]

Thanks for the heads up - I'd been looking up this stuff, but could find no endorsement for use in a scooter...except some nutjob on Youtube who talks about VP fuel while putting it into a funky scooter, but stops filming before he starts the engine. The video(s) are mostly him puttering around his garage and saying highly technical things like, "All the race car drivers use it!"...

[Raiderfn311]

The funny thing is, I started a "Racing fuel" thread in here about a year ago myself! Here's the thing. Our engines are "low-compression" engines. They dont need the extra octane. Add the fact that higher octane fuels will burn hotter, which is not good either. Ive just began (4-5 tanks) to use 87 in my scoot. I use to run 93. After reading enough on here and MV, Ive gone to 87 and I'll never go back. I do add a "small" dose of Stabil Ethanol treatment in every fill-up. Ethanol can be corrosive and attract water, both fo which are bad. I also run some Seafoam through every 3 months or so to clean out the system. Hope this is helpful.

[Tam Tam]

It is, man. MB is where I learned about Seafoam...wonderful stuff.

[ericalm]

Much of the racing stuff out there is made for racing, meaning on heavily-modified scooters that get worked on a lot and are intended for riding certain distances at certain speeds. You don't want to use most of that stuff (whether parts, oils, fuel, whatever) in your every day scooter.

[Beamster]

We have the regional distributor for Sunoco racing fuels in town and I use a couple of the mixes for various usages.

I use a non-oxygenated high octane blend for winter storage of all the bikes and equipment because it does not gum up the fuel systems and has a couple year shelf life. Since doing that there have been no more Spring start-up problems and stumbling that we used to have with "treated" pump gas. To me that alone is worth the cost of the 5 gallon pail of fuel.

I also use it year round in a vintage bike who's original octane requirement was 97 octane so there is no pump gas that it will run well on.

There is no performance gain associated with elevated octane use if your engine does not require it for either high compression or timing advance and the higher octane mix runs hotter as someone else mentioned, so you could notice idling and restart issues in the hot weather with an air cooled bike.

The advantage to the higher octane, according to the fuel rep, is that it has more additives and less likely to break down.

If you have money to burn, give it a try, but don't expect to feel anything.

[Tee Jay]

Race gas I don't think so. but nitrous?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi_pr-kIlmk