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Going back to Regular

7K views 45 replies 26 participants last post by  kjd15 
#1 · (Edited)
With gas hitting 3.40 a Gal how many people that were running premium have gone back to regular?

Talking about the V6 guy's. We know the V8 require Premium.
 
#2 ·
Not me. 93 or higher! I didn't buy a racehorse to feed it puppy chow!
 
#9 ·
You know it runs fine off 87 octane for the v6 and the v8...hence the low octane tables.
 
#10 ·
premium is roughly $0.24-$0.30 more per gallon and say you put 15-18 gallons in every time you fill up... that's about $3.60 - $5.40 more per fill up.

if you can't afford $5 more for premium, then you can't afford a brand new camaro!

that being said, if your filling up your V6 with premium, even though the factory recommends regular, you are just wasting $5 every time you fill up.

the only time you should fill your V6 up with premium is if it has been tuned to run premium. you are not getting any added performance or fuel mileage by running premium in an untuned V6 camaro!
 
#11 ·
premium is roughly $0.24-$0.30 more per gallon and say you put 15-18 gallons in every time you fill up... that's about $3.60 - $5.40 more per fill up.

if you can't afford $5 more for premium, then you can't afford a brand new camaro!

that being said, if your filling up your V6 with premium, even though the factory recommends regular, you are just wasting $5 every time you fill up.

the only time you should fill your V6 up with premium is if it has been tuned to run premium. you are not getting any added performance or fuel mileage by running premium in an untuned V6 camaro!
Sorry, the manual states use 87 octane or higher. No where does it recommend just 87.

A few folks have data logged the use of the higher octane and found no timing pulled using the higher octane where as using 87 will cause spark retard.

The car runs fine on 87 but if your looking for a little extra get up and go a tank of 93 once in a while ain't bad.

Nice thing about the V6 is we can run 93 and go back to 87 with no problems.
 
#14 ·
The book says a V8 can run regular but it might knock and ping, suggesting that if it doesn't do that you've not much to worry about. I'll be trying regular next tank to sway, but it'll always be a Tier 1 Gas.

Tib
 
#15 ·
v8 premium is recommended, that's what i would use if i had the 8...but with the v6 reg. is recommended...i just go with the recommendation.
 
#16 ·
I've never ran premium in my v6...but I do know from experience....I ran 93 in my '08 Cobalt a few times and did get a little better mpg as I recall I got 40MPG that time normally it got 37. Next time I fill up I may fill it up with premium just to see. I'm not a fan of spending more money for the higher octane but if it improved my mpg by say 3 mpg I'd be happy. I do run 93 in my GSXR...but it's only 4 gallon tank :lol:
 
#19 ·
I always run premium in my V6. I "feel" like I can tell the difference in performance. Certainly, I can tell the difference in the lighter weight of my wallet!!
 
#22 ·
I just filled Mine up Sunday $3.71 a Gallon for premium. Dam near $60 :eek:

Even my Truck has a 5.3L in it so I figured since im going to be driving further to work soon after my house is built I needed a beater.


I bought a 2000 S10 4 beater , auto with 51,000 Miles on the odometer for 2K

I forgot what it was like to buy regular :lol:
 
#24 ·
:lol: no matter what forum I go on gas always seems to ruffly feathers :lol: Got in a heated argument a year or so ago on gixxer.com for the same thing...some douche was on there basically telling everyone that was running 93 in their 600's that they were wasting their money blah blah blah the book only calls for 87 blah blah blah...my argument there was I have always ran 93 when gas spiked 2 years ago i tried 87 in it a few times the bike spit and coughed...back fired a lot when i pushed it hard (16K RPM's)...with 93 in the tank it was smooth and crisp!!

Now to the Camaro's I've never ran 93 in my car i may try it next fill up just to see. I drive my car to work 4 days a week every week and get consistently 25-26 MPG now if I fill up the end of this week with 93 and end up getting 27-29 MPG then i can honestly say it was the gas....we'll see .....

Bottom line is with out trying to hurt any feelings here nobody signed their name on the dotted line but you when you picked up your camaro no matter wither its a SS or RS/LT its your baby and your choice to run what ever you want....hell I wouldn't mind running a little 110 Cam2 to cruise around in on Saturday nights if I could afford it..ahhh smells soooo good hahaha....maybe mix a little 93 with it to make it go a little longer :lol:
 
#25 ·
its all about driving habits. and it will take more than one tank of gas to figure out if it gets better mileage. maybe try it for an entire month to make a good decision.

also, it comes down to driving habits. if you add premium to get better mileage, you might subconsciously try and drive it softer and if you do drive it softer, of course your going to get better mileage. if you put it in to get better performance, your going to of course push it harder to see if it feels different. if you try and do both at the same time, your going to find your fuel mileage will drop because your pushing the car harder.

its all about the timing. i can't say if the camaro computer can tell what fuel it is running or not, only the guy that designed the ECM for that engine can tell us or not. but when the ECM is reflashed or the negative battery terminal is removed for awhile, the computer will reset. that is when it will start relearning your driving habits. if you go into it thinking premium will help without reflashing the computer, your going to find yourself wasting $5 every fill up.

maybe it will work and advance the timing after you fill up with premium and reset the ECM, maybe it won't.


if you really want to prove this theory. have someone else fill the car up for you, not telling you what they put in, run that same fuel for a month, making the same person fill it up without you around. after that month goes by get the car dynoed, then have that person start filling up with the other grade fuel, reset the ECM and have them fill up with that fuel for a month while you drive it. once that month is up, dyno the car again. the trick is YOU cannot know what fuel the car has in it ;) and compare each month. maybe even do it with 2 or 3 tanks of fuel, but 1 simply isn't enough to make a true comparison
 
#28 ·
4.18/gal for premium here in Alaska... Glad I left the Camaro back in Oregon.
 
#30 ·
tough to find that, and you gotta pay a pretty penny for it!

i put StaBil Marine formula in mine every fill up. it's 2x concentrated over regular StaBil so the bottle lasts longer, it has 4x the cleaners in it so no sludge build up on injectors, and it also treats ethanol so it doesn't cause condensation inside the tank or eat up the fuel lines
 
#32 ·
Why is it the V8 Guy's know more about the V6's than the guy's that drive one?
Why is it they want to tell us how our engine's run on premium over regular?
They must be engineers or maybe they helped design our V6 cars.

Look, guy's the V6 runs a little better on the Premium fuels, the book says to run 87 octane or BETTER, not 87 is the only fuel to run in the V6.

I'm not saying I'm getting more horsepower, nor am I saying I'm getting better MPG's, all I am saying is I get a better response out of the car with premium over regular.

Now back to my question, Those V6 guy's who were running Premium, did you go back to regular when the gas spiked?

The reason I ask this is for the last year I've been running Premium in my V6, and when fuel hit the 3.20 mark I went back to regular.

Did you see any problems with switching back to regular? I have not seen any problems at all.
 
#33 ·
My CTS has the same 3.6 as the Camaro and I believe it calls for 89 and up in the manual. Never filled it with anything but 87 because its a v6 and Im not looking to squeeze every single hp out of it for a DD.
 
#36 ·
Another thing to consider is that our cars are probably factory tuned with 10% ethanol from the factory, so thats a whole other topic to chew on.
 
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