Regular or Premium Gas

[DragonLady58]

Well, on my Thunder Big Bore 1500, which has pretty high compression, a good bit of cam, porting, etc....after I adjusted out my Wiseco Tuner, and installing the Iridium plugs, my engine didn't ping as much running lower grades of fuel. Only 1 engine, I run premium, never any problem with pinging/knocking. It just likes premium fuel....On my other one, I run regular, but I add lucas octane booster. In the hot summer, fully loaded, pouring the coals to it....it might slightly only if I get into some really crappy fuel.

[MAS Tequila]

Most of the time I run what they call down here, Rec 90.

It's alcohol free, and 90 octane.

I don't need the 90 octane, but I'd rather not have the ethanol.

[DragonLady58]

And with the ethanol, since we have opened up this can of worms again....you will actually have to burn more fuel, to make the exact same horsepower with ethanol fuel. The more ethanol thats added, the more fuel mileage changes.
They want to make bikes quieter, burn cleaner, get more gas mileage, burning a substandard fuel.
They are now doing to bikes what they did to cars. Having to completely redesign a engine to burn a certain fuel.
Remember, they started watering down fuel with alcohol, because America had to buy fuel from other sources overseas....
Now, a few years ago, we, the American People, found out that North America sits atop the biggest gas reserve in the world. Have the farmers stopped raising corn to help power our bikesand cars? No! Have the stopped watering down the fuel with Alcohol? No! Are they gonna change those laws back to what they were, or lower the price? No!
Bottom line is the political structure is doing the 'don't look at the man behind the curtain' scenero....and we're paying for, again.
More people are riding bikes, more people are driving cars, so they outta be rolling in the money, right? Well, has the fuel stayed the same? Nope, has gradually gone up.
Has the formula for our gasoline changes the past few years? Have they had to redesign the refineries because of the changes, no. Prices still gradually going up, penny by penny....
You can get a 2002 FI Nomad, add the tuner, add a decent exhaust and air cleaner, and that bike will burn just as clean as the new models....
Its a crying assed shame that that our cost of living pay hasn't kept up with the taxes on our bikes, on our fuel, on our rent and house interest payments.
This ball of crap is powered by the fraking all mighty dollar!
This is just my opinion, and had nothing to do with Vulcan Bagget Forums....
Just my 2 Pecos.....

[Chuck A.]

Just one thing to remember. We do sit on top of a large pool of crude but we buy from around the world to slow down the consumption of ours. The car companies have been trying for 40 years to find an alternative the fasil fuels. I for one don't care for electric vehicles. We suck the worlds supply down to rock bottum this country would be devastated if we did not have a backup supply. Imagine what a barrel would cost if the world supply hit bottom. Corn grows a new supply every year. Just saying...…..

[DragonLady58]

I hear what your saying Chuck. And I do agree. My Uncle worked for the Big Oil Co's for 40 years. Back in the 70's, they hired these drilling rigs to poke wells in the gulf of mexico. For every 10 wells they'd drill and hit oil, they'd cap the wells off, and only use 2. In other words, there are hundreds of wells, capped on the gulf floor.
Reason? Money....when the demand really ramped up, and there was the opp. to raise prices, they could raise prices and uncap a few of them. Theres still 100s....thats not counting the oil fields up north. A few of these were natural gas, but the majority are oil wells....
Its all about the money, and gas isn't going down any time soon.
Diesel in the late 80s was cheap, till mercedesbrought the super popular 325s here. That, along with the diesel pickups everyone started going to, to save money, diesel rose in price over $1 a gallon in a year, then steadily gone up since.
A diesel was designed to run off the residue oil in cotton mills, seed mills back in the late 1800s/early1900s.
Diesel fuel didn't come about till the 60s, there was fuel oil.
The military has large diesel tanks on bases, they pour the left over oils from everything, filtered oil change oil into these tanks to run their diesels.
We used to run one of our trucks off fryer oil....they were paying folks to come get the stuff. Back in the 90s, they were co's coming around signing contracts, buying their fryer oil.
We used to laugh, driving around, smelling like fried chicken or french fries, at the exhaust pipe....