March 30th, 2018, 11:58 AM | #1 |
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Fuel at the Track: What do you guys use?
I believe Kawasaki calls for 87 octane for the street, what do you guys do at the strip or track?
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March 30th, 2018, 12:20 PM | #2 |
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87 no different just because your ringing it neck at a track then ringing it on the street.
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March 30th, 2018, 01:26 PM | #3 |
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Stop at the last gas station before the track entrance, fill the jugs and go. Same gas as normal.
You only need higher octane if you've got a seriously modified, high-compression engine. The choices are then very limited... some tracks don't have race gas available, so you need to go find your local VP Fuel dealer and buy drums of the stuff. PS: Since you're in Maine.... if you're thinking of doing track days, chime in on the NE Trackday thread.... https://www.ninjette.org/forums/showthread.php?t=308168 The season starts SOON!!!
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March 30th, 2018, 03:31 PM | #4 |
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Thanks for the info everyone. Actually, I'll be racing in Nova Scotia. The bike will come back to Maine at some point but not this year. I will check out the other thread.
One of the reasons I'm asking is that the bike was originally prepped for a race series by Kawasaki Canada and I strongly suspect they set it up on 91 (it has a PCV). I don't know why the higher octane was used: as mentioned, there's no advantage in doing so, but if they did I'm afraid to run 87. Timing is advanced 2* at larger throttle openings 6500 to redline. I don't know if that's enough to get into detonation with quicker burning fuel. Unless I can find out for sure how it was set up I'll probably run 89. What it really needs is to inhibit the air injection stuff and autotune. |
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March 30th, 2018, 04:52 PM | #5 | |
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Maybe there's something in the notes field in the PCV tune. Plug it in and see what it says. I put those notes in mine when I mapped #1 for MR12 and map #2 for 91 octane pump gas.
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March 31st, 2018, 04:35 AM | #6 |
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Whatever I can siphon out of a taco truck the night before. Just be careful, they don't run for $#!+ on diesel.
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March 31st, 2018, 06:23 AM | #7 | |
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April 1st, 2018, 04:27 AM | #8 |
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I found out it was set up on Shell V-Power i.e. highest octane available on the street. I'm not sure why but that's what was done.
The Power Commander site has a map that might work on this bike but they show 4* timing advance in similar areas. I've reached out to them, trying to find out which fuel was used. |
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April 10th, 2018, 03:04 PM | #9 |
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The higher octane is a waste of money. In fact, if you go too high on the octane you will slow down the fuel burn to a point that you actually will make less horsepower.
What isn't a waste of money is buying pump gas that is ethanol-free. The reason is that (for a given volume) ethanol has half the BTU output of gasoline. Less BTU's means less power. So if you buy gas with 10% ethanol, the math will show that you're getting 3% less power than you would with straight gasoline. When you're racing these little bikes 3% matters. It works out to almost 1 extra hp if your bike is making 30hp. Details matter if you want to win. |
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April 10th, 2018, 05:01 PM | #10 |
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April 10th, 2018, 08:26 PM | #11 |
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I was gonna say... car tuners are kinda flocking to E85 because it can put out near-race-gas HP numbers, but is still street legal. Just have to have an engine that's properly set up for it. When it comes to E10, the 250R and 300 were engineered with the proper seals and o-rings to live with low ethanol content fuel. And really, it's not going to make a pre-gen burst into flames either. Going by butt-dyno here, but I've long since stopped being snobby and filled up my race bike with the cheap stuff.
That said, E-free with a shot of Seafoam over the winter, especially on carbed bikes is a good idea.
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April 10th, 2018, 10:40 PM | #12 |
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What's Octane???
Copyright ©2004 by Dan Nguyenphuc This paper may be freely distributed, provided it is distributed in its entirety Last revised: May 13, 2004 Background There's always a lot of confusion regarding octane, octane-boosters and how they work. Typical misconceptions are evident in blank-statements like: "Higher octane fuels burn slower, thus their higher octane number" "Higher octane fuels burn hotter, therefore more power is generated" "Higher octane fuels explodes with more force, thus their higher power" All of which are untrue and are coincidental in effect, rather than causal. In actual practice, an engine has to be tuned specifically for high-octane fuels to generate extra power. If you have an engine fully-tuned and optimized for 91-octane pump gas, adding 100-octane race-gas into it will yield little if any increase. However, if you were to take that engine and increase the compression, advance ignition-timing and/or increase the boost, then you can take advantage of the higher-octane fuel. But this precludes going back to the previous lower-octane fuels. Three Kinds of Octane Boosters - 1. ORGANO-METALLICS There are three primary octane-boosting additives mixed in with gasoline: organo-metallics, ethers/alcohols and aromatics. Each one has distinct chemical properties and results (along with side-effects) on octane-boosting. Some people get these families of compounds and their effects mixed up. First, let's look at organo-metallics which is used in the little bottles of over-the-counter octane boosters, what makes them work and how they compare. By far and large, these work on the same principle as TEL-Tetra Ethyl Lead which is the principle octane-boosting component of AvGas. For automotive OTC use, a slightly less carcinogenic MMT compound is used (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl); it has pretty much the same structure as TEL, but with manganese substituted for lead. These compounds have a non-linear octane-boosting curve. The initial amounts give the most boost and adding more gives decreasing benefits. Typically you get 3-4 'points' increase with these types of additives; going from 91-octane to 91.4 octane max. I've uploaded a comparison article of these types of additives: 951 RacerX: Octane Booster Comparison As you can imagine from the metallic content, these boosters create nasty deposits in your engine. That's why they typically include a solvent such as mineral spirits to try and dissolve the deposits. Then a lubricant such as ATF or Marvel Mystery Oil is typically added to the cocktail to help your rings slide over the deposits easier and minimize the damage. If you dyno-test a car using organo-metallics (with straight-through exhaust), you can actually collect metallic pellets coming out your tailpipe. Not a good thing to be putting into your combustion chambers no less... 2. OXYGENATES The next group of octane-boosting compounds are oxygenates: ethers & alcohols which also serves an emissions purpose by bundling their own oxygen along with the fuel. The best compound here is ethanol (CH3CH2OH) with a 115-octane (R+M)/2 rating and containing 34.73% oxygen by weight. However, its high volatility with a RVP of 18 makes it unsuitable for use in warm climates for emissions control. In which case, MTBE (CH3OC(CH3)3), ETBE (CH3CH2OC(CH3)3)__ and TAME ((CH)3CCH2OCH3) are used which has more favorable RVPs of 1.5-8.0. But they also have correspondingly lower octane of 105-110 along with lower oxygen content of 15.66-18.15 by weight. Ethers & alcohols are basically hydrocarbons fuels with an extra hydroxyl -OH group added to one end. These fuel-additives reduce your gas-mileage due to the displacement of hydrogen and carbon atoms by the larger oxygen molecules. The increased molecular-mass of the compounds with the attached -OH is what gives the octane-boosting effect (absorbs energy that would have formed radical alkyl groups that causes detonation). The -OH group also makes the compound polar, water-soluble and highly reactive chemically. They will dissolve rubber and plastic fuel lines and thus their concentration in fuels is fairly limited. Thus their octane-boosting power is also reduced. Ethers and alcohols are starting to be banned in a lot of areas because their water-solubility makes tank leaks and dispersion by ground-water a big problem 3. AROMATICS The final group of octane-boosting compounds, aromatics show the most promise. Due to their stable benzene-ring structures, the compounds are non-polar and chemically stable (non-reactive). In fact, they are less volatile and less reactive than most other hydrocarbons in gasoline. This stability is what gives aromatics their octane-boosting powers. Normal gasoline typically contain around 25-30% aromatics, primarily toulene and xylene. Adding more will simply increase the octane rating and bring their concentrations up to what you find in higher-octane European gas (40-45% aromatics): Gasoline composition. So by using aromatic toluene and xylene as octane-boosters, you get none of the bad side-effects of using organo-metallics (cancer and engine-deposits) or ethers & alcohols (low gas-mileage and rotting fuel-lines). By using just two gallons of xylene in a 15-gal tank of 91-octane pump gas, you've brought the octane-rating up to 94.5 and have roughly the same aromatic content as German or French gasoline. You may also notice in the Octane Booster Comparison article above, that the best octane-boosting solution was to use unleaded race-gas; the primary octane-boosting components used are toluene and xylene. "Doesn't higher octane fuel have higher energy content and makes more power?" Well, it's not so simple. Really depends upon what you mean by 'higher' and 'energy content'. 'Octane' does not directly relate to 'energy content' or 'power' in anyway. There are many, many components and properties of gasoline that is custom-tailored by the refinery, such as specific-gravity, octane, oxygenates (ethers & alcohols), RVP-reid vapor pressure (volatility), D86-distillation curve, combustion-temperature, sensitivity, flame-front speed, VL-vapor/liquid ratio, etc. Just about each and every one of these properties can be tailored and are sometimes dependent, and sometimes independent upon each other. One of the basic measures of energy-content is BTU/gallon or Calories/gal. The amount of heat released by any given volume of fuel is directly related to the number of Hydrogen and Carbon atoms in that gallon. Oxygenated fuels that use MTBE or alcohols to have extra Oxygen onboard deliver much less energy per gallon because the oxygen atoms are simply HUGE compared to a hydrogen or carbon. Such fuels tend to deliver less mileage per gallon than non-oxygenated fuels. BUT, they do not deliver less power, because that's more of a function of air-mass ingested into the engine per 4-stroke cycle than fuel (air is tough to cram in, fuel is simple to inject). Compared to gasoline's specfic-gravity of 0.751-g/cc, toluene is 0.881-g/cc and xylene (most likely a mixture of m-xylene; o-xylene; p-xylene) is around 0.871-g/cc. This means they have more hydrogens and carbons to combust per gallon with the O2 in the air that's being pumped through the engine. The results of using large-percentage mixtures of these aromatics in your fuel is a richer mixture than before with just pure pump gas (without re-jetting). This will be safer than using the other common additive, 100LL AvGas which is lighter than gasoline and will result in lean mixtures and melted catalytics and O2-sensors. (LowLead AvGas is still contains several times more organometallics than leaded auto gasoline). I've known of several people that have destroyed some very expensive engines because they ran a large amount AvGas without re-tuning their air-fuel ratios. Besides, 100LL AvGas is only about 98-MON anyway, so it's not as effective as toluene or xylene. Octane Doesn't Predict... Another factor that octane doesn't predict is combustion temperature which may or may not relate to the power produced. It's possible to blend two mixtures of branched-chain paraffins along with aromatics to create two concoctions both of which have higher octane than pump gas, and one of them will have higher combustion temps than pump-gas, and yet the other will have lower combustion temps. A lot of people also confuse octane with flame-front propagation speed which is yet another independent factor. Take the old-days measurement of octane-ratings with iso-octane (2,2,4-trimethylpentane) with a octane-100 rating and n-heptane with a 0-octane rating. They both have the exact same flame-front speed (combustion-rate), yet one of them has a fairly high anti-knock index. The other, n-heptane, has such low knock-resistance that you can just tap the beaker and the stuff would explode! Octane Does Predict... In the end, all that octane predicts is AKI-Anti Knock Index as measured on a knock engine. These are variable-compression single-cylinder engines that can vary their compression between about 7.0:1 to 15.0:1. There's a highly-sensitive and accurate knock-sensor and computer hooked up to this engine that gives a readout of knock. The engine is run with the mystery fuel and starts at a low-compression. Then the compression is increased gradually while knock is monitored. Various levels of compression-ratios are used and the corresponding knock measured. This is looked-up on standardized tables and the MON-octane rating of the fuel is then determined. In the end, that's ALL that the octane predicts, is how much resistance the fuel has to knock. So what's the point of all this? Just use the xylene to increase your fuel's octane-level!!! Two to three gallons in a 15-gal tank won't change the specific gravity by so much that it'll mess up your AF-ratios. By itself, the resultant 96-octane mix won't automatically give you any more or less power. But will allow you to TUNE your car for higher power by increasing ignition advance, increasing compression or turning up the boost! I've accumulated a couple of good posts on octane-blending on my RacerX website under the Fuel-FAQ section. There's the obligatory 4-part Gasoline-FAQ, and the F1-Rocket Fuel and DIY Octane Boosters FAQ. Also the toxicity of xylene and toluene is actually lower than gasoline (due to their stable ring-structures): Toxicity Profile: Toluene Toxicity Profile: Xylene ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REFERENCES: The Chemistry of Hydrocarbon Fuels - Harold H. Schobert_ -_ Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd. Automotive Fuels Reference Book - Keith Owen, Trevor Coley - SAE#R151 Mixture Formation in Spark-Ignition Engines - H.P. Lenz - Springer-Verlag Fuel Injection - Jeff Hartman - Motorbooks International Lean Combustion in Spark-Ignited Internal Combustion Engines - Germane, Wood, Hess - SAE#831694 An Introduction to Thermal Fluid Engineering - Z. Warhaft - Cambridge University Pressz Last futzed with by DannoXYZ; April 11th, 2018 at 08:38 AM. |
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April 10th, 2018, 10:51 PM | #13 |
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That was 15-years ago, many new developments have occurred since that time. E85 is the current champion fuel with 105 pump octane rating. This allows for high-compression streetable engines that would've been temperamental monsters just couple decades ago. Or extremely high boosted (20psi+) engines.
Due to difference in specific-gravity, you can't just replace gasoline with E85 and expect more power. AFR will also be too lean due to diffence in stoichiometric ratio. So you'll need to re-program injector-duty cycle to match. Along with more ignition-advance and more compression and/or boost. |
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April 11th, 2018, 06:26 AM | #14 | |
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What octane is best for a stock engine at the track? |
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April 11th, 2018, 06:49 AM | #15 |
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Get the cheap stuff and ride more. Unless/until you're getting podiums and want to try and win a championship, then start min/maxing everything.
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April 11th, 2018, 06:54 AM | #16 |
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You can use anything you want that doesn’t cause detonation. I’ve blown up so many engines due to insufficient knock-resistance (and too much boost) that I tend to gravitate towards having large safety margin and to deal with worse-case scenarios of hot ambient air, lean mixtures and too much ignition. This all came together at a 110F day at Thunderhill last year when I was using the +7 degree advance pre-gen ignition box, I actually got some detonation by end of session with coolant boiling over @ 240F. I re-installed radiator fan from that day onwards.
After that, I started using 89-octane with new-gen ignition and 91-octane with pre-gen ignition. There are many guys using 100 or 110 race-gas, but at $12-15/gal, I think they’re wasting money that can go towards go-fast parts. That’s paying for too much of safety margin that’s not needed unless you’re running 13.5:1 pistons. Last futzed with by DannoXYZ; April 11th, 2018 at 02:13 PM. |
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April 11th, 2018, 08:38 AM | #17 |
ninjette.org member
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The important point for me was to determine which fuel was used when the bike was set up. It has stock internals and it's quite possible that running 87 would be fine, except it was set up on the higher octane fuel. That's what I'm going to run.
No doubt that a modified engine can take advantage of some of the properties of other fuels but that's not the case here. BTW: does anyone know how much power the stock injectors can support? Where do I find flowrate? Thanks Frank |
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April 11th, 2018, 09:02 AM | #18 |
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If you've got more ignition-advance than stock, I'd bump up octane-rating. It's actually the other way around, with higher-octane fuels, you can run more ignition-advance for more power. This allows the entire air-fuel mixture to be combusted and exerting maximum-pressure closer to piston's TDC position to extract as much expansion power as possible. This optimum point is about 18-degrees ATDC, but in practice, ignition isn't advanced enough and we get 25-30 ATDC for safety from the manufacturers.
Easy way to find flow-rate of injectors is to pull them and look at part#. Stock 300 injectors are: Kawasaki# 49033-0558 Denso# EAT-811 Flow = 175cc/min @ 43psi RC Injection's website has handy calculators to let you play "what ifs" with injector sizing. Above injectors will support 53bhp @ 80% duty-cycle. Note Power Commander will only allow you to adjust fuel-injector duty-cycles only so much away from stock. If you change injector-sizes, best to re-flash the ECU to incorporate new injector-size into baseline map. Or go with aftermarket standalone EFI system. BTW - anyone know if the 300 gets 3D ignition maps that also accounts for load rather than simple 2D RPM-based one from 250? Last futzed with by DannoXYZ; April 11th, 2018 at 10:26 AM. |
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April 11th, 2018, 02:16 PM | #19 | |
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April 11th, 2018, 02:49 PM | #20 |
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