i know a gas station, around me sell 101 octane gas. i was wondering if i can ran that in my car, 86 camaro z28. i want to see how the can runs different, with it, and would it hurt my motor

 

if you look at most octane scales no one runs the octane the should... a 8.1 motor should be running on something like 92 octane for best performance... really you need to know what your compression is before figuring out what gas is best but it never hurts to run higher octane gas for the most part... helps from detonating too soon... the whole reason there are knock sensors on newer cars is so the computer can adjust for the crap gas going into it... if it doesnt bother you to pay the extra for the octane go for it 101 would be good in just about any stock to mild motor... at the track last week we ran a 12.1 motor on just premium with octane boost to run out the tank then put in some 115 octane shaved a second and a half of the quater time because of it...
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this is off an earlier post on mifbody.com

Found an excellent article on the net:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasol...section-1.html

It's somewhat lengthy, and covers a pleathora of things besides octane (including ignition), but here is the short story :

NOTE #1: The octane numbers listed below are for engines without an engine management system

NOTE #2: Interesting that the author states that engine thermal efficiency maxs out at 17:1 compression
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7.2 What is the effect of Compression ratio?

Most people know that an increase in Compression Ratio will require an
increase in fuel octane for the same engine design. Increasing the
compression ratio increases the theoretical thermodynamic efficiency of an engine according to the standard equation

Efficiency = 1 - (1/compression ratio)^gamma-1

where gamma = ratio of specific heats at constant pressure and constant volume of the working fluid ( for most purposes air is the working fluid, and is treated as an ideal gas ). There are indications that thermal efficiency reaches a maximum at a compression ratio of about 17:1 for gasoline fuels in an SI engine [23].

The efficiency gains are best when the engine is at incipient knock, that's why knock sensors ( actually vibration sensors ) are used. Low compression ratio engines are less efficient because they can not deliver as much of the ideal combustion power to the flywheel. For a typical carburetted engine, without engine management [27,38]:-

Compression Octane Number Brake Thermal Efficiency Ratio Requirement ( Full Throttle )
5:1 -----72 ------
6:1 -----81 -----25 %
7:1 -----87 -----28 %
8:1 -----92 -----30 %
9:1 -----96 -----32 %
10:1 ----100 ----33 %
11:1 ----104 ----34 %
12:1 ----108 ----35 %

Modern engines have improved significantly on this, and the changing fuel specifications and engine design should see more improvements, but significant gains may have to await improved engine materials and fuels