there shouldn't be any reason 87 octane would ruin the o2 sensor. i would keepusing it if i was you.if you have a NA monte it is useless to put anything more than 87 or 89 in your car. octane is the property of gas that resists engine knock(which is caused by compression among other things), so the higher it is, the more protection against knock you have.thatis why high compression race motors have to run 100 octane or more.your NA montes are designed to run on 87, due to the lowcompression ratio. i am not sure what the CR of the SC montes are, but if they are a little higher, then you should run a higher octane fuel.when i was shopping around for montes, i was always told bynumerous dealer mechanics you should run at least 91 or 93in the SC.basically you're wasting your $ if you put 93 octane in your NA montes.

 

In a nutshell, that's pretty much what I heard too. Don't know what the compression ratios are for the SC either, but I do know the owner's manual and the sticker inside the gasoline door say "Premium Unleaded Fuel Only". Which blows when the price of gas is high.

 

guess you guys missed my first post....

i don't knwo about your results, but those were mine.

 

yeah cowboy6622 i saw your first post. if you got better mileage, it wasn't from the higher octane. octane has nothing to do w/ fuel economy.if you google it, my previous statements are confirmed.



http://www.gasforlessmoney.com/highe...r-gas-mileage/

http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/M...sWorthTheMoney

 

I'm finding that octane isn't always the key to performance. On our two boosted cars, this Intimidator and the 07 Solstice GXP, they are both tuned for 93 octane, and run for crap without it. The Solstice doesn't even like 92 one little bit!
But the other 2, the 82 Olds Regency and the 99 Silverado Z71, we run 87 octane.

In ALL of the vehicles, we try to stay away from the cheap gas, and independents, which also have cheap gas. QUALITY and cleanliness is ALL important to me. I know of people running midgrade and premium because regular runs for crap in their cars. But where do they buy their gas? The CHEAP stuff stations. They spend more on gas to improve the octane rating, to offset the quality problems of the regular gas!

Case in point: We have had problems with the gas gauge sending unit in our Silverado for YEARS now. I did a complete brake overhaul on the Intimidator SS this summer, and drove the truck regularly for about 2 weeks. On my 1st fill up with it (I normally fill up at BP, or Amoco gas), the gauge started working again. I continued to use the Amoco 87 and it STILL works. An occasional glitch, but LadyT also runs Citgo or whatever in it (she can't run Shell, for whatever reason, cuz it is crap here). I fill it up with Amoco, and it works again. Also, I rarely have any problems with dirty injectors.

Point is, people spend extra for octane to compensate for crap gas, when all they really need to do is quit buying the absolute cheapest gas they can. They spend more in the end for loss in milage, and dirty injectors.

like NAPA says "BUY THE GOOD STUFF!"

 

it's "GET THE GOOD STUFF", but thats a minor tecnicality

i think i failed to mention my car was dyno tuned on 93 octane, so it's timing and adjustments are all for 93 octane.

 

well that makes more sense why you get bettereconomy on 93. do you put out more hp than stock then?i might have to look into that mod in the future.

 

my original pull and my last pull showed about a 10 hp difference (to the wheels), so a little bit. i don't know if there are many tuning programs out there for your engine yet though but i haven't researched this statement, so feel free to prove me wrong.

as to the guys original question... somebody fed you some crap about octane throwing an oxygen sensor. teh only thing i can think of is if you use really cheap gas with some sludge in it alot.. and i seriously doubt that would even throw the sensor. i have heard of them just going bad though....

 

I use 87 octane but try to only go with Shell, BP or Mobile. Every oil change I add Chevrons Techron fuel injector cleaner also. I have experimented with higher octane but didn’t see a difference in gas mileage so why waste the money?