race fuel

well im making the switch to race fuel..a local station recently installed a new ethanol free pump selling 91 octane and i picked up a few 5 gallon pails of vp 110 leaded. thinking i can mix 50/50 or maybe 3 gallons 91/2 110....
my bikes run great on the 93 gasahol ive been giving them but i figured this would be a good way to get them up into the high 90s and get rid of ethanol. should also make some nice alcohol-free awesome smelling fuel for my line trimmer, chain saw, backpack blower, and snowblower! hey all the hoosks gotta live right ya know?

think there will be a performance increase? i know real fuel has more btu value but dont know if the vp will actually add power beyond more octane..i guess i could maybe set my timing closer to stock spec instead of being a mm retarded now..

to my understanding you need higher compression to gain any benefits from higher octane if your meeting your engines octane requirements with 89 or 91 or whatever than 93 and up is a waist but if your not well theres room for improvement i have buddy that just got done with a full house Eric Gorr 110 racegas ONLY YZ 295 all i can say is that sombitch is FAST FAST AND I MEAN FAST but you gota kick it like your the hulk

the husky manual states 94 minimum. no mention of ron, mon, or anything. pretty sure i wouldnt want to run less than pump 93 in any of my bikes especially my 88 250, which is 15:1/215 psi....the 91 ethanol-free im sure could benefit from being mixed with at least some race fuel.
do you run your 87 wr on less than premium pump troy? that motor is pretty high compression for being stock

93 no ethanol from the pump 50:1 amsoil and yes there's brown below the ring the gaps rather large and i still got 200+ psi

i would maybe skip the racegas if the gas was a higher octane here, but 91 is the best around with no alcohol. at least in east ohio/west pa.

wish we had 93 puregas here, but i guess i should be happy theres dedicated 91 pumps around, along with 110 vp pumps over half the year.

I would use 50/50 or 2gal race/3 gal pump if you have an air cooled bike, but with a water cooled bike its not really needed. The reason the air cooled bikes respond better is not compression related but they run significantly cooler and more consistently with the mix of race fuel, the water cooled bikes dont have that issue. With an LC bike the consistent fuel quality will allow you to really fine tune your jetting, so it sure wont hurt anything some race fuel. In an LC I would run as little as 1gal race to 3 gal pump, I dont know how or why the chemistry works, but that small amount of race fuel really evens out the inconsistencies in pump fuel.

My wr250 would not run on 93 no alcohol unless I jetted it richer, especially the pilot. It would detonate off idle an on the needle when it was jetted crisp like it should be. I mixed Sonoco 110 50% with the 93 and that allowed me to jet it correctly and it did make a performance difference. I got tired of mixing so I've since gone to 100% vp110 or 100AV gas. Another plus is it doesn't go bad sitting around like pump gas does, no need for additives. MY son's yz450 had very noticeable performance gains especially after I bought a GYTR tuner and remapped it with a more aggressive tune. His yz was not doing anything wrong on pump 93 so the "you won't gain if it doesn't need it" did not hold true for either my 09 WR250 or his 2011 YZ450.

thanks for the responses so far, many sites you cannot have discussions about fuel or oil without things going south quickly! the cafe is an exception for sure!

WELL THAT INFO WAS MORE TOWARDS THE AUTOMOTIVE SIDE OF THINGS

I am pretty sure they do not do r+m/2 in Sweden where the manual was translated from. There are chemicals in race gas. The mr2 really irritates me. High octane race gas actually kind of burns like sterno. Jellied alcohol. I blame the inside of my petcock going bad on race gas, not sure if the plastic tanks are really up to it long term. The ethanol free stuff I get in Ohio is 91 as well.

Oxygenated race fuel is about as bad as ethanol, for messing up carbs, petcocks etc. Non-oxygenated is better. I run VP SEF 94 in my bikes. It's not cheap, it's not really race gas, but works well in standard engines. I have no jetting issues, no problems when a bike sits for a few weeks and the exhaust smells good!

Good timing on this discussion. My 87 430 manual says 94 octane.
I was wondering whether I should mix in a little race gas to get to 94 octane. 92 w/ ethanol pump gas is the best I can get.

Does having a Husky Products 430 pipe (by Up-tite) change the gas requirements? Or only porting changes, etc.?

according to vp, some oxygenated fuels have ethanol in them..

i doubt it, headwork or altering the ignition timing could change fuel demands. some port timing changes as well. do you have access to race fuel locally? shipping is out of the question for me, its quadruple the price. many pumps here sell vp110 leaded as thats the main fuel for dirt track racing thats big in the northeast, theres some sunoco 110 around as well. once i found a new ethanol free 91 pump local its a no brainer for me to run at least some cut with my regular fuel. ill likely stick with 50/50 and jet with that

Many oxygenated race fuels are oxygenated with ethanol. I dont use straight race fuel, but only because its a waste of money for me, its not going to hurt anything but your bank account. If you are going to have to mix the oil, miixing some fuel is not really that much additional work. All you really need to do is get your fuel mix up in the 98-100 octane range.

I haven't really looked for local race fuel yet. Shipping is too expensive for sure.
I've seen some VP cans on the shelves but VP has a lot of different types. I'll see what is out there.
I do remember a recent MCA article on the different types of VP race gas and when to use what.

I don't race, so I'm more curious about how my Huskys would run... given they were designed in a different time with a racing orientation. Just interested in the pros and cons of running a race / pump mixture.

here's the MXA guide on race fuels...
http://motocrossactionmag.com/news/racers-guide-to-the-hierarchy-of-motocross-racing-fuels-2

I haven't looked locally for fuel. Must be some around. I'll have to look.
Nice to read the pros and cons on the topic.

right on, getting my mix well up into the 90s or 100 is pretty much my goal.

Methanol is a great fuel and mixes well with most other fuels like nitro and other oxygenated fuels. The problem is when it absorbs moisture it becomes highly corrosive so you have to maintain your machine like a top fuel race team. I had a drag race car than ran on methanol and for example if you had an aluminum fuel fitting that the anodized coating got scratched the fitting would be corroded clear through in 6 months. Most of the fittings had to be stainless steel, this is the same as with ethanol which is what you get at the pump. Ever wonder why the numbers on brass jets are unreadable and the jet looks like it has been sandblasted? That's corrosion that ate away at the brass (likely from pump gas) and is eating away at the aluminum and pot metal carb at a much higher rate which means that over time the performance is likely dropping dropping due the the size and shape of passageways being altered. When you think about all the dollars in parts that alcohol ruins, race fuel starts to look less expensive.

As to Troy Deck's comment, it is true that if an engine is designed to run on pump gas and is tuned accordingly adding race fuel won't help a bit and is likely a waste of money. However if you are going to modify that engine to get more out of it then race fuel is your friend. I wasn't trying to single out troy with my previous comment, in fact 93 no ethanol is supposed to be enough for most stock bikes, the two bikes that I referred to could be exceptions or possibly my local 93 is not really an honest 93.