85 Octane

We have 86, 88, and 90 or 91 at the stations at my crappy DA. I just never go lower than the 88 for peace of mind. I drive an ecoboost f150, so its not apples to apples, but i hate going that low already on a turbo motor. Also i remember reading in the owners manual for my 01 cobra that altitude adjusted octanes were not recommended and to still not go below 91. So i followed their advice.

nelson said:

You should hit up the eye doctor then. All I wanted was some factual based responses, not .gifs and videos and people insinuating I'm a moron because they've never lived at altitude. As I said though, well within their right to do so.

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Post #37. The manual specifically answers your question. /thread

85 is fine at very high altitudes.

Zelek said:

I just filter Gas Buddy to only show Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil 1. Texaco is probably another I should also add to my list.

Does really well as far as only showing me the good ones.

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Same here. I also filter to show 76.

obgod3 said:

yep we got all these here...like everywhere else but like he mentioned we only have 85/97/91 and I think the debate was octane not Top Tier Fuels. Are you saying the octane doesn't matter? Glad to see Costco on there also since I use it exclusively.

Top Tier retailers include 76, Aloha Petroleum, Amoco, ARCO, Beacon, BP, Break Time, Cenex, Chevron, CITGO, Conoco, Co-op, Costco, CountryMark, Diamond Shamrock, Entec, Esso, Express, Exxon, Holiday, Kwik Star Stores, Kwik Trip, Mahalo, MFA, Mobil, Ohana Fuels, Petro-Canada, Phillips 66, PUMA, QT, Quik Trip, Road Ranger, Shamrock, Shell / Shell V-Power, Sinclair Standard, SuperAmerica, SuperFuels, Tempo, Texaco, Tri-Par, and Valero.

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For years, ARCO was NOT on the Top Tier list. Surprised to see they have been added. Friends and co-workers have had issues with ARCO gas (knocking, pinging, rough idle) over the years.. Google is full of people having issues. My granddaughter was having problems with her car running rough at idle. I asked what gas she has been using. You guessed it...ARCO !! Told her to stay away from ARCO and use Chevron (for the Techron). No problems since then.

bootlegger said:

Did he state he was data-logging? If not, then this is bad advice.

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Agreed.

When I’ve driven from Texas to Colorado, the octane choices go lower as elevation increases. Even in the northwest part of Texas on the high plains, the octane is lower than in Dallas/Houston.

Gosh, I’d want to run the highest octane I could get. The power loss at altitude in an average car is gut-wrenching.

I'm out here in UT right below you, we also have 85. But most of the pumps I go to still have 89, we just have 4 selections at the pump. 85, 87, 89, and 91. Even in my little POS Chevy S10 I originally drove moving out to this state, I kept it to 87. 85 might have been fine because of the altitude, but I stick to 87 if I'm feeling cheap at the pump. Screw it, I'm not saving much between 87 and 85.

In my Mustang, the lowest I'd even want to go is 87 just for peace of mind and to play it safe. But I religiously put in 91 here since that's the highest we got. I don't have to go that high, but I do lol. Just strictly follow the manual is my operating procedure, that way if I take her in for warranty work they can't tell me shit. Right now I have my '16 GT and a 2003 Explorer that's keeping the stang out of the snow. Even in the Explorer I put in 87 rather than 85. I came from CA though where the lowest we had at that altitude was the 87. So I got out here and wanted to know wtf all this 85 crap was lol. Even with the logical explanation that the higher altitude makes it fine, I just don't personally trust the shit lol.