The first time I filled up I wasn't paying attention and put unleaded in the tank, now today after 115 miles I run out of gas and have to switch to my reserve. Well, I wasn't expecting to need to fill up at 115 miles so I got stranded in the rode and was really shocked when I had to switch my reserve on. Will a lower octane rated gas give you less miles per gallon? Also will lower octane increase the heat produced by the bike?

 

Depends on the engine, really. My friends gixxer 6 gets better mileage and runs better on unleaded than it does on premium. My old zx7 and my zx9 both have to run premium otherwise they run like crap and get garbage for mileage. My Lincoln gets crap mileage on unleaded and good mileage on premium, while my grand am got great mileage on unleaded, as does the accord, which gets worse mileage on premium.

 

Thanks, that must be the case then. When I first got the bike from the guy it got to about 200 miles before I put gas in it so he must of had premium in it.

 

Just so you two know, all gas sold in the US is unleaded! There are different grades of unleaded gas. And like srobak said, it does effect engine performance.

 

sorry. too many cold meds. when I say unleaded - I mean regular unleaded. when I say premium I mean unleaded premium. Dee De Dee!

 

Ya, I understood what he was trying to tell me.

 

my brother inlaw did the same thing, but low octane gas in and got horrible millage. with high compression engines i think anything like 10.00 and above need a higher octane fuel in order to run properlly. what happens is when you compress the air/fuel mixture it gets hot, the more you compress it the hotter it gets, octane is simply the ability to not combust. the higher the number the higher the heat it can take before it combust. if you run low octane in your bike, it will ignite on its own before a spark causing crappy performance= less hp less mpg. higher octane fuel doesn't burn cleaner or any of the marketing bull**** they tell you. always read your ownersmanual and whatever it says thats the lowest you can run. also the further you advance your timing the higher of octane you will need to run properly. my cousins drag car is only at like 10.5/1 compression, but will not run on anything less than like 105 or 112 octane, i can't remember exactly, b/c of the timing, if he backs the timing out then he can run the lower octane.