[cycleway4]

Probably 20 years ago,..I attended a Turbo Motorcycle Owners Group Rally. As in many rallys of this type, there were seminars that were able to be attended. I went to one such seminar on tuning the Kawasaki 750 Turbo, led by at the time, the #1 Kawasaki 750 Turbo drag racing guru in the country. The subject of using high octane premium fuel/its advantages on stock bikes came up (not necessarily turbo bikes, just stock)....our instructor explained that there was no advantage at all using a higher octane than a motor was designed for,..or needed...that higher octane fuel actually burned slower, was less prone to pre-ignition/spark knock, etc. The higher octane in fact offered no power gain when not needed,..in fact the opposite. As an example, he offered the following story to prove a point: at a recent drag race event, the bike his team used as a pit-bike (a 50cc Honda) ran out of fuel...all they had with them, was 105 octane fuel (for the drag-bike). They filled the 50cc pit bike up,..started it up,...and had a huge loss of power...it wouldn't even pull the weight of a rider around the pits, without someone pushing......started and idled fine....upon arriving back home, drained out the 105,..filled back up with 87,...and full power (well, for a 50 cc) was back. He said that was the best way he could explain the slower burning,..no power gained,...when using higher octane than needed (going from 87-to-105 octane) and (most importantly) the motor was not designed to be able to benefit from it.....