Octane Supreme (formerly Lead Supreme)

[Chevy454]

Sam: you're too quick! I re-read it and realized I had it backwards (too early yet)...and wasn't pointing the finger at you directly...sorry if it came across like that!

But like a lot of folks, I used to *assume* that since my L72 was rated at 11:1, that it would in fact be close to 11:1...WRONG. I tore it down, did an ever so slight clean-up on the block & head surfaces, and put a set of TRW blueprint 11:1 pistons in it...then I broke out my cc'ing kit, and my jaw hit the floor...I had a WHOPPING 10.2:1 compression! Quite a far cry from the advertised 11:1 I was expecting, and this was after removing some metal and getting (what I thought was) a good set of pistons. I did some asking around, and it turned out it was common...Scott Tiemann had done a similar experiment on a Berger COPO, and came up with 9.8:1!!

Anyway, running in Pure Stock I saw everyone else at the track dumping in race fuel, so I automatically did the same...but I was at a T'n'T one night at MMP, and the car wasn't as sharp as I thought it should be. It was late summer, and had cooled off a bit (cool for Memphis, at least, which is my home track), and it finally dawned on me that I had mostly race fuel left over in the tank from Stanton. So, I pulled it out, put in some good ole 93, and ran a 12.7x (about .05+ quicker than before). But I've also hurt parts with too little octane...busted the ring lands off of a 454 I was cutting my teeth on in high school...all lessons learned.