Originally Posted by Mr_will
You mentioned ethanol (and yeah i know you didnt say you were a fan) - im a bit wary of that, i mean i cant say ive seen long term studies on its effect on engine life. apart from that, no cars that i know of were 'designed' to run on fuel with ethanol, and by that i mean car manufacturers test their cars on regular petrol, be it 91 - 98.
as for the LS1 sensor, to be honest im not sure i read it in several articles, in relation to power output, as holden does in some instances actually quote two figures, i guess perhaps they believe some people are too stupid/dont want to pay the extra (or some other reason). i would assume that they must have a pretty good reason for doing it, but im not really sure of that either, will look into it.
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ok since its obviously not going to be enough until i explain this in full detail, i am going to, so i apologise in advance for the long post but i think its necessary
Timing is a tool to get peak cylinder pressure event to the best time to promote maximum torque, however You don't advance timing to get more power. You add more AIR to get more power. Timing is just there to control when your peak cylinder pressure occurs.
Higher octane fuel takes longer to burn, thus you must start the burn process earlier than normal if you are running these fuels. Otherwise you are delaying peak cylinder pressure, and reducing overall power - that is to say that if you increase the RON of the fuel- EG 95 to 98...WITHOUT advancing timing - you delay peak cylinder pressure and YOU LOSE POWER
there is an ideal point where the timing should be, usually referred to as best mean torque, or something similar... if your timing is set before that, advancing it will make more power, if your timing is set at or after that, advancing will make you lose power(and also increase the chance of damage to the engine)
If you get power from advancing timing (without changing fuel), it means that before you did it you were wasting power which was allready there available to you.