Is it snake oil or does it make a difference?

This particular one has good reviews on Summit and I have always heard good things about Lucas's products. Granted I know that nothing will take E-10 87 swill and turn it into 106 octane race gas...

I picked one up on and order while I had free shipping.

In my case I am right on the edge of pinging. I curved my dizzy so it won't ping at WOT but on hot days 80*+, I can get it to ping at 3/4 throttle or so. I'm sure this is because of the vacuum advance on the dizzy but I am trying to not have to disconnect it.

What say you?

You might buy a drum of race gas & add a gallon or so as needed on hot days before you go out cruisin. Wouldn't be a whole lot more work than adding a bottle of that stuff. No opinion on the financial differences & as you know ANY pinging is way too much. If you build a monster you gotta feed it what it wants (needs) & maybe that stuff DOES work but here's a BTT on this for ya

Well, I checked the Material Safety Data Sheet. It does not appear to have any metallic compounds or methanol. Seems to be straight petroleum distillate of some sort or sorts.

I for one would like to see results from an independent testing lab on the octane-boosting properties of this stuff. Otherwise it's just the placebo effect. Research shows that the placebo effect is so strong that around 40% of test subjects had an improvement of symptoms attributable solely to the placebo effect.

The claim: " Tested and proven to deliver three times more boost than most other brands."

This claim means nothing, as most other brands give little or no boost. It could be completely true or completely false and there's not enough in the statement to call it false advertising if it's false.

It never ceases to amaze me how some companies are given "reliable" status while others aren't, and on no factual basis whatsoever. For example, everyone and his dog thinks that Lucas is on the up-and-up. Anything they say must be true. But, what do they actually do? Yes, they are sponsors and probably have contingency money (advertising budget). But their PRIME BUSINESS is selling oil products. They EXIST to make money selling stuff, like any other commercial enterprise. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Whoever designed their product containers was a genius, as was the guy who invented their little gear demonstrator machine found in the auto parts stores. Boy, it really worked. The knowledge gained from that hand-cranked demo machine would be extremely useful IF WE ALL DROVE LITTLE HAND-CRANKED GEAR MACHINES! The average car guy doesn't understand that the additive may have an unexpected consequence of making the oil release air more slowly and therefore cause foaming which can lead to lubrication failure. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but my point is that the possibility wasn't even considered by the guys turning the crank.

On the other hand, Joe Gibbs Racing puts out a line of oils with some very believable claims and most everyone here says they're just trying to make money selling oil. Joe Gibbs Racing at least has a competitive race team and has spent thousands of hours dyno testing, PLUS competing in all those NASCAR events. I find their rationale much more believable.

Your mileage may vary. Like believers in any religion or subjects of a Journey song, believers won't stop believing.

R.

"I can get it to ping at 3/4 throttle or so"

Dump the bottle in the tank and the pinging should be gone if it's any good.

After many years of 'testing', here's my thought on 'boosters'...


Go find some CAM2...


(Detonation is not always audible)...

I don't have any first hand use of Lucas octane boost, but I attended a seminar on muscle cars at Barrett Jackson and one of the speakers (Colin Comer) was praising the stuff. He said it was the only stuff that he thought really worked compared to all of the rest that he had tried. YMMV......................

If you spend a lot of time searching the web for octane booster test results, you may come to the same conclusion I did, which is that most of the stuff sold is junk.

The ones that do work (and I'm not even sure which ones those are right now, since formulations change and what worked 5 years ago might just be more junk now) don't make a huge improvement. But they'd be good enough for some margin of safety if you're running on the edge. But all that hype about turning pump gas into race gas is total b.s.

you've answered you own question with the above question IMO

hey what ever happened to SLICK 50 ???

I use it in my 11.5-1 SBC with 93 clear gas.Works for me.They also have 110 leaded race fuel for 68$ for 5 gals at my local Shell. The Lucas is about 8$ for a pint. Do the math. When I feel like getting frisky 110 stuff is fun.

there are only a few effective octane boosters, and none that work in such small quantities.

the octane rating is supposed to be the knock resistance of a fuel as a percentage of pure isooctane, since gas is a mixture of hydrocarbons, from benzene up to nonane et al. it is often not as good as pure octane (100, depending on measurement system) and there are things that are better, so more than 100 is possible.

if you mix 1 gallon of regular 89 octane gas with 1 gallon of toluene (114 octane) you should get around 101 octane fuel, tetraethyl lead and alcohol are the only other 2 common octane boosters out there, and 4 oz of either in a tank will make no difference.

you can buy race gas and mix as above, or buy some other substitute, like tolulene or avgas but not from a tiny bottle

I wonder what he was paid to say that !!

Yeah seems that the nearest station with non ethanol premium gas is 15 miles and race gas is even further. I'm not lucky enough to live real close to a place where I could buy a couple of gallons of hi-octane race gas and spike my tanks.


I am trying to buy some time until I decide what to do with my motor. I undercammed it and I think this is part of my problem. I'd like to go with a higher lift roller setup which would probably cure all this BS instead of throwing money away on expensive race gas. My car is a street car and I wanted to avoid this having to go to exotic fuels.

Thanks for the input, guys. Kinda what I expected that this is probably not going to do much, if anything. Oh well it was only 6.95 so worth a shot I guess.

By whom? Certainly not the octane booster companies!

15oz mixed with 10 to 20 gallons of pump premium won't do much. I don't care what's in it.

i get 100 octane avgas from my local airport, for (current price) $4.45 per gallon. grab a tank of that, and see how you do. avgas is a hell of a lot cheaper than race gas is.

Petroleum distillates, as an octane booster, helps minimally, you basically average the octane levels of the constituent parts.

TEL works much better and in substantially smaller quantities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#History_of_TEL_in_fuels.

Unless that octane booster is different from the ones I used in the past, I have seen little to no affect from them.

What many people don't realize is that most of the "off-road" or "race" octane boosters contain a product called MMT and it works very much like TEL works. Products like Lucas and NOS can legitimately raise 10 gallons of gas by a full point or 2, i.e. from 91 up to 92-93 range depending how much is used. So yes they do work if you only need a couple point boost to your octane.

Airport is 10 mi away,been running it since 1992 !!

A point or two is not 91 octane to 92 or 93 octane.

It's 91 octane to 91.2 or 91.3 octane. That's the "point" as in point two or point three octane.

But yes, MMT works better than petroleum distillates, much better, but not as good as TEL.