Why Octane Booster Is A No No

Since the government is going to officially introduce RON 95 into the market on Sept 1st and float the price of RON 97, we can actually see the RON-related or octane topic is increasing as every local forum in the internet is eagerly to discuss about this matter (well, I'm afraid I'm also included into the statistic). Some 'self-claimed experts' among the forumers even stated boldly that RON 95 will eventually destroy their pimped twin cam rides and suggested to use octane booster to rectify the additional octane requirement. But wtf is octane anyway? Octane numbers are something we see every day and probably take for granted before this. It is a rating means to measure a fuels resistance to pre-ignition. Let's first assume you have a car that runs well on 95 octane. What could you gain by altering the fuel you fill up with? By going down to 92 octane you might achieve better mileage (due to no ethanol which commonly used to raise octane in fuels) but could risk detonation depending on your cars engine. By going up to 97 octane you might allow your car to advance the timing gaining horsepower (but some cars didn't benefit the higher octane at all). Due to lower BTU (British Thermal Unit - unit of energy) per liter you will give up a few miles per liter. So right off you can see that it is a balancing act.

Looking closer at this, you notice that the extra horsepower comes from the ability of the car to advance timing and not the fuel itself. Higher octane fuel has less BTUs, but still nets power due to the timing advance and higher boost (in turbocharged application) it can achieve. In modern vehicles with knock sensors the ignition timing is constantly varied to achieve the best balance between performance and economy. Because this adjustment takes time, simply switch to higher octane at the track is not good enough. The fuel needs to be run in advance to allow the ecu to compensate for it. So using 92 all he time and then going to the track and filling up with 95 is not going to help your track times. You will have a faster car on the ride home though.

The other end of the spectrum is less octane. The down side here is the risk or pre-ignition and high EGTs (Exhaust Gas Temp). Both of these can lead to melted or bend pistons. Valves and the head are also at risk. If you have a modern vehicle it will detect this and retard timing to prevent damage. This timing modification is easy to detect with an OBDII scanner and it an easy to diagnose too fuel with too little octane.

Because of the above reasons, a lot of people turn to the boosters as a way of having both good fuel commonly and good performance at the track. The problem with them is most do not work as advertised. If you do find one what works, adding it to your tank a day before you go to the track can be beneficial. Despite the benefit, use boosters sparingly as most rely on MMT (Methyl cyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl - what a freaking kind of name though..) or Toulene as a means of boosting the octane. While MMT is a pretty good octane booster but it leaves combustion chamber deposits very quickly. These deposits lead to pre-ignition and knock so people will evually add more octane booster which leads to more deposits, more knock ... you can see where this is going. MMT based boosters also quickly reach a point of diminishing returns i.e. the more you add the less it helps. And how much this booster cost in the market?? Much more than you actually pay for your fuel.

Toluene has the advantage of being relatively cheap, and fairly effective at raising the octane even in fairly high percentages. Plus it has good resistance to pre-ignition which is an important consideration in a high compression engine; in this case such as 4G92 MIVEC. The downside is as you raise the percentage of Toluene, the throttle response quickly becomes flat and mushy. So the engine won't knock, but it probably won't run any better either.

Commercial octane boosters are a scam. They are simply as bogus as those loan sharks. For example, if one says it'll raise your octane by 7 points, this is what they meant:

92 Octane + 7 Point Octane Boost = 92.7 Octane and NOT 99.

Most of addtive says "up to 5 points", "up to 10 points", or "up to 20 points". What does that mean? It means it goes up anywhere from 0 to 20 points, so you might get only 1 point after all. Who knows? 1 point is still within the number range to 20 and you can't sue them for misadvertising though.

92 Octane + 0.1 = 92.1 Octane = pathetic

By now you are probably confused again by what all of this means. To sum it up, if your car has no changes to compression, no raised RPM limiter or lots of boost, you should probably fine using the fuel without any booster added. If you have a beefy race built motor, stick to premium or race fuel that meets the need of your engine. If you have a lightly tuned engine and enjoy the occasional track day, regular fuel is already adequate. Don't touch octane boosters at all cost.

extracted from Octane Boosters and the Truth Behind Them ezine

Beneath 69 - old MIVEC Resurrected

Since early 2000, there was no replacement or additional model in the valve-lifting MIVEC family. Most of the model that carries the word MIVEC only features the variable valve timing and there weren't any valve lifting. Clearly Mitsu spoilt their rep by naming all of their new line pussy engine with the MIVEC name but without the mighty cam engaging feature. They should have came with another abbreviations instead of MIVEC. Maybe something like MVVT (Mitsubishi Variable Valve Timing) or MCVT (Mitsubishi Continuos Valve Timing) or p-MIVEC (pussy-Mitsubishi Innovative Variable bla bla thingy). So, after so many years, Mitsu came out with a new 2.4 litre, four-cylinder, SOHC engine which utilized the old MIVEC feature. Even though this engine is far from being considered a woww and more to an auwww, this could be an early step for Mitsu to get their ass back to produce more cam engaging engine like they used to before. Enter the 4G69.

Cam profiles switching occurs at an engine speed of 3500 min (the speed at which the torque curve yielded by the low-speed-mode cams intersects with the torque curve yielded by the high-speed-mode cam). The 4G69 large-displacement four-cylinder engine has a long-stroke design for compactness. With this design, valve-diameter size is limited as imposed by the bore. This flawed actually will make the flow velocity of the intake air is extremely high. When combined with MIVEC extra lift feature, this will create a strong scavenging effect thus increasing air intake volume significantly. The result according to Mitsu is much better output than the previous high compression ratio of Mitsu's GDI engines.

This engine will never up to par with Honda's K20A nor the Toyota's 2ZZ-GE motors despite the massive displacement it has. This engine (sadly) is more intended to use as global purpose which mainly will offer good driving capabilities, reduced fuel consumption and its quietness. We hope those white-coated people at the 3-diamond star will come out something spectacular incorporating the awesome valve-lifting MIVEC technology they had before. Imagine a 2.4L DOHC 16-valve MIVEC-MD engine with 6-speed close-ratio gearbox. Owhh, that would be freaking nice.

content was extracted from the technical datasheet of Mit 4G69

Ass Lifted - Changing Rear Light

After owning the car more than 6 years, I'm looking for something that can freshen up some bit; or in simpler word, change some parts to have a different look. This PROMOTE rear light design was back from early 2000, only this one the inner frame has been blackened to give that ganas look. Although more recently most aftermarket lights has a growing range of LED style rear lights for cars but unfortunately this light still utilizing conventional bulbs. I guess there isn't much choice specifically for Satria until now.


Installation is easy, in fact a lot easier than I thought. A day before I purchased this light, I was helping my colleague to replace the rear light on the '08 Vios; and that wasn't any easy. Everything seems too tight to open, too small to grip and too expensive to fool around. Maybe that's an advantage when dealing with cheaper and older Protons. Somehow we tend to not feel 'guilty' to mess around compared when dealing with other 'superior' brand car. There were 4 bolts holding the lamp base to the body frame and unbolting them took less than 2 minutes.

Installing the new lamps were also as easy as dismantling the old one. All wiring sockets are snap-fit with each other. The best part is, the lamps came complete with bulbs. Since I've got my car ass-lifted, maybe to get those BMW-wannabe eagle eye should be next on my list. Or maybe, just the plain blackened frame headlamp; like those Wira's/Satria's SE. Or maybe, just get some decent fog lights and blast a 6000k HID kit through it. Or maybe (the list goes on .. and on..)

Flowless Victory : OEM vs K&N

For decades, the aftermarket hot rod, racing and tuning communities have relied on oiled-media filters (namely the infamous K&N) to free up that extra few horsepower. In fact, it's often one of the FIRST modifications many automotive enthusiasts do to their car. With the marketing tag line such as "Better airflow" or "more airflow", this mod is the first path for any modder, racer or even ricer will take. But how much is "better" or "more" of the airflow the filter gonna give? In the mean time, how much dirt or fine particle this filter able to trap since it was design to deliver "more" airflow? As dirt suspended in air, it's logical to say that as more air the filter flows, the more dirt the engine will ingested. This is pretty much make sense such as any turbocharged engine will have shorter service interval compared to its' N/A counterparts. The reason? One of it is more air flow hence more dirt.

Common sense is needed here. Although manufacturer main objectives are to produce car as cheap as possible and to sell it as much as it can. But one thing must one must remember. They also want their car to last long. No one is going to buy a car that will rot in few years. So, without proper filteration, engine wear will be off the chart and parts may fail prematurely. Those self-claimed performance filters only focusing on performance (if there's any increment noticed) and the easiness of filter servicing (for the washable type). It's just amazing that the most popular washable high flow air filter on the planet isn't used for standard equipment in any performance car. Take an Italian exotic car for an instance. This kind of car is built purely for performance and building cost isn't a factor at all. Yet those car were never fitted with any kind of this so-called high flow air filter. Ever heard a Lamborghini owner praising about how good the K&N filter on their car? Ever tired listening to Wira and Satria owner worshiping this filter in their car?

The filter build quality is also quite arguable. This picture is me comparing my previous K&N air filter vs OEM air filter. Don't get me wrong. I was a K&N fan. I think I am still. But I don't know whether it is just me or what, somehow the life time filter rubber frame doesn't seems to hold its' shape for long. It shrunk and some areas (mostly at the edge) were broken and chipped off. If an USA brand of filter isn't able to last long, you can kick your Taiwanese filter down in to garbage truck where it probably belong. Get real, you want more power than go internals or get some blower complete with cooler. The bolt-on stuff, especially air filter won't do much better than what's the factory has fitted your car with. The engineers who designed your car aren't fools. They know how much air it can move when in stock configuration, and would be negligent to supply less than that. This is especially true from this point of view for all 4G9X owners; if the OEM filter can't efficiently handle passing enough air to make 110-170hp to keep rolling along the highway, how is it ever going to flow enough air to make 260hp on force-fed 4G63 EVO III at all?

P/S : Mit Lancer Evo I - III 4G63 shares the same filter with 1st gen 4G9x and 4G1X.

I've been using the K&N panel filter for 5 years. After I've ditched the K&N and switched to the old OEM paper filter (roughly 15,000km mileage on it) which I kept for in case of emergency, believe it or not, I couldn't feel any degration of power as what people said. I might have lost some ooommpppphhhh at higher rpms but without dyno-chart, that claim could be bogus because, I didn't experienced any power degration over switching to paper filter that already had 15000km on it nor my fuel comsumption sky rocketing as what those marketing people at K&N would suggest.

I would suggest you to visit http://www.nicoclub.com/articles.php?id=180100 for detail info solely on this matter. They even proofed that most performance air filter isn't a real performer.

Cold Rev Cut

You might heard it plenty of time people says, "Don't drive hard while the engine is still cold". This is because it can cause high friction wear on the cylinder walls, piston rings, pistons and all of the bearings. It also can cause excess gas to go into the exhaust and ignite in your catalytic converter (if you still had one p/s: pun intended). This is why manufacturer put this cold rev cut safety feature to prevent a possible premature damage to the engine done by an immature driver.

The video above shows the cold rev cut comes into play. The secondary cams were engaged but the rev is limited to ard 6500rpm. Big thanks to some fella at youtube for posting this.