I am buying an 2001 AC 400 4X4 this afternoon and was wondering about what type of gas to put into it. A friend told me to run premium gas, is that correct? Something about the machine will run cooler?

 

i run ethanol/gasoline blend.. no particular reason other then thats what we fill the farm bulk tanks with.. never had a problem with either power, starting, over heating etc in the 2000 500man, ran it for years in a yamaha moto4, riding mowers too.

 

The AC should be ran with what the owners manual calls for,and to my knowledge,it is 87 octane fuel.

The only exception would be if there were major engine mods,like a HP piston,cam,ect.Than the engine would REQUIRE a higher octane rated fuel.

Octane has to do with an engines abilty to deal with spark knock,in another words,if the engine does not produce any spark knock on acceleration,stay with 87 octane fuel.

Now,on the other hand,if the engine does produce a engine spark knock on acceration,go up to 89 octane fuel and see if the pinging goes away.If it dont,than you probably need to go to 92 octane or higher.Higher octane fuels when not needed are just a waste of money,
Bill

 

Has anybody seen the latest American Hunter issue concerning hunting vehicles? It had an article in there about building a Honda Foreman for hunting, and various accessories needed, as well as tillage equipment for planting wild life feed.

Anyway, one of the accessories they highly recommended was 104+ Octane boost, as well as Sta-bil fuel stabilizer. I can see the Sta-bil suggestion for when wintering, or when the machine will sit for long periods of time without being used, but going by Bill's suggestions, why would they recommend the 104 octane boost? They claim it gives an added edge in power for turning the larger tires they put on (26" Blackwaters if I remember right), and seemed to make it "feel" more powerful. I don't recall any engine mods to the Honda, so I really don't understand why or how the 104 boost would help.

Oh, on a side note, they did say that the one bottle of 104 would do approximately 22 gallons of fuel, and that it should only be applied in small amounts every other tank, if that makes any difference. Something about keeping the engine/carb cleaner???

Any comments???

Mike

 

I find that running 89-93 otane helps the performance of my 500 over the 87 octane gas. The reason is cause of the higher than normal compression ration Arctic Cat uses on there quads.

On a down note I also fin that my cat runs hotter with the higher octane gas.