Honda Car Forum

My Acura salesman told me that i can go ahead and pump octane 87 since i'm in California. The manual says premium. The salesman said that in California, 87 is the premium of all other states. Have you heard of this?

Premium in some states is actually 89-91 octane. This is considered mid-grade in states with pollution regulations on the gas sold there. You could probabally get away with regular in CA, you will neeed to listen for pinging in your engine. To be safe run mid-grade most of the time with an ocassional tank of premium. The one thing your saleman didn;t tell you is that if you run a lesser grade of gasoline you will lose some mileage.

Use premium, more miles per gallon, also 87 maybe afect you catalic converter.

Its an Acura TSX... 87 Octane is ok. The mfg. recommends Premium Gasoline but its not really a big time performance car to warrant the cost of the premium.The only thing that will happen is you might get a little knock in your engine at first, but as soon as that happens the ECU (cars computer) will pull timing, the knock will go away and it'll be fine. Odds are you won't even notice.Go for it. For once the car salesman wasn't lying.

First of all, octane has NO effect on gas mileage. The reason why Acuras all recommend premium gas is that they have high compression engines. That compression ratio usually requires higher octane to not "knock". If you buy a tank of regular, and dont have knocking, then go ahead and use regular. I put regular in my RL. if you have knocking, then upgrade to Plus, and see if that stops the knocking. Sometimes you can fill halfway with regular, and top off with plus.

You can run 87 fine.i run 87 in my integraand in our v6 accordCalif has the best gas octane wise.

This salesman is blatantly lying to you. Octane rating is nation wide. But you may be wasting your money using higher octane gas if you don't experience spark-knock when using the cheaper stuff.

In response to Patrick's answer, you will NOT get knocking in your engine. Why? Becuase the engine is equipped with a knock sensor that will retard the timing. The engine won't knock, but you will be running an enine at a significantly greater loss of power.

Your salesman is lying. Go see a new one.

The salesman is not lying. He doesn't make commission on gas. And he won't sell you something that won't work.