Those are two different engines; 327 SBC and 464 BBC. Yes, it's definitely a compression ratio thing. With the price of gas today, I wouldn't build a engine over 10:1 for street use. I wouldn't go higher than the 9.25:1 I built and expect them to run well on regular 87 octane gas.

 

I used to live in L.I. ,NY near the Northville Industries fuel terminal in Port Jefferson. This company provides gasoline and fuel oil for most of the NYC area. Most of the fuel deliveries to gas stations were made by tank trucks owned by various companies, but none except for Mobil carried a gas company logo. The same truck could be seen delivering along its route to different branded stations and top off their tanks. Talking to the delivery drivers I found out that the base fuel was all from common storage tanks at Northville, and different additives were added to the truck load to meet octane and pollution requirements. Some tankers were portioned for different grade fuel, and some were not, and many times premium was substituted for lower grades to make things simpler, being that the price difference to Northville was minimal. The point of this story is that regardless of the fuel grade, cleanliness depends mostly on how the fuel happened to be handled during storage and delivery.

 

NY must have different (none) testing at pumps. Most states have random octane testing, and if a station was to sell gas that didn't meet the octane rating advertised on the pump, they are shut down.

 

Perfect advice.

 

Sheez. Here they test it right from the pump and the testers sign is embossed (soft aluminum) in the tag with the date.

 

The way Pete worded that (how I read it), he's saying they would pump a higher octane into a lower octane holding tank. Can't see a gas station getting into trouble for doing that.

 

I think you're right Chuck. I didn't read it correctly, as I thought he meant they substituted lower grades in premium tanks.

 

Yeah that would be a big no-no. However, he was talking about New York.....

 

That's very interesting. I actually would've thought that the gas now is cleaner than it would'v been back then. My car is stock so I have nothing special in it or have it tuned for anything like a lot of you seem to. I don't mind paying an extra 1.50 or so per tank for the 91 but I just didn't think it made much of a difference at this point so I haven't been. Thanks for the info!