if you’ve recently bought a new car of you’ve been driving for quite some time now and you don’t know what kind of gasoline your car should take, it may be time to set aside a few minutes and figure out which type of gas your manufacture company recommends. Since most cars only need 87, it never hurts on how to find out. Here’s how you do it:
Check your owner’s manual - The first thing you should do is reference your owner’s manual. Every manual will have a section where it’ll tell you what gasoline they recommend for your vehicle. Simply look in the glossary for anything related to the gas consumption.
Check the website - If you don’t know where you’ve placed your owner’s manual, simply hop online and Google your car’s name. Every car company has your car manual online. From there, browse it online or simply search for something like “What kind of gas does a 2007 Honda Civic need?”. 99% of the time you’ll get your answer.
Be cheap - If your car recommends 87, stick with it, it will do just fine! There’s no need to upgrade and pay 30 cents more a gallon for a higher octane, you’re only hurting your wallet.
What takes high octane? The only cars that you’ll most likely find taking higher octane fuels are your luxury vehicles, higher performance cars that require a lot of horsepower, and others. So, unless you’re driving a higher perfomance based car there’s probably no need for you to go for the high grade.
How is my octane determined? The octane for your car is determined on a few factors. The main factor is generally the engine and how it works. As I mentioned above, the higher the horsepower, the harder it performs, the better grade of gasoline it will need.
My word of advice is that you just stick to what your manual recommends. If it recommends a higher grade, I wouldn’t use anything lower than this because it will potentially void your warranty and could cause great damage, so don’t be stupid or cheap when it comes to using better gasoline.