Octane Rating a relative scale to tell you how resistant the fuel is to spontaneous combustion under engine compression, since the goal in an engine to only have the fuel react with pressurized hot air after the piston reaches top dead center so that as the piston starts the downward stroke the hot combustion pressurized expanding gas pushes down on the piston to perform work to drive the engine crank connected by gearing & shafts to the vehicles drive wheels & thus tires on the roadway to propel the vehicle forward.
Higher Octane fuels work better in air cooled engines where the engine head temperatures are upward of 350 F while a typical water cooled automobile engine head temperatures closer to 230 F and the coolant block operating temp around 186 F respectively.
100LL low lead for opposed piston air-craft engines or even Lead Free 100 octane, many small aircraft can even use 80 octane gasoline, like the O-200 engines that been in use for 70+ years with a mostly similar design to its original version. They cost over $30,000 new, which is amazingly expensive given the antiquated design.
Automobile engines are made by the millions such that they cost a lot less and typically contain all the modern technologies like water cooling, fuel injection, emissions controls, ECU, O2 sensor, ADAS & more chipsets features & functions.
Aircraft are made in small volumes and everything more expensive as a result due to the lack of economies of scale that companies like Toyota achieve with the Prius lineup for example. $ for $ you get the most technological bang for your buck with the Chevy Bolt EV for example. Tesla Model 3 has even more technology available at a higher price per unit of tech.
When gasoline sprayed into the intake ports of a piston engine, the compression ratio of that piston + block + head, the valve timing + duration & lift, and the ignition timing, electronically controllable, can all be adjusted by the ECU or engine control unit computer that works with the closed loop knock sensor & O2 sensor & crank sensor & MAF sensor & other temperatures sensors to adjust the pulse width & timing of the electronic fuel injector operation, such that good peak power can be made while minimizing fuel waste & reducing emissions. Fuel injection with emissions controls makes modern ICE vehicles 95-99% cleaner burning than their older carburetor engined vehicle predecessors.
O2 Sensor + ECU + Catalytic Converter + Fuel Injection + Electronic Variable Ignition Timing
These engine control & fuel injection & exhaust emission control technologies means that a fully warmed up modern cars like a 2023 Toyota Corolla GR emits 99% fewer smog forming emissions than the same vehicle model released before 1970 that used a carburetor to Venturi pin hole vacuum mist entrainment fog gasoline into the engines intake manifold so that when the intake valves open a mixture of atmospheric air rich ratio fogged with gasoline gets sucked into the engine cylinder as the piston moving down such that the volume inside the swept area increasing to accommodate a fuel air load. The intake valve then closes as the piston reaches lowest bottom level before starting to come back up for the compression stroke.
Now with the intake & exhaust valves closed the fuel vapor air mix stuck inside the cylinder as the piston travels upward compressing this mixed charge & when the piston gets to top dead center or just after the spark plug produces a hot electrical arc using thousands of volts of current making a tiny lightning bolt that's over 10,000 F that ignites the compressed fuel & air with a wave front propagating deflagration combustion event that produces hot expanding exhaust gasses that shove the piston down performing mechanical work on the engine crank to move the wheels via gearing & shafts in the drivetrain.
In the basement of the engine, engine oil being swashed about to keep the crank bearings, head bearings, journal bearings, ball bearings, and every other friction interface inside the engine lubricated with a thin oil film that enables the metal parts to smoothly slide against each other so as to reduce friction & enhance the operating life of the engines internal lubricated parts. Seals at all the interfaces between sections keeps the oil trapped in the crank area & inside the head with the cam-shafts & valve & rockers etc.
Engine coolant as a mixture of propylene glycol and water & some long life corrosion inhibiting additives flows through channels in the engine block via pressure produced by the engines water pump as hot engine coolant flows into the radiator where the heat exchanger interface allows air passing through the fins, sometimes assisted by an electric fan behind the radiator sucking air through it, to take heat away from the engine coolant & dump it into the environment, using ambient air as a heat dump.
Thus billions of engines running for trillions of hours increases the heat content of the atmosphere of Earth known as global warming, plus the green house gas CO2 emitted from combustion of the fuel helps to trap more of the Sun's energy in Earth's climate, making storms more energetic, droughts longer lasting & hotter, and flooding more intense & longer, more chaotic and energetic storms that cause more damage to human infrastructure.
Because ICE powered cars each contribute to climate change & because of the carbon intensive nature of car manufacturing, cars are not a good transportation option for 10 billion people alive at the same time.
Lithium Ion battery electric vehicles are not a good replacement because they do not address the core of the problem, the energy intensive wasteful nature of large heavy metal vehicles for each person that sit for 20 hours per day not driven, depreciating & corroding away the owners capital or money.
When the cold engine started its tight as the metals have not warmed up & expanded, so the piston rings scrape the wall of the cylinder such that most of the wear affecting common car engines occurs during the first 90 seconds of cold start in the morning.
F1 engines are heated to 154 F before starting because they are too tight in term of tolerances to even be started cold at ambient temperatures. Block heating your engines can enhance its useful life by pre-warming it so that less friction happens on warm start-ups.
Passenger car engines become most fuel efficient & have the lowest emissions once they reach their full operating temperature typically in the highest transmission gear cruising on level roads at 50 MPH the aerodynamic cross over point where any faster requires a lot more fuel per unit distance traveled. This is why Highway fuel economy ratings for cars tend to be higher than City fuel economy ratings or real world achieved fuel economy results. Stop & Go city driving puts much more wear on a vehicle per mile than steady state highway driving.
Electric vehicles are trending because of the global trend to decarbonize transportation energy, aka phase out combustion engines & their emissions in order to reduce carbon emissions to address climate change. But we need to rethink transportation to a post - car era mindset where vehicles are more efficient, where transportation safer, where accidents are virtually eliminated, where energy efficiency maximized * where emissions are minimized.
Think trains & hyper-loops, busses traveling in clusters on highways controlled by computers to make a road-bus-train so that the fleet uses even less energy *as each following bus behind the lead gets the draft advantage of the vehicle up-front pushing the air out of the way //
I want you to think about why a bicycle the most energy efficient vehicle ever invented! Why E-bikes aretrending to make bike commutes on steep hilly terrain or longer routes a less sweaty affair for people looking to not drive their car as much to save money they would have to spend at the gas pump to fuel their cars. Why are E-bikes & electric battery kick scooters trending? Electric scooters & electric motorcycles, self balancing electric last mile EPMAD devices like the Segway Ninebot MiniPro :)
Go for walk and consider living close enough to where you work to walk to work, or digital commute by working from home on your computer & shop online so you don't have to drive to a store to shop. Let the systems work for you like magic & use the spare time you generate to have fun, to stay fit by exercising, to focus on cooking from scratch instead of wasting time shopping.
There are better solutions to all problems that start with upgrading each persons mindset about the best ways of living as they become proven & well known, just as interval fasting trending now even though the Romans pioneered 1 meal per day living in antiquity. Sometimes intelligent operating paradigms like gardening edible produce in raised boxes near your home skips generations.
My grandparents were into gardening as are Meg & I, but my parents were more interested in making money & not at all interesting in gardening. My grandparents were frugal or cheap like me, my parents were not. We see that the cultural pendulum swings & trends come into & out of fashion or vogue over time.
Meg & have nostalgia for styles & designs from 1950's America homes & appliances, colors & fashions, food & music, before plastic was a big deal, where things were made with better quality, metal, wood & glass, before human population exploded, back when America was on the up & up after the end of world war 2. I am talking about a time when ethical real music made by bad of musician with talent, not some software defined music that I can make easily DIY style on my laptop.
I think America peaked in 1968, shortly after the USD or US dollar was delinked to Gold which was before 1964 pegged at $35 USD per ounce. In many ways the NASA of back then & appliances that last a lifetime & innovative new homes & new technologies, before people held the internet in their hands with smartphones, before school shootings, when all the food was still naturally organic, when many small business were thriving, before globalization, when people were reverent toward God & their country & neighbors, when the world was slower & simpler & human activity was slower on smaller scales of operation with lower emissions & less pollution, less micro-plastics, fewer pests, before COVID19 & the war in the Ukraine.
I have a nostalgia in my Heart for 1940-1964 America, even though I was born in 1983 this time through. In September 2025 my soul turns 3,000 years old, as this is my 57th iteration through life according to my believe in the Akashic Record of my Soul.
I try to find good reasons to keep going each day & consider each day a precious & special gift & try to make the best of each day alive since I have no idea when this life will end. I charge you with the same, to try to make the best of the finite time you have alive.
Thanks for reading. Be well & peace be with you!
With Sincere Loving Kindness
Aaron Kenneth Schwarz
Thinking About Octane Rating
Combustion engine generator / Range Extended Electric Vehicles. I covered a lot of topics here, but I want to encourage to to understand that automakers are optimized engines with variable compression ratios and many other emerging technologies like gasoline direct injection, all with ambitions goals to reduce carbon emissions, to make vehicles with better fuel economy that cost less to operate even with expensive fuels like the 3rd generation drop in replacement renewable fuels or biofuels that will replace gasoline in the mid term future. I am talking about DME like propane for $1/gal replacing diesel fuel in industrial vehicles, heavy duty trucks upgrade with DME fueling like they did in South Korea already!
There are tons of people trying to reduce waste with innovative new business models that take wastes from one industry like imperfect mangos & make vegan leather.
There are people making biological fabrics out of used banana peels.
There are people making plastic utensils, cups & plates out of mushroom mycelium, even vegan bacon & vegan leather.
We have people turning used cigarette but filters into cleaned fluff inside stuff animals
Thaely makes shoes out of plastic bags in India
There are people making eye-wear out of used coffee grounds
People making furniture & other goods from broken skateboards
There are a lot of farmers trying to reduce the amount of pesticides they spray to help the bee's
Most people are trying to be better at recycling and recycling rates are improving all around the world
Energy efficiency a trending topic in business because it reduce operating costs & improves profits, thus wasting energy not only foolish but expensive & represent lost profit & increased risks.
Light pollution, sound pollution & air pollution are all being addressed by people designed smarter light fixtures that concentrate light where its actually useful & not throwing it towards the sky where it creates glare back scattering that obscures views of the heavens above, of space, of other stars of the Solar System! For millennia before artificial lighting other than warm dim fires for cooking, people woke up at 2am to take a leak outside & noticed the beautiful stars above, in a state of appreciate awe struck wonder & mystery, they were inspired to develop telescopes & astronomy to surpass the derange older theories of astrology with an actual science more like the way God thinks.
I am talking about actual facts about reality, truth & life, the way that life came about, where we came from, God, and why we owe it to each other & future generations to make the world a better place to live for everyone. We need to improve everything continually motivated by the Love of God through Faith in Christ Jesus, to help other people in more ways any way we can imagine. It's about a reasonable profit, not excessively & obsessively focusing on maximizing profit. It's about fair competition without corruption. It's about honest government without bribery & lobbying. I am talking about phasing our Crony Capitalism and other moral failure in governments world wide, like the EVIL despots who control the CCP in the PRC.
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