So there's more to making your bike faster than just running synthetic oil and race fuel?
There is NO BENEFIT to using a higher octane than your engine needs.
I'll try to be brief.....
Octane rating is a measure of the auto ignition resistance of gasoline and other fuels used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines.
Octane is NOT a measure of power but of the fuels? resistance to ignition from heat.
A higher-octane fuel, under identical combustion chamber conditions, will burn slower than a lower number.
As the piston, quickly squeezing the fuel/air mixture into a small space, it can generate enough heat of compression to ignite the fuel well before the spark plug fires, with unpleasant results... Detonation....
If the fuel prematurely ignites while the piston is on its way up, the burning of the fuel, in conjunction with the rising piston, creates even more pressure, resulting in a violent explosion.
This explosion is equivalent to hitting the top of the piston with a very large hammer. If you want to be able to see through the top of your piston, ignore those sounds that are usually called: "pre-ignition", "ping" or "engine knock".
What we really want is a very rapid controlled burn of the fuel, not an explosion.
And we want the burning of the fuel to take place while the piston is in a better position to convert this pressure into productive work.
It might seem odd that fuels with higher octane ratings burn less easily, yet are popularly thought of as more powerful. The misunderstanding is caused by confusing the ability of the fuel to resist compression detonation (pre-ignition = engine knock) as opposed to the ability of the fuel to burn (combustion).
Premium grades of fuel often contain more energy per gal/ litre due to the composition of the fuel as well as increased octane.
This is why when BDI's dyno run with race fuel lost HP on the initial fuel swap.
The engine was tuned to run with the pump gas,
we had the boost cranked up as high as we could go with pump gas
the race fuel would burn slower.
Tuning the engine to run with the race fuel produced more power as they could increase cyl. pressure/timing etc. (BMEP) without detonating the fuel prematurely.
The opposite will happen running the race fuel in your bike if it's not tuned/built to run with it. The slower burning fuel will cause your cyl. pressure to actually drop if nothing else has been changed.
Running the race fuel in a stock engine shouldn't do any damage.
I hope this makes some sense.
It's a pretty complicated subject worth spending some time on.
I am with you sandman, an aircraft engine is running in quite a different environment.
Tuck\o/
