Premium Fuel in 496 Mag?

[LawyerMan]

Is there any real benefit to using premium fuel in a 496 Mag, or is it just a waste of $0.23 per gallon extra?

 

[Southpaw II]

All of the modern Mercruisers are set up to burn 87 octane. No value....

Don

 

[Strake]

In the 4 plus years we had our 496 I only put premium in maybe 2 or 3 times...... as our marina had run out of 87. The boat ran perfectly fine on 87 and I could not tell the difference in any way.

 

[LawyerMan]

Sounds like a waste of money.

 

[CliffA]

i would run whatever grade Mercruiser recommends for that engine....engines can be tuned differently to run on different grades of gas....if your engine was tuned to run high octane then i would suggest you run high octane....if not you could get detonation and severely damage the engine....

don't make an uninformed (and potentially very costly) decision....read the material in the link below and then decide if you want to risk using gas that is a different grade than what is reccommended...in then end, is a few extra $$ per tank full worth the risk of ruining an engine?.....IMHO no it is not.....

cliff

http://www.contactmagazine.com/Issue54/EngineBasics.html

 

[CliffA]

You must have missed the part about the engines being rated at 87 octane, which the recommended fuel.

nope...i saw that but i was not sure if that is true for all 496 MAG engines.....if so then 87 octane will be fine.....the OP did not state what grade his particular version of the 496 MAG engine is recommended....if certain variations and model years of the 496 MAG could have been tuned differently depending on which boat they were installed in then my reply is valid...

cliff