GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

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Yes.Due to it's high compression ratio, it requires premium to prevent detonation.. "knock". You can run a tank on regular or silver if needed, but it will affect the car's performance, and it'll actually hurt gas mileage because of it.

Good thing gas prices dropped crazy low recently

It will run on regular...., but you will not get the full power of the engine..when the engine starts to detonate due to lower octane gas, it retards thetiming to compensate and thus you loose power.If you do decide to run premium after running regular. It will take a couple of tanks befor the ECM realizes you're running premium and advance the timing to give you the full potential of your engine.

Crap, ive been filling on regular for 4 months now....

Not to be a complete (removed)...but why do people spend the extra money for a high performance car if they aren't willing to spend the money to keep the car running at high performance? If I was completely concerned about gas, I would've gotten an Insight or a Prius..but.. I'm willing to pay to play..Sorry..just a gripe.. It -should- be run on premium, and you're only hurting yourself by putting in the cheap stuff.. I don't mean to say you're wrong for doing so, it's just a pet peeve of mine.

Quoting the manual:"If your vehicle has the 1.8L H.O. DOHC engine (GT), use only premium unleaded gasoline with a posted octane of 91 or higher. In an emergency, you may be able to use a lower octane -- as low as 87 -- if heavy knocking does not occur. Refill your tank with premium fuel as soon as possible. Otherwise, you might damage your engine."I don't know how much clearer this requirement can be. Sorry, but...

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa »Not to be a complete (removed)...but why do people spend the extra money for a high performance car if they aren't willing to spend the money to keep the car running at high performance? If I was completely concerned about gas, I would've gotten an Insight or a Prius..but.. I'm willing to pay to play..Sorry..just a gripe.. It -should- be run on premium, and you're only hurting yourself by putting in the cheap stuff.. I don't mean to say you're wrong for doing so, it's just a pet peeve of mine.I don't really see the Vibe to be a high performance car, plus someone told me it was alright to use low grade.

Just got back from the gas station. Filled up for $20

Quote, originally posted by rAERRK »I don't really see the Vibe to be a high performance car, plus someone told me it was alright to use low grade. I guess I agree with you it's not really a high performance car, but it is a car with a high performance engine. ~ 180 hp from 1.8L, I call that high performance.

Crazy low gas prices?!?!? Not here. It takes about $27-$30 to fill my Vibe depending on how low the tank is. But as was said, I (also) pay to play. Gotta love the GT.

That's insane. I spent $20.50 @ 10.6 gallons today. I thought that was expensive.

If I could spend $21 to fill my Vibe, I'd be a happy camper.

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa » Not to be a complete (removed)...but why do people spend the extra money for a high performance car if they aren't willing to spend the money to keep the car running at high performance? If I was completely concerned about gas, I would've gotten an Insight or a Prius..but.. I'm willing to pay to play..That's funny, because I think if I had wanted a performance car, I wouldn't have bought anyting Pontiac was selling at the time either but the vibe is a great compromise of many factors.if you calculate the extra cost of using premium fuel over some period of time, it really isn't that much. Maybe about 20% between the extra cost and lower mpgs. The car will be a lot more fun if you drop the extra couple of bucks in each tank in premium fuel, and will be much better for the car. So, while I'm saving some pennies in my base on regular gas, you can grin as you blow by me with your GT in lift.

Quote, originally posted by AzFusionGT »Crazy low gas prices?!?!? Not here. It takes about $27-$30 to fill my Vibe depending on how low the tank is. But as was said, I (also) pay to play. Gotta love the GT.Premium is $1.87 here

Quote, originally posted by Psychobroker »I don't know how much clearer this requirement can be. Sorry, but...Yeah, I have to agree. I just didn't have the balls to say it for fear of being flamed.As to pricing, I just paid $16.50...but that was for regular...

I haven't really noticed a major difference between using premium and regular. I do notice that the tank seems to last longer on regular than premium. I can get about 270 miles on regular, but premium gets me 240-250. I have a long comute to work, it takes me about 40 mins so I drive a lot.

I have always used premium in my GT, I actually switched from 93 to 94 and she ran even better. I figured with the 94 I would get lower mpg but it actually increased.

Quote, originally posted by rAERRK »I don't really see the Vibe to be a high performance car, plus someone told me it was alright to use low grade. True..it's not a sports car or anything.. But, neither is say, a Saab 93. Though, those are turbocharged, so using anything less than premium can be disasterous. Same with a turbocharged Passat.It's not the look of the car that matters, it's what's under the hood. They jammed a lot of performance into a tiny engine (thank you Yamaha tuning!), and that's all that matters. For the size of the car, it does have a very discernable amount of pep. I'm not sure who would've told you that..if it was someone on the sales floor at the dealership, are you really gonna beleive that? Ask the guys back in service. Not the representatives, but the people who actually work on the engine. And yes, of course, the car will compensate for the regular, but it's just not designed to do it..

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa »I'm not sure who would've told you that..if it was someone on the sales floor at the dealership, are you really gonna beleive that? Ask the guys back in service. Not the representatives, but the people who actually work on the engine. And yes, of course, the car will compensate for the regular, but it's just not designed to do it..No it wasnt a salesman, it was someone on another forum. The salesmen at the dealer we got it from didn't know **** about the GT because they never stocked them (nobody would buy them). But after delivering ours and seeing it in person they said they were thinking of stocking more GT's

Quote, originally posted by rAERRK »No it wasnt a salesman, it was someone on another forum. stop back at that other forum and tell them they are full of (stuff) I was going to add that you should also tell them to come here to genvibe, but if they're telling people to routinely run regular gas in a GT (or XRS) then I don't know if we want them

It was only one guy and he didn't say routinely, he said it probally wouldnt hurt to use 89.

89's not regular either...that's 'silver'. Which, is a slightly lesser evil. The manual, I believe, states that it requires 91 octane. Which of course is impossible to find.

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa »89's not regular either...that's 'silver'. Which, is a slightly lesser evil. The manual, I believe, states that it requires 91 octane. Which of course is impossible to find. It says "91 or better", not just 91. It can't be that hard to find 91 or better in other states. Here in CA, we're capped at 91 from the pump, or better at the TRACK lol.EDIT: Hey Jahntassa, when'd you get those HID's?! link please!

In California that's all we get. (91)

Damn, I haven't been out to Cali in a while, then. Out here it's 87, 89, 93 (GA, and NJ if it's still like that).As for the HIDs, had 'em since August. Mike probably has some pics of the whole thing somewhere. I basically have his original set of HIDs, because I didn't care about the lacking hi-beams, and he has the better set, plus, now he has HID fogs.. Unfortunately, i've been perpetually broke since then, so I still owe him some cash for my headlights. I just made the sigpic last night because of a conversation Mike and I had about that sticker in the pic.

I've never had the courage to try anything lower than 91 octane. What I have noticed is that whenever I use a fuel system cleaner, my milage goes in the crapper! Seriously! Try from 28 mpg to 23 mpg. I think that it has something to do with the cleaner reducing the volitility of the fuel...err something like that. Guess the ecu dumps more fuel in to compensate.

am I right in saying that all the 2ZZ GE motors require premium grade unleaded?

running anything else will gum up your fuel system... it needs that high grade premium fuel. Its not a suggestion lol

Quote, originally posted by Mavrik »running anything else will gum up your fuel system... it needs that high grade premium fuel. Its not a suggestion lolI thought that the reason the GT needed premium fuel was because of the higher compression ratio, you needed a higher octane to prevent knocking, The car has a knock sensor that will retard the timing to reduce knocking as much as it can but running regular gas in a GT will reduce power and efficiency, and can be bad for the engine over a long period. I don't know about the fuel system gum up issue though.

Quote, originally posted by rated_w »am I right in saying that all the 2ZZ GE motors require premium grade unleaded?http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id ... ad?id=7795

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »I thought that the reason the GT needed premium fuel was because of the higher compression ratio, you needed a higher octane to prevent knocking, The car has a knock sensor that will retard the timing to reduce knocking as much as it can but running regular gas in a GT will reduce power and efficiency, and can be bad for the engine over a long period. I don't know about the fuel system gum up issue though.I could very well be wrong. All I know is it causes major fuel issues for the GT engine if regular fuel is used.

Merge Thread 01-18-05