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I'm a novice and need your opinion on compression ratio. I have a down payment on, and will be buying my good neighbor's 05 FLHT. He works at the CVO department in Milwaukee. Before he put any miles on it, he went through the motor. In Wisconsin, we have 93 octane. He said when traveling, I could run into much less octane. He told me to run it for awhile this summer and see how it goes. If I decide to go back to th 9.1 pistons it wouldn't be a problem. He would change them back at no cost. He had mentioned it's currently set up around 108 HP when dynoed and going back to 9.1 would probably drop it down to around 100 HP. My quesion is, would I feel that much drop in HP? Is it better to sacrifice the HP so not to mess with octane booster or have performance problems?
If you know for a fact you can find 93 octane anywhere you ride then I would leave, but with that being said if you plan any rides across state lines I highly doubt you will always find 93. I would drop it down so that I can be able to ride across the states and not have to worry about any problems with the performance of your bike from not having the right octane running.
I run almost the same set up. I ride 20 to25 thousand a year and only rarely run into a problem. But I was thinking I might carry a couple of octane booster pacs to use in a pinch. I did put reg 87 in once and my bike pinged its head off. never doing that again. Man your going to have a hoot with all that power. I think its worth looking for premium fuel. ENJOY !!
Have any of you actually had any luck with octane booster? I haven't. Most gas stations in my area of Minnesota only have 91 octane. Unless you are looking to race regularly drop the compression down, or look at different cams to use with your combination. Make it a real world bike that you can just ride and have fun with with out the worry of burning a piston.[sm=happy046.gif]
My bike runs any premium crap I can get with out pinging and still makes good power.
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