So, my wife picked me up at the airport and told me she accidentally put 87 octane in my SRT. I was pretty furious but I checked online, found other discussions about it and a lot of people said it isn't a problem. I let it cycle through, never driving it hard and I never heard any knocking.
It's cycled through 93 a couple times since letting the 87
run empty. Tonight I took it to the drag strip and I'm running 2 mph slower trap speeds than normal. Could there be a correlation?
We worked through it. The other day I text'd her a picture a picture of my hand pushing the 93 button, and she text'd back that she'd rather see a picture of me taking out the garbage.
This also happened to me when I purchased my scat pack, except instead of being a lovely wife it was the dealer that put 87 in it though I requested premium. I was considering octane boost but the manual warns against using boosters as they may contain methanol which damages parts. I just took it easy as you did, after the second tank full of 92 (that's all there is in my area) it was running normal again.
I wonder why I was running slow last night. The temperature was slightly cooler than normal, although still pretty warm (84 degrees) and humidity wasn't especially high. Someone else mentioned it could be also be low barometric pressure.
In the manual it says if you accidentally run E85, after you drain it and refill it with normal gas then disconnect and reconnect the battery to reset the memory. I'm going to try that and then run it again next week.
This guy stated it correctly. You don't need to mess with octane boosters, run multiple tanks of a higher octane while driving the car easy, etc. The higher octane rating is required to prevent detonation under high cylinder pressure (heavy throttle). Detonation is when the fuel explodes rather than burns, resulting in a metallic hammering sound of which can damage pistons and connecting rod bearings. Modern engines feature a knock sensor, of which is merely a microphone-like device installed in the lower engine block to detect detonation. If detonation is detected, the ECM/PCM will retard the ignition timing slightly to compensate in effort to stop the detonation state. Under high throttle settings, you "may" notice a slight reduction in engine power with the low octane. During normal driving operations, the higher octane's anti-detonation properties aren't being used anyway, as cylinder pressure (i.e. throttle application) is relatively low. Just finish off your current tank of fuel and fill with the proper octane next time.