Hi All, I recentley bought a TLR 200, circa 1985, which is in good overall condition, and starts and runs well.

Can any reader please give a point of view as to which is the best fuel - regular unleaded, or higher octane. And do any riders use octane boosters at all as an approach?

I will be using the bike for club level intermediate level trials. 

 

Many thanks

 

Unless it has been modified it almost certainly uses regular unleaded and handbook (if you can find someone with one) should give actual minimum octane number. All my Hondas of that era used regular unleaded and I think 95 octane minimum.

There is a chance with TLR 200 that compression has been raised in which case higher octane will be needed. Of all the small cc Honda trials bikes I knew non were unmodified as they were a bit short of power as standard. If it is un modified octane boosters will reduce performance.

Ethanol Free premium will be your friend..  they don't need premium , but they run a tad cooler and happier . And as Do2 said , unless you build the motor to hot rod levels , octane booster is a waste , GOOD  pump gas is fine ...

Glenn

Your valves and valve seats would not think a tetraethyllead octance booster a waste.

There is a simple answer to this,a TLR engine does not need an octane booster,lead or anything else. As long as you dont mind paying for it Aspen fuel will make it run very nicely,not rot any fuel components,draw in moisture or do anything else nasty that pump unleaded will. It has a 5 year shelf life and allows my AJS to start first kick and run like it never has before. It comes in clean cans,so carb cleaning is a thing of the past,spark plugs actually last and best of all the fumes from it are considered harmful - not toxic.

My chainsaws start and run like new ones despite being very old and done lots of work.They no longer give me headaches when there is no wind to carry the fumes away - which was a big problem for me.

 http://www.aspenfuel.co.uk/

 

No connection to the company,just a very satisfied user.

Your valves and valve seats would not think a tetraethyllead octance booster a waste.

As far as I know all Hondas from the late 1960s on (possibly earlier) were designed and built to run on unleaded fuels) having hard valves and seats. In an engine with insufficiently high compression and combustion characteristics to properly "process" lead additives, the additives can do harm by fouling the spark plugs.

Note that in the UK the unleaded of today is a different beast to the unleaded of 10+ years ago, due to the ethanol now added to it.

I'm a fan of the Aspen fuel mentioned above.

Edited September 29, 201510 yr by dpyam