A Fleet Test Evaluation of the Effect of a Unique Gasoline Additive on Vehicle Acceleration

This paper describes the effect of a unique gasoline additive technology on the acceleration performance of electronic knock control (EKC) equipped vehicles A polyether pyrolidone (PEP) molecule has been shown to provide a reduction in the octane appetite of engines on dynamometer test stands and in vehicles in a fleet test ^{[1 2]} This program was designed to determine if a reduction of octane requirement of EKC-equipped vehicles would result in acceleration improvement of those vehicles The performance of a fleet of six vehicles, consisting of three vehicles each of two different models, was studied The vehicles were operated for 16,000 kilometers (km) fueled with gasoline containing conventional detergent/carrier additives, then an additional 8,000 km fueled with gasoline containing the same detergent with the PEP now substituted as the carrier Acceleration performance was carefully measured after operation on each fuel Engine induction system and combustion chamber deposits were removed at the end of test and the vehicle performance again measured.

Acceleration performance deteriorated after 16,000 km of operation while using the conventional additive, indicating an increase in EKC activity Further operation on the test additive resulted in reduced EKC activity and a recovery of acceleration performance Acceleration performance of the test vehicles was best with a clean engine