Wow! Thanks for all the feedback. Greatly appreciated! I remember when I was saving for a Commamdo and the price at the dealership was about $1900 U.S.(back in the previous century). Somehow I wound up with a 1972 XLCH Sportster (Boooo!) which, by the way, forever tainted my opinion of that marque!. Recalling back to that age of muscle cars and cheap high octane gasoline (petrol?), a machine wasn't a machine unless it required the likes of "Sunoco Blue". I believe 102 or 103 octane at the pump (If you remember the Sunoco gas station pumps had the dial on the side and you could select your octane rating! (purely an advertising gimmick). Back then, performance meant octane, and motorcycle manufacturers of high performance machines were no exception to the rule. The lead content TEA (Tetra Ethyl Lead) was done away with. This changed how engines were made (after the age on Norton????). By the way, regarding octane, the base for the octane rating at the pump of your local service station is stated on the pump itself. You may have noticed "octane method" R + M -:- 2. That stands for "Research + Motor -:- 2". The "Research" is the Lab "Spec" report of the gasoline octane content. The "Motor" is an actual motor they run the gas through that is able to calculate the octane content. They add the two octane findings together and -:- by 2 and that is the "at the pump" based octane rating. ( Sorry for rattling, I worked for many years as Captain on oil tankers with gasoline(petrol?) cargos).
