Well, last night I disconnected the battery completely and reconnected it this morning. I let the car idle for about ten minutes and drove off. My tank ran dry before that and it is filled with 93 octane. I only have a K@N filter with a stock air box. Here is what I found:

1) The climate control did some goofy diagnostics where all three LEDs blinked for about 20 seconds while it moved all of the vents into every which position they can possible go. It's kinda cool that it has it's own little self-diagnostics. I never saw that before.

2) The engine was throttling down alot faster then it used to. That was when I first started driving it. As the morning progressed, it started going back to it's old ways of taking forever to throttle down, although it is still a little quicker.

3) You can now hear valve ticking which you couldn't hear before, and I have been using 93 octane for weeks before I disconnected the battery. I always pay attention to the noises my H3 makes. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. I'm assuming maybe it's because it doesnt realize it's 93 octane and it's trying to run the car for 89, or it's just running the engine differently because it now is working a different way.

4) A tiny bit of vibration on the wheel and shifter that wasn't there before, but appeared to have smoothed out by the time I got to work.

So, anyway, yes there are definitely small differences after this, so something did get wiped and reset. Now, the whole 25 mile trip to work was unfortunately stop and go traffic for the most part, so I really didn't get to drive it at highway speeds for more then 5 minutes at a time. I'll see if there is any difference in gas mileage over the next week or so. So far, there is a slight power increase, but not too much.

I did the math and with the average amount of gas I use, it costs me about $150 to $200 a year more to use premium gas then regular. I'm willing to spend the money if it means I'm putting better gas in my vehicle. Maybe I'm just stupid (Don't even go there Dennis ) but so far it's different. Whether it's in a good way or a bad way remains to be seen.

 

I noticed that little diagnoatic thing with the hvac lights too. I was waiting for a voice to come on the onstar saying "what did you do!!!!"