[mikestew]

But when a gasoline engine doesn't knock, you can get more power out of it by consuming more fuel faster and more smoothly though.

No, you get more power out of it by advancing the timing and increasing the compression, both of which will cause an engine to knock with lower octane fuels. Perhaps that's what you are saying, but it didn't seem clear to me.

Thanks for the extensive write-up. Many of these types of questions can thankfully be answered on a dyno, but a little knowledge of what's going on never hurts.

[fuzzfactor]

I think I am saying the same thing, except my feeling is that you sadly have to retard the timing to get by on less-than-100 octane gasoline ;)