Latest Top Tier Fuel Retailers.

Boy I'll say. Some of those listing must have involved payoffs.

 

I've been using Costco for a long long time and have had zero issues other than the occasional wait.

 

They have to pay to be listed as Top Tier. You don't get to use the valuable logo for free!

 

What it means is that the detergent additive package at those stations meets their standards, and that is a good thing. I've had cars that were extremely picky as to what fuel I used and some of them have had a litany of injector related problems. When I started exclusively using "top tier" gas in those cars the problems went away.

I'm not going to suggest that the storage and fuel quality standards for some of these places aren't crap, but as far a keeping injectors clean I haven't had any issues with some of the "off brand" suppliers listed. In fact, the "Country Mark" co-op near me has ethanol free premium fuel that I use I the race boat and I fill the tanks of the cars being stored for the winter with and I've had great performance from that fuel.

 

+1 Shows a higher commitment to quality control in the distribution chain. The FAQs on the Top Tier web site address many of the comments above. (I have no affiliation with gasoline marketing.)

 

Top Tier is nothing more than a marketing company selling club memberships.

anyone can get in, just pay the fee.

A Classiche program for gasoline.

 

If you want more detergent just add Redline SI-1 or Chevron Techron. Detergents are mostly Poly Ether Amines.

 

BMWs have had major issues with costco gas at least here in Phoenix.

The fuel pumps didn't like the gas. They fuel pumps were getting eaten by the costco gas.

We had this happen on many many many cars and BMW sent an engineer out to figure out what the issue was... After testing the cars fuels and asking clients where they purchased their gas... there was only one answer... Costco

 

Is this a different issue than the very common high pressure fuel pump problem encountered by a huge number of the BMW direct injected engines worldwide?

I hear BMW has those fuel pump problems everywhere, not just Phoenix!

Re "top tier" list - I don't care so much about detergent content, I care more about lack of ethanol content (ie ethanol free gasoline). I'd suggest finding the intersection between that Top Tier list and this list http://pure-gas.org/ , the list of ethanol free gasoline in the US and Canada.

 

Here in Virginia, most E-0 is sold by independent retailers as a sideline product like kerosene. They probably have agreements with their local jobbers to supply base gasoline before splash blending ~10% ethanol in the tanker truck.

Our local marina carries E-0 by special arrangement that is supplied by BP (on the top tier list) but I've not seen it available to the public at one of their branded stations.

 

When I had my C4 Corvettes and showroom stock Camaros I tried ALL of the additives that were supposed to clean injectors. Redline, Techron, STP, and I tried them in various concentrations up to 3x the amount that was recommended. Since I was commuting over 75 miles a day I was going through a lot of gas.

None of them worked. Not a lick.

I was racing at the time and talked to BP engineer about the problem. In those older cars the fuel injectors would clog with varnished fuel and they ran poorly, some cylinders ran rich and others lean since the injection system fired all of the injectors equally and didn't have cylinder discrimination. For that reason having injectors that flowed equally was really important. He recommended that their mid-range fuel and confided that at the time their mid grade actually had their most effective detergent and additive package.

The reason for that is that they wanted a customer who tried a tank of the mid-range gas to "feel a difference" in one tank. What I did was use their mid-grade during the week and clean the injectors out and then switch to the higher octane on race weekends.

I never had any results from "snake oil" additives no matter how much or how often I tried them.

 

seperate issue. We had it on non turbo cars as well as turbo cars and even minis

The fuel pumps were litterly being eaten by the gas. I believe our land rover and audi stores suffered similar problems. They probably all use the same manufacture for fuel pumps. It could have been a problem with the material the pump was manufactured from... but the large common denominator was Costco gas. The people who tested the gas wanted to know where the gas was coming from because they saw something that was abnormal. It was so many years ago I can't quite remember what it was.

We had to tell our customers on delivery to not put costco gas in the cars. They looked at us like we had 3 heads "ohh i would NEVER do that" sure as **** about 2 or 3 weeks later... they came in and we would ask if they had a costco membership and they would hang their head low. It was pretty funny.

 

You're probably right.

I was using Quick trip because of their top tier status and their guaranty until an Autozone employee told me that's what was tripping my check engine light.
Switched to Shell, Mobil or Chevron.
Light gone.

Costco... top tier.
HA!
Not only was the shark jumped but Fonzie then landed in a wood chipper.