Gas Stations - Differences?

A Honda technician in Seattle a number of years ago insisted that Amoco gas (later available at BP stations) was superior to any other gasoline you could buy in the U.S., at least for Hondas. I had been using Amoco gas back east and my cars always ran fine, but in Seattle, Amoco was not available, and the engine would ping on whatever gas I put in it in Seattle! When I drove back east and began using Amoco again, the pinging went away. So what he said may have had some truth, or it may have just been a difference in the west-coast blends compared to what the car was used to, and perhaps it would have pinged on Amoco in Seattle as well, if it had been available.

Anyway, I've been using BP gasoline in both my Hondas and my Ferrari whenever possible, and I have no complaints. When we had a gas shortage a few years ago, I ran a couple of tankfuls of regular-grade in the Ferrari (which has mechanical fuel injection), and the engine never objected.

 

I don't see Citgo on here. Now the Red Sox have to take the sign down!

 

Can we have the Cities Service one back?

 

somewhere in the 308 section I did an informal check of Gas stations & mpg on the 308.

Hess gave me the best mpg by like 2-3 miles if memory serves. There was only like a 1 mpg difference between regular unleaded & super.
Chevron isn't around me anymore.

 

+1 for Hess. When the daily driver gets refilled anywhere else I can feel the difference within seconds. Even my wife notices that Hess provides more power.

 

Hmmm..so, if a 308 gets about 15 mpg avg, and you got 2-3 mpg more with Hess, thats about a 15% increase in mileage. Do you really believe thats credible? A 15% increase just cuz of a brand change in gas? I would suspect some other reason for that mpg difference, Clyde. Hess would be bragging about their miracle gasoline all over the TV stations. Maybe you were driving easier on that tank. something else. Has to be another reason.

 

Is it possible Hess has a lower alcohol content?

 

Peter, just going from memory (I fill up there many times), I remember seeing, at least, in my town, "up to 10% ethanol". I really doubt even with lower ethanol one could expect , realistically, such an increase in MPG.

 

and just cuz one experiances very little trouble with injectors doesnt mean the additive/elixir you dutifully had added in the past years is to be credited. Ive owned many cars- with many miles-with many years- never had a FI problem, never added stuff- ever. Not scientific evidence, just my experience.

FI? Change the fuel filter. And air cleaner.

 

Alcohol definitely results in lower gas mileage. I hate Consumer Reports in general, but their tests do tend to be impartial. Here is their report on gas mileage with E85:

Ethanol Alternative Fuel | E85 - Consumer Reports

Power is also reduced as a result of Ethanol, but it's likely that their Flex-Fuel vehicle's electronics compensated for the fuel difference so that acceleration wasn't affected in their test. Power is likely to be reduced in older cars that don't have sophisticated electronics to compensate.

 

Nice catch! Retro Kenmore Sq...I'm in for that.

Oh damn Cities Service isn't on the list either!!!

 

Retro?

I still miss the Sinclair Dino.

 

Pipeline pigs are not used to separate grades and types of fuels as they move through pipelines. *If a supreme grade is following a regular grade into the depot/ terminal, the "transition" between the two grades is down graded into the lower octane product. *So in this case regular grade tank actually gets a bit of a boost. *When diesel is following gasoline or vice versus, the transition is directed to a "trans mix tank.". Many terminal operators will send the transmit back out of the terminal to be reprocessed. *But some will blend it off, very slowly, back into a sale tank.

Downgrading product or putting it into transmix costs the owners of the fuel lots of money. *Good operators will pay attention to minimize.

 

There are some interesting tidbits in this thread. I have 89 Ethanol Free or 92 w/ Ethanol available. Assuming both are the same level of "fresh" which would you use for a 10 year old F-car in a warm and humid environment?

 

The manual for a 360 specifies 95-98 RON, which would be approximately 91-94 octane on the USA's AKI (R+M/2). As much as I hate ethanol, it's probably best to meet the factory's octane spec in order to avoid pre-detonation.

 

If they will let you, maybe mix them half and half, this will reduce the alcohol content by 50% and raise the octane. I think I read that mixing alcohol with pure gas raises the overall octane, but I could be wrong about this. Maybe somebody who knows can confirm or correct me.

 

Ethanol has a octane (RON) rating of 108.6. There are other blend stocks with higher levels. When the fuel manufactures formulate the base fuels, such as CARBOB, they avoid giving away octane since that costs money.

 

I go to one specific Chevron station. Not that I prefer that gas, but it is the only station that I have found that has nozzels that allow me to fill my 308GTSi in a reasonable amount of time without turning itself off every few seconds. I still have to modulate the flow by hand, but it can keep the flow going at a reasonable rate.

 

Nice-Now that is old school! One of the top Pixar execs is a big car guy-I can't remember his name but in a number of their movies he throws a gas station in there that is clearly a reference to Sinclair Dino-real sharp!

 

Must be a North Shore thing.

 

There is a difference, and it comes from the additive packages.

With modern port injected engines the computer will lean a bank of cylinders until one cylinder in that bank starts to miss. That is, the mixture for the bank is determined by the lowest flowing injector. If the injectors don't flow equally, you can have some cylinders running rich and therefore not making as much power. For that reason it's important to have clean injectors that flow equally. When you shut your engine off, fuel sits in the injectors and cooks, and it evaporates off the end of the injector. If you don't have a good detergent package after a while you won't have equal flow and that's when the trouble begins.

Cheap "no name" gas doesn't have much detergent in it and as a result, you injectors will coke up and the car will run like crap after a while.

I found that I had injector mismatch that would cause intermittent missing on the highway with my fourth generation Corvettes. I tried multiple " fuel system cleaners" and aftermarket products (all the big name stuff in a bottle) and nothing worked. By chance I put midgrade Amoco in the car because I was in a hurry and the premium pumps were shut down. I just figured I wouldn't hammer it until I ran that gas out of the car, and to my surprise, by the time I burned out the midgrade the car was running really smoothly. I was racing against a guy who worked for Amoco and I mentioned that I was using the midgrade during the week and the premium on weekends. He explained that their midgrade gas at the time had a lot more detergent in it and he agreed that it would clean up the injectors during the week and that running premium on the weekends when I was racing the car would likely solve the problem. The reason the midgrage had a lot more detergent in it was that they wanted the customer to "feel the difference" in about one tank of gas and that would give the customer the incentive to buy the more expensive gas. They figured that the users of premium got enough detergent to keep the car clean so there wasn't a need to put extra detergent in the premium. That totally cured the intermittent highway miss and the car was always great running when it was being used on the track.

Since that time BP now advertises that all of their gas has higher levels of detergent (Invigorate) in them.

The wife's SUV is somewhat sensitive to different gas, sometimes she gets a load of bad gas and the car will throw a code, putting a tank of top tier gas in and the code will go away.. My son's GTI runs noticibly better with good gas, no doubt about it, but it's an older car too and that may well have something to do with it. My 5th gen Corvette doesn't seem to be sensitive at all, I can put any gas in it and it runs fine.

BMW, Audi and GM all support "Top Tier" gas, and since they don't have a dog in that fight, I think that says something. The bottom line is that if your car is sensitive to injector clogging a gas with a higher level of detergents will really make a difference. If your car isn't sensitive then gas is pretty much gas, and you can buy it by octane rating. But if you use no name gas a lot, you can expect that from time to time you should run a tank of top tier gas through it to keep the injectors clean. If you have a rough idle, try a tank of top tier gas before you do anything else and see if that clears it up.