Quality Gas?

joyriide1113

joyriide1113

There is no cure!
I want to get into the discussion of Gasoline.

Do different stations matter? I have been pumping with shell for the most part. Not because of anything special, just that their is a bright lighted state of the art new one that was built not far from my home... Also their advertisement of their V-Power 93 octane gasoline.

My car specifies 91 octane or higher and here in florida it goes from 83, 89, 93. I only use 93. One concern I've had is how can I trust that the gas pumping is actually 93 octane? I'm sure that in brokedown neighborhoods one would question more, but I still question when I'm pumping gas at my own station...

Now as Judge Mills Lane says: "LETS GET IT ON!!!".
 
fwiw, I've heard 2 schools of thought. I heard the first idea when I was having starting problems w/ a brand new truck and the mechanic told me that WAWA's gasoline is not only cheap (quality), but inconsistent in that they get it from different suppliers in order to keep costs low.

The 2nd is that there are a limited number of co's that actually refine oil into gasoline, and that the majority of the gas comes from these few suppliers.

I always wonder about the quality of the tanks undergroung as far as age goes, and if the gas station is relatively old, if the gasoline in the tanks below ground contains any particles from tank corrosion?

I'd like to know too...
 
Large companines draw from the same tanks, they do this to save on shipping costs, you take 100,000 from my tank I'll take the same from yours. However, what makes the difference is the Additive. Each company has its own additive and adds it to the base gasoline. So while the base gasoline may be the same, the additive is different, and hence the brand of gasoline you use is different because of the additive, not the base gasoline.

As far as Octane levels I thought that had to do with the compression of your engine, higher the compression the higher the Octane required.
 
Yea, but what about the actual gas you're pumping in? How do you know its not 87 octane and the station is selling it for 93 octane? I'm sure theres some way to regulate against those commiting GAS fraud. LOL:D
 
True...your right there is no way to know. Other then I wonder if they get tested periodically, like a group comes in takes samples from each level and tests them.

Not sure this is even possible...but I do know a local gas station here was shut down for filling his tanks with a considerable amount of water.
 
Is there a place on the internet or locally we could go to get a test kit? I just ordered a test kit for my oil that I plan on mailing away and getting my oil analyzed so that I can see how my oil is wearing and how long I should actually go without changing my oil ( I don't trust BMW's 15K mile, even if Porsche say 20K) ... I plan on doing this one more time after my next oil change...
 
The octane is tested by state consumer dept., the same as weights and measures. If a station is caught they will face heavy fines.
It really wouldn't be worth it to them.

Stephan is correct when he said that the base fuel is basically the same but each manufacturer is different when it comes to additives or additional refining processes. That too gets monitored. It all falls under consumer fraud.

"J"
 
One thing I have always tried to do, buy gas from a really high volume station.
The gas may not be any good, but at least it should be fresh.

Charles
 
Someone once told not to buy gas at astation that just recently refueled their underground tanks...Something about the gas not settling in and getting more water than gas, blah blah blah... Anything close to what I just tried explaing truth?
 
What bothers me the most about more recent formulations of gasoline is the content of ethanol.

Ethanol produces much less energy than gasoline and when you have as much as 10% per gallon, you're performance and fuel economy will tend to go down.

As far as quality, I just try to stick to a name brand with the exception of ExxonMobil (I abstain from them).
 
I think Iowa has most of their gas at 15% ethanol where most other states are 10%. It might be kinda state drivin for some of the mixes. Thats what I have heard, not sure if its true.

I do know that companies go around and check out the tanks from time to time, a local one got shut down cuz they were to old and must have been starting to do some bad things to the ground and the cars.
 
G35stilez said:
What bothers me the most about more recent formulations of gasoline is the content of ethanol.

Ethanol produces much less energy than gasoline and when you have as much as 10% per gallon, you're performance and fuel economy will tend to go down.

As far as quality, I just try to stick to a name brand with the exception of ExxonMobil (I abstain from them).
Click to expand...
There's quite a bit of debate as to the difference in mileage with 10% ethanol added.
Some pretty educated people have come up with entirely different conclusions.
My personal, uneducated, conclusion is that is that in my 2004 Pontiac Montana, the 10% ethanol blend reduced my mileage from 20.1 to 19.3 mpg or approximately 4% less. Those figures were taken from 3 consecutive fillups with ethanol blend and then 3 consecutive fillups with regular fuel.
I am not a fan of ethanol because of what I consider to be detrimental side effects. When it first came into use, I saw a lot of fuel system damage in vehicles. Filters, plastic floats, injector insulation, etc.
To me, saying you can use it as long as you don't exceed 10% is kind of like saying you can drink a poison as long as you don't exceed 10%.
FWIW, in Iowa, ethanol blends were as much as 6 to 10 cents per gallon cheaper than regular fuel. I still used regular.
Now that people are jumping on the ethanol bandwagon, the ehtanol blends are as much as 6 to 10 cents per gallon more expensive than regular.
Another thing that many people choose to ignore is the simple fact that ethanol requires more natural resources to produce than it saves.
All of the corn grown in the U.S. would supply a very small part of the fuel needed to replace gasoline.

Charles
 
MrRogue said:
I think Iowa has most of their gas at 15% ethanol where most other states are 10%.
Click to expand...
Iowa is 10% for most vehicles and have 85% (E85) for vehicles that are designed to run on that high a percentage of ethanol. E85 seems to get about 30% less mpg in the dual fuel vehicles. More expensive as well.

Charles
 
Another little known fact.

Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. has decided to stop distributing gasoline to some 1,800 U.S. stations.

Sometimes even when you buy local, you don't really buy local.

Charles
 
Refineries provide their customers with a Certificate of Analysis (CofA) for every batch that is produced. The gas is blended per the specifications of the area (city or region) for which it is destined. The CofA verifies the octane level of the gasoline to the terminal when it leaves the refinery. The gas is then transported to a terminal via pipeline or barge.

On pipelines, batches can be very large (500,000 bbls / 21,000,000 gallons) and will be dropped along the route to the respective terminals. The pipeline could have various grades of regular, premium, diesel and jet fuel. Some pipelines will segregate the gasolines on one line and the diesel and jet on another. In cases of a comingled line, the goal is to protect the more expensive product. That being said, the transmix between batches will go into the lesser graded product. Premium transmix is slopped into regular, diesel transmix is slopped into regular, jet transmix is slopped into diesel. We could also talk about oxygenated gas versus conventional gas. Or even Ultra Low Sulfur diesel and the issue of transporting them.

The terminal that loads the trucks will typically test the tank prior to loading. Most of the tanks are side draw, so any water will settle to the bottom of the tank over time. The terminals will occaisionally do water draws on their tanks to remove the water.

When the trucks deliver to the stations, the driver should stick the tank prior to offloading. This tells the driver the volume in the tank and the prescence of any water. Unless it is a older station, most tanks today are plastic and possibly double walled (this is for leak protection). If there is any trace amounts of water in the tank it will be agitated and then suspended in the gas upon the driver offloading. After a period of time for settlement it would then fallout to the bottom.

To summarize as others have said, the process for refining crude oil to gasoline is the same for all refineries. The process of blending the raw gasoline for the terminals I believe is the same. At the terminals is where the named gasolines become the Shells, Exxons, Valeros, etc. I can't speak on what additives are used by companies like Racetrack but assume that there are minimum government standards for detergents.

Sorry for the long post. Hope this helps. And yes, I work for a major oil company and supervise the operation of pipelines in the Gulf Coast area.
 
Bellydawg, sounds like you work in the industry.

Joy:
Yes, that does happen. that is the only time when you could get "water in your gas" and it seperates rather quickley

"J"
 
I don't know if anybody has heard of Top Tier Gas, but one of the requirements to get on that list is that all your grades of fuel must have the same level of cleaning detergents in them. That's why Chevron now has Techron in all their grades (I believe they only had it in premium a while back).

I buy Chevron and Shell for the most part, NOT because they are name brand but because they are the CHEAPEST, often by 10-20 cents in my area. I do not believe they have any better gas than a generic station because I have heard before (on the net no less, so take this with a grain of sand) that the detergents are mixed in by the bucket. There is no strict controls - the tanker driver just puts a bucket worth of crap into his load, eyeballing it, and off he goes to deliver it to your gas station.

For me, with my 99 Accord 4cyl, I have been able to tell the difference between 87 and 91. Many people told me that 91 would make my car smoother, provide better power, gas mileage, etc. I tried two tanks of 91 and found this to be completely untrue. The car felt more sluggish with noticeably less power, and I got less gas mileage (though it was not significant enough of an impact to say for sure if it was the gas alone). However, some cars do dyno better with 91 - if your car has a knock sensor and some way to electronically control the spark timing, you can probably bet that it will take advantage of better fuel.

For high performance engines like the Euro's pump out, the difference between 93 and 87 should be QUITE noticeable. I can't say for sure since I haven't tried it, but the car should either 1) ping horribly 2) be extremely sluggish 3) run hot 4) any or all of the above.

A bigger difference to look at when you're looking for bad gas is the station's tanks, as someone mentioned before. Since all the refining and such are more or less the same, the only case where you would get significant amounts water or sediments in the gas would likely be at the station. A general rule, you should not fill up your car when there is a tanker in the station. The theory is that it kicks up the sediment that has gone to the bottom of the big tanks and it gets into your fuel. It hasn't been proven, but to be safe I will wait at least 1-2 hours before I go back to the station after I see the tanker there. Of course I would never know if I pulled in right after the tanker left...but then that's just luck/fate.

Regarding ethanol, the jury is still out. I've heard the argument that the resources you'd have to put in to produce it are much greater than the energy you get out...but there have been so many studies that come up with both conclusions that there's no way you could say for sure. In the end, like someone mentioned, the total ethanol that could be produced in our nation is not even a tiny dent in the amount of oil we use everyday. I don't think it is going to fly...I used a E15 tank in a 04 Odyssey I had for the weekend and it was the worst mileage tank I got. Also felt a noticeable decrease in power...engine was just not as willing to rev. I didn't particularly like it, but 20 or 30 cents per gallon worth of incentives off regular gas might change my mind...though that's unlikely to happen
 
I put nothing but v-power 93 in my '92 Caprice and my '92 Legend.

The Caprice @185k runs like crap on regular but the Legend @198k runs fine on either.
 
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