Quality Gas?

CharlesW said:
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.

Where did you get fuel without any ethanol?


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.

If your talking about the E85, it should actually be much more. Right now the government is covering the huge difference so that E85 can be affordable.
 
Maxima Lover said:
Where did you get fuel without any ethanol?
Any station in Iowa that I have visited has both regular gas, (no ethanol) and a 10% blend of ethanol/gasoline that they refer to as gasohol.
As a side note, many/most stations have regular (no ethanol), Gasohol (10% ethanol), and diesel (no ethanol). Premium or higher octane fuel is not carried at a lot of locations.
A typical rundown of octane ratings at most stations:
Regular 87
Gasohol 89
Premium 91
There are a very few stations that do have 92 octane, but it isn't easy to find.

Maxima Lover said:
If your talking about the E85, it should actually be much more. Right now the government is covering the huge difference so that E85 can be affordable.
I was referring to the 10% blend known as Gasohol at the 6 to 10 cents a gallon added cost. I have never seen the price of the E85, but I have heard that it is 20 to 30 cents higher than regular.

Charles
 
CharlesW said:
Any station in Iowa that I have visited has both regular gas, (no ethanol) and a 10% blend of ethanol/gasoline that they refer to as gasohol.
As a side note, many/most stations have regular (no ethanol), Gasohol (10% ethanol), and diesel (no ethanol). Premium or higher octane fuel is not carried at a lot of locations.
A typical rundown of octane ratings at most stations:
Regular 87
Gasohol 89
Premium 91
There are a very few stations that do have 92 octane, but it isn't easy to find.

I was referring to the 10% blend known as Gasohol at the 6 to 10 cents a gallon added cost. I have never seen the price of the E85, but I have heard that it is 20 to 30 cents higher than regular.

Charles

I see. I thought all gasoline in the US had to have 10% ethanol. It's weird how every state is different. Here everything has 10% and almost every station has 93 octane.
 
Maxima Lover said:
I see. I thought all gasoline in the US had to have 10% ethanol. It's weird how every state is different. Here everything has 10% and almost every station has 93 octane.
It has probably been close to 10 years since I have seen 93 octane in my area. I think it was some blend with MTBE, (whatever that was), in it. I think the MTBE was found to be harmful to the atmosphere so it was dropped or banned.
FWIW, when I noticed a Phillips 66 station had 92 octane on their pump and most other stations, (including another Phillips), had 91, I called Phillips to see what the deal was there. The gentleman there told me that if the pump said 92, it would be 92 or above. If the pump said 91, it would be 91 or above. The reason the two Phillips stations were different was because the one with 92 was a company owned station, the one with 91 was a franchise station. The company station supposedly always would have Phillips gas and would meet the 92 specs. The franchise station might have gas purchased from other than the Phillips distribution system and while it would be 91 or above, it might not always be 92.
The only time I even worry about it is if I have a boosted vehicle. The turbo charged and the supercharged cars I have owned, I felt needed the higher octane. Especially since they had the boost jacked up higher than the factory level. It doesn't do much good to have boost and then have the computer pull back the timing because of lower octane fuel.

Charles
 
BenjiBoy650 said:
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.
We have a gas price watch web-site in my area and the price difference, highest to lowest, is usually 2 cents. Most are at $2.81 right now for regular. One Citgo is lowest at $2.80, another Citgo is highest at $2.82, so brand doesn't seem to be the governing factor in pricing in this area.

Charles
 
We have a gas price watch web-site in my area and the price difference, highest to lowest, is usually 2 cents. Most are at $2.81 right now for regular. One Citgo is lowest at $2.80, another Citgo is highest at $2.82, so brand doesn't seem to be the governing factor in pricing in this area.
Come to new york the avarage price is $3.26 for regular I have seen $3.77 on the parkway for regular its starting to get insane Bush needs to do something to lower the price of fuel.
 
harry444 said:
Come to new york the avarage price is $3.26 for regular I have seen $3.77 on the parkway for regular its starting to get insane Bush needs to do something to lower the price of fuel.
Since I'm not yet ready to stop driving, I usually don't pay much attention to the pump price, but I don't think it has topped $3 at the stations any time in this area.
Gas at the marina for the boats is a different story. I think it has been in the $3.25+ range all season. There again, I'm going to run the boats so I just pay the price.
Probably the biggest problem I foresee for us with high fuel prices is the trickle down effect. It is going to affect almost every product we use. Transportation costs, manufacturing costs, material costs are all tied very closely to the cost of fuel.
One of my pet peeves is the way we are conned by the oil companies. We will probably see even higher fuel prices before they level off and come back down.
Then when it gets back to the $2.50 to $3 range we will be celebrating the lower price. We tend to forget that big oil managed to gouge us for a 20 to 40 percent jump in the final price. They did it when it went from $1 up to $2 for a time before it dropped back to $1.50 and we were happy.
Ah well, I guess I should be happy that I can afford to buy it.:)

Charles
 
CharlesW,

I didn't mean to imply that it was the brand that made it the cheapest. In fact there are 2 clumps of stations that are about 5 miles apart. The one by me (the cheapest I've seen) is at $3.11 as of today. The far clump is about $3.39 last I checked. Both are Chevron/Shell clumps so it's def. not the brand.

You can see how much our gas prices vary...http://www.sanfrangasprices.com/ ...the Shell in San Bruno @ $3.39 is in the expensive clump that I speak of and the South San Francisco Costco is next to the $3.11 stations (all 4 are generally at the same price)
 
harry444 said:
Come to new york the avarage price is $3.26 for regular I have seen $3.77 on the parkway for regular its starting to get insane Bush needs to do something to lower the price of fuel.

I agree Connecticut and New York Gas are outrageous...
 
BenjiBoy650 said:
CharlesW,

I didn't mean to imply that it was the brand that made it the cheapest.
And I didn't take it that way. Around here, it seems that all the stations raise their prices on the same day and they lower their prices on the same day, regardless of brand. They all are within a few cents of each other at almost any given time.
I'm sure it's just coincidence, though.:lmfao

Charles
 
CharlesW said:
And I didn't take it that way. Around here, it seems that all the stations raise their prices on the same day and they lower their prices on the same day, regardless of brand. They all are within a few cents of each other at almost any given time.
I'm sure it's just coincidence, though.:lmfao

Charles

Funny you mention that...in Middletown CT on my way to work there are two gas stations same side of the road less then an 1/8 of a mile apart, one is a Sunoco and the other is a Shell, and then Shell is always 6-10 cents cheaper and yet I see lines at the sunoco place. And it's not like you can't see the signs...
 
BenjiBoy650 said:
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.

At a terminal, when the truck driver arrives, they insert a card that tells the rack which detergents and additives to blend into the respective gas. Shell, Exxon, and others may all load out of the same terminal with different specs for their respective fuels. Each company is responsible for maintaining the volumes in the detergent and additive tanks for their fuels. The detergents and additives are in very small tanks with injection pumps. When the truck driver begins loading the truck the computer knows the volume to be loaded and injects the correct amounts into the gas stream going to the truck.
 
When I saw the title of this thread, I thought we were playing Jeopardy.

Q: What does Fuzz get about two hours after pigging out at Taco Bell?

A: Quality gas!


Har har har!

Seriously, I buy gas for the xxxxxin' Camaro at a local Shell station. They are an extremely high volume business so the gas is fresh and as an added bonus, they got a couple of hotties workin' inside so I always go in and buy some Mountain Dew and Skittles when I fill up.
 
I try to stick to name-brand gas. Plus, I toss some Fuel Power into the tank at each fill-up. I prefer Exxon/Mobil since I was an employee of each half of that company at one time and I'm addicted to my SpeedPass. :)
 
harry444 said:
...... Bush needs to do something to lower the price of fuel.

Not a big fan of Bush or anything, but I do get a kick out of people suggesting that one man could do something about the price of gasoline. What, exactly, would you suggest that Bush do?

$3 per gallon hasn't exactly slowed most people's driving habits, and demand typically has a great deal of influence over the price of things.
 
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