"Top Tier" gasoline

[Tom M King]

We typically get 300,000 out of our gas burners, and have never had any fuel related problem with running whatever the cheapest we see is. We use Mobil 1 oil, changed every 10,000 miles. The last truck I owned, before the one I've been driving for the past 13 years, parked beside me at Lowes last week. The second owner said he still hadn't been in the engine. It had 280 something on it when I sold it 13 years ago. It had near new compression when I sold it, and it had pulled a lot more than it was ever designed to.

As long as I can get ethanol-free for the small engines, and not have to remove ethanol from gas again, I'm good.

[Jim Koepke]

When you go out to car forums, you find people who swear they see a mileage difference when they go to a top-tier gas. that's almost comical, especially if they think they see one right away.

This reminds me of my oldest brother, may he RIP.

We all met up in southern Oregon for a family get together one time. He told me about how he was running on fumes as he was getting close to the boarder coming up I-5. He said he held his breath and crossed his fingers because he wanted to wait until he got across the boarder to fill up. California has different fuel mix requirements. He said as soon as he started the engine he could tell the difference. I didn't want to ask about the fuel that was in the lines that was still the old fuel. I would rather just let him have his moment of smugness instead of saying anything about being an old fuel.

On another story since way back in the days of high school one of the major brands (or another for sure) is supposed to have something that makes engines run poorly. To this day wife is still a strong believer in this. She doesn't want me to use that brand no matter what. What she doesn't know is the local major grocery store gas station uses that major brand in their pumps, "that's different."

After years of hearing stories of how different gasolines are blended to make your engine explode I have noticed they all seem to have a few things in common. The people telling them heard them from someone else, usually over drinks during happy hour.

jtk

[David Weaver]

Remember clear gas? My grandmother had an older guy who mowed her lawn for her, and he brought his own tractor. He demanded that she buy the gas, though, which always confused me, and he said that if she didn't buy the clear gas, he wouldn't put it in his tractor and therefore wouldn't mow her lawn.

I still don't know why he expected her...in her mid 80s, to get gas for his tractor when he was hauling a tractor instead of using hers.

[Rick Moyer]

There is a gasoline terminal locally and tankers from all different companies fill up there. I've been told the gasoline is all the same, but different additives are added to the load depending on which brand of stations they are delivering to.

Actually it would be more "which supplier they are buying from", although you are still mostly correct. A Sunoco station would be getting Sunoco gasoline generally as that would be the required supplier, i.e., it would have the correct additives that Sunoco specifies and the delivery tanker driver would punch in the Sunoco supplier code at the terminal when filling his truck. This combines the required fuel additives mixture from all the various smaller tanks one sees at a typical bulk station. There are many different supplier codes, each with different additives. When a driver arrives at a bulk filling station, he needs to enter different numbers into a computer that indicate his company, the supplier they are buying from (raw gas + additive mixture), what product he wants loaded (gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc.), how many gallons, etc. The raw gas that comes through the pipeline is, to my knowledge, all the same but the additives are different for different brands. whether this makes much difference is your decision, I don't know.
This is what I remember from delivering fuel for a year or two quite a few years ago. I am not saying things couldn't have changed since then.
This is also why you might see a sign at, for example, an Exxon station that says "this product is not an Exxon fuel". I have seen this at a branded station getting diesel. The diesel wasn't "brand name" but their gasoline was. Actually, most diesel doesn't have the additive situation that the gasoline has, so they probably bought it from the cheapest supplier, assuming they did not have a contract with the "brand name" for diesel.

[John McClanahan]

The pumps at our local BP station say it contains "Invorgrate" (not sure of spelling). What exactly does that do for my truck?

John

[Tom Stenzel]

When I took my new ‘84 Cavalier back to the dealer with the usual list of problems to fix, one of them was a leaky valve cover gasket (2.0 pushrod four). The dealer fixed it, when they were done there was a bunch of black RTV gooped around it. Not long after the engine started to run sloppy, not idling smooth and stumbling. Back it went, this time it was the O2 sensor. I got a long dissertation from the service manager that it was the silicone in the gasoline, and Shell gas was the worst. I had never put Shell gas in it, but whatever.

A few months later the GM dealerships were instructed to get rid of all their RTV sealants as there was an upgraded replacement. Yep, you guessed it- the old RTV would outgas silicone, get into the oil and then get pulled through the PCV valve damaging the O2 sensor. I found our about it from my brother who was working an Oldsmobile parts counter at the time.

That was 30 years ago. The gas was blamed, it never was the gas. It was GM’s own sealant that did it in. That service manager sure was full of something, just wasn’t information.

-Tom

[Kent A Bathurst]

The pumps at our local BP station say it contains "Invorgrate" (not sure of spelling). What exactly does that do for my truck?

John

Check with the marketing people who invented that noun.

[Mike Cutler]

I sort of buy into it, but I'm not OCD about it.
I have two Mini Coopers, One a 2009 S model and the second a 2013 JCW( John Cooper Works). Both vehicles have turbos and having driven turbocharged vehicles for 30+years, they take a little more "attention". They get Top Tier gasolines and higher octanes because that's what BMW spec's, but I really do it for the turbo's, and the fact that I pass by 3 Mobil's and a Shell everyday, and the difference in price between the "dump and run" outfits and theirs isn't significant enough for me to go out of my way.

I put 330K on a 1989 Toyota truck, 310K on a 1995 Saab 900SE, 300K+ on my current 2001 Toyota truck, 130K on a 1986 Toyota truck, 80K on a 1986 BMW 325ES, 210K on a 1981 Toyota Corolla, and 80K on a 2007 Mini Cooper S. I never worried about what kind of gas I put in to any of these vehicles. Only the Saab was a problem child. The rest didn't seem to care.
I've also owned two Turbocharged Kawasaki's, but I wasn't too concerned at that time about anything other than finding out just how fast I could go. One wheel or two, I didn't care.

The item that most folks don't believe me about, is that I've never had to have a clutch replaced, in any of my vehicles, and they're all manuals.

[John McClanahan]

Check with the marketing people who invented that noun.

Yea, but how do they get it mixed in with the gas?

[Rich Engelhardt]

I believe nothing the oil industry and/or it's associated political hacks say has any grain of truth about it.
They' have lied and twisted the truth for so long, they have no credibility whatsoever..

"Top tier gas" in my book, is nothing more than "oil industry lie number ___(fill in the blank)" - whether it's true or not.

[Ole Anderson]

I believe nothing the oil industry and/or it's associated political hacks say has any grain of truth about it.
They' have lied and twisted the truth for so long, they have no credibility whatsoever..

"Top tier gas" in my book, is nothing more than "oil industry lie number ___(fill in the blank)" - whether it's true or not.

While I don't completely disagree with you, that statement sounds a bit jaded. My understanding is that "top tier" was instigated by a segment of the auto industry, not the oil industry. Read the Wikipedia article posted earlier and check the references if you must.

[Myk Rian]

Being retired, and filling my truck so infrequently, I just hit a station and fill it.
I do check Gas Buddy, but it doesn't always guide me to any certain station.

[Brian Elfert]

I just buy gas at whatever station is closest when I need gas.

Currently, I buy most gas at a Shell station because I moved out in the sticks and it is one of two gas stations along my route home. I travel almost 20 miles on the interstate and then get off and drive another 8 miles along a road with almost zero retail along it. I am not going to get off the interstate during rush hour just to get gas. Too hard to get back on the interstate and traffic just worse the later it gets in the day.

[Tom M King]

A lot of those fancy sounding names that the gas "contains" is nothing more than what they call the ethanol that is added. "Clear" gas was high test Amoco, back in the '60s, and maybe into the '80s, but I don't exactly remember when they stopped selling it. I know a lot of people wouldn't run anything else here in their boats.

I knew the guy who owned Hobie Cat Company back in the late '80s. He was in the oil bottling business in Texas. He told me once that they might be bottling it for one company one day, and another the next day (he named major brand names, but I'm not repeating them here), but that it was all the same oil.

[Anthony Whitesell]

Up here in the northeast, most (if not all) the gasoline comes via pipeline. Which means that most (if not all) the gasoline starts out as the same. Additives, if any, are added after the fact.

I have to agree with the 'turnover' factor as stated. I do tend to avoid the small mom'n'pop stations in lieu of the larger name brand (national or regional) stations.

As for the old fuel in the lines in the car, most vehicles run on a fuel pump system which the fuel pump runs constantly at the same rate all the time. At the engine, the pressure regulator feeds fuel to the engine and bypasses any it does not need back to the fuel tank. So any "old" fuel left in the fuel lines would be mixed back into the tank within a fuel seconds.

On the other hand, there is a similar issue fuel pumps. When I had a car that required a specific octane (thank goodness I no longer have that requirement, I'm on to my next car) I would make sure to use a station that had a nozzle specific to each octane. I relate the following information from personal experience and witnessed by my own eyes. I was curious (OK, I'm an engineer too) as to the inner workings of the gas pumps. At the station I was using at the time, one of the pumps was under repair. So I wandered of to peek at the insides. This was a single nozzle, multi-octane pump. The fuel flow was as follows: Each grade came into the pump via a different line and was selected at a manifold to feed the fuel filter then the flow meter and finally out to the hose. At the time I was familiar with the type/brand of flow meter, estimated the size of the filter, and the length of the hose (additional research gave me the hose ID). I estimated there to be nearly 1 gallon of "hold up" between the manifold and the nozzle. So if you must by fuel above the lowest grade, you are most likely getting close to a gallon of the previous octane pumped.

As for the winter vs summer fuel blends. On my current commute, I can tell within a week when the blend changes at my favorite station. An instant change in MPG (-10% winter vs summer or 10% gain in summer vs. winter). In the winter time my summer time average MPG of 34 drops to 28 MPG if I have to run the defroster. I knew after one fill up the blend had changed. On Monday the fill up was 12 gallons, on Wednesday the fill up was 13.1 gallons. I asked in side if they had been refilled on Thursday or Friday and there response was "Yes, the truck came Friday just after lunch. How did you know?" My response was "You must now have the winter blend, it took more to fill up today [Wednesday] than on Monday, almost 10% more."