Do You Avoid Buying Gas When...

[Jim Koepke]

My Logger acquaintances get their chainsaw gas at the airport. I always go out of my way to find 93 octane for my small engines.

A friend of mine in rural California does the same. The only other places with non-ethanol gas near him are a few hours drive.

Luckily for me when it is needed there are a few places in town that carry it.

Find in your area at > https://www.pure-gas.org/

jtk

[Bill Howatt]

I used to go the few outlets that still sell alcohol-free gas for my small engines. I also checked it when I got home to make sure it really was alcohol-free (it always was). Rightly, or wrongly, I don't bother anymore, I put in Sta-Bil 360 which is supposed to negate the bad effects of the alcohol. I always put stabilizer in my gas cans for storage anyway and so far this seems to be working well for the past 5 years.

https://www.goldeagle.com/product/st...60-protection/

[Bill George]

I used to go the few outlets that still sell alcohol-free gas for my small engines. I also checked it when I got home to make sure it really was alcohol-free (it always was). Rightly, or wrongly, I don't bother anymore, I put in Sta-Bil 360 which is supposed to negate the bad effects of the alcohol. I always put stabilizer in my gas cans for storage anyway and so far this seems to be working well for the past 5 years.

https://www.goldeagle.com/product/st...60-protection/

That’s a good idea, I have heard things about 360!

[Warren Lake]

i think I read the stihl oil has that in it.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I like when threads come along that spur agreement. Creekers like good clean fuel, good boots, good food, sharp tools...

[Bruce Wrenn]

Local Costco goes thru an average of 30,000 gallons a day, which translates into five tankers a day. Only by luck will you be there when there isn't a tanker dumping during open hours, I have seen one waiting for the one in front of it to finish dumping. Steel UST's are a thing of the past.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Not long ago I tried to get a mental picture of how big a tank would be need to be to hold the worlds daily supply of crude. With the help of the web I came up with a cube shaped tank 800 feet long, 800 feet wide and 800 feet tall. For 1 day.
Update, 900x900x900 feet

[Ronald Blue]

Heck yes we are your neighbors, there are lots and lots of steel tanks still in the ground, yes even in Nebraska and will be for a long, long time. Where do you think all the cr*p goes when the tank is rusted and also water / dirt is present? It goes to the bottom of the tank, dumping in a few thousand gallons of new gas in the tank, do you really believe it does not get stirred up?? Talk to a mechanic who works on cars and trucks. BTW there is water and dirt also in fiberglas tanks, how could there not be??

Obviously regulations differ on this side of the big muddy. Steel hasn't been allowed here since 2008. Only fiberglass. I can't find the info on steel now but I think nothing can be in use any longer from before 1989. I'm sure any tank has a little contamination in it. I haven't had a problem in 30 years though. Over 100,000 on my current pickup bought new in 2015, same with the one before that purchased in 2004. Haven't kept the SUV's that long but no fuel problems with any of them either. Next time I see a friend who wrenches at the local Ford dealer I will ask him if they see many fuel related issues.

[Brian Elfert]

That's interesting because in my experience, Costco's gas price is generally lower than typical local stations, especially "name brands" that are also Top Tier fuel. Here, the cost difference is as much as twenty cents a gallon lower. I've found advantage while traveling up and down the east coast, too, with using Costco when it's reasonably close to the route. But I'm sure there are areas that are different.

There are a BP and Speedway station across the street from each other that are often the same price, or less, then the Costco about eight miles away.

The local Costco stations don't have diesel, but they do in other states. It used to be that a Costco in Salt Lake City always had the lowest diesel prices around, but that is no longer the case. It was really fun getting a 43 foot motorhome with 24 foot trailer in and out of the gas station. It has a really tight turn to get out. These days there is a newer chain of truck stops called Maverik that usually has better prices. I use Costco on road trips when I can. I paid $2.15 at a Costco in Denver back in January.

[Curt Harms]

My Logger acquaintances get their chainsaw gas at the airport. I always go out of my way to find 93 octane for my small engines.

Avgas at airports is nearly always 100LL (100 octane low lead) That doesn't have alcohol but it does have a fair bit of lead in spite of its low lead designation. Older aircraft engines designed to run on 87 octane didn't especially like it if idling quite a bit. It was (I guess still is) a ritual on those engines to run the power up to about 1700 RPM and do a mag check. If it ran rough on one mag, go back to both and lean the mixture to raise combustion temperature to burn the lead off the spark plugs. I guess chain saws run at high power most of the time so it isn't an issue there. There is a movement to ban aviation fuel with lead in it no matter how little and the EPA is getting onboard. It's also expensive to handle leaded aviation gasoline, it can't use pipelines (no leaded fuels in pipelines apparently) and it's a very low volume business. There is I believe there is only one facility in the western world that produces the lead additive.

[Brian Elfert]

It seems to be pretty common where I live that abandoned/unused fuel tanks have to be removed. The MN State Fair had a former DOT truck station onsite and the tanks were removed there. The State Fair also moved their fleet garage to a new location and had to remove the tanks at the old fleet garage. I don't know if they have removed the old fuel tanks at the abandoned race track. The pumps at the race tracks had not been used in years, but around 1990 they started using the pump for diesel.

[George Yetka]

The pumps normally have significant filtration in them as far as the gunk goes. And reputable stations i would hope get the tanks pumped and cleaned occasionally to remove any buildup of water.

[Malcolm McLeod]

Quite an onion here...
Mr. Yetka is correct: there are water and sediment traps, plus fines filters in many cases, on every fuel delivery system I've ever seen. On-site maintenance of those devices likely runs the gamut from OCD to 'What filter?'. Caveat emptor.

I have no inside knowledge of pricing philosophy for the semi-national retailers*, i.e. Costco, Love's, Pilot, etc, but locally owned stations in my area (NM/CO/TX/OK) always seem locally competitive and aligned on gasoline prices. Diesel not so much - prices can vary 30-40cents on opposites sides of the highway, and vary 70cents in 200miles. And then there are the 'taxe$' in CO - - I've seen gas prices climb >1.50$/gal between Texline & Trinidad. CO vs TX state published motor fuel tax rates only have a $0.02 delta, so no idea why the huge difference.

*Major O&G companies got out of the retail biz a couple of decades ago, so $$ differences are determined by locals - - your respective friends and neighbors??

Octane...
...has essentially nothing to do with horsepower. I am not a chemist, but my fittingly simple minded explanation of octane is that as any engine's compression ratio increases, the fuel's octane rating needs to increase to prevent detonation. This is why the Mountain West sees 83-85 octane :: at 9000ft ASL there is just less air in the cylinders.

Avgas is a wonderful onion all by itself...
FAA has probably not certificated a new GA engine twice in the last 3-4 decades? So, the current piston-engines require 100LL per the FAA. EPA has been trying to nuke 100LL for at least 1-2 of those decades. Who wins?!? ...Govern'mental' at its finest.

Then there are those mags... We have dual mags on GA engines for safety/redundancy. Really? When is the last time any car newer than 2000-ish mis-fired or needed plugs? Or any electronic ignition work at all? I have a 2007 Toyota FJ @290kmiles running on the original plugs. Only the headlights are dual! (Tiny dose of hyperbole here; no need to beat me with the taillights.)

And I finally just switched to canned fuel for my chainsaws. Ethanol dissolved the fuel system guts of my previous one. No more.

[Tom M King]

I have one horror story to tell about contaminated fuel- diesel, not gas. About 20 years ago my Wife was showing a dog at a show in Richmond, about an hour and a half from where we live. The dogs she breeds need to pass their health testing every year for various reasons, but mainly to get the top price for the puppies. At some shows (that one) they have the health testing clinics where you can get it all done at one place. Long story shortened some, I carried five of the dogs that weren't being shown to get their health testing done.

On the way home, I stopped in Petersburg (an hour away from home) to fill up with diesel. I was driving the dually.

Normally, I fill up at truck stops but had put off filling too long so just stopped at a regular gas station.

About 2 miles down the road, the engine quit. I carry a spare fuel filter, so that was not a worrisome few minute fix. Another two or three miles down the road and it quit again. This time I looked at what was in the filter and realized that it would do little good to put another filter in it.

A local guy stopped to help me and pulled me into a privately owned gas station about a quarter mile away. It was one of those July days close to 100 degrees here, and the dogs were getting too hot to safely stay in the truck, so I rented a room in the motel next door to that service station.

The guy that owned that station knew a local guy with a rollback big enough to move the dually on, so I called him. He worked at another job and couldn't take us home until later that night, which was fine because it was cool enough then that the dogs could ride in my truck on the back of the rollback.

Room was about a hundred bucks, rollback trip home was 250, and I spent all the next day taking the full 56 gallon tank out of the truck, cleaning it out, and putting it back in, so I lost a day of produced income out of it too. I forget what the 56 gallons of fuel was worth back then.

I only buy fuel from truck stops since then.

[Edward Weber]

There are so many "it depends" variables in this subject it's not even funny.
If you deal with one or more engines, of any kind, you'll probably encounter a fuel issue at one point or another in your lifetime. Places that sell "bad" fuel, don't stay open long if at all.
Some vehicles do run better on certain formulations of gas (different stations) but that's about it.
The millions of gallons of gas/diesel pumped each year and the hand full of issues cited, would suggest it's not a widespread problem, or at least not in the last 25 years.
Too many old wives tales and superstitions for me.