Re: Vs Top Tier Gas

Does anyone have an opinion on using "no name" gas such as Safeway or CostCo? I find I can save the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee (large) by filling up at Safeway instead of Chevron or Shell. Is using "no name" gas a no-no?

If I had a Safeway, CostCo, Seven Eleven, etc. that offered gas, I'd use it. I have in the past, as long as they have 93 Octane. I generally stay away from the real seedy looking indies

and I always have. 170k miles and no issues.

I use Costco quite often. No issues at all with using it.

by running it thru a full tank of gas, then change the oil.


[www.chevronwithtechron.com]

Top Tier Gas

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

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KevinR-MedinaOhio
Top Tier Gas

Looks like all the majors are included along with a few regional brands - but I noticed BP was not included. They are the predominant brand around here. I wonder why they are not listed.

Lawdevil
2013 Boxster S - Agate Grey,
2016 Macan Turbo - jet black
Cashiers, NC & Atlanta

Nor is Hess mentioned.....

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Lawdevil & CURVN8R

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KevinR-MedinaOhio
Top Tier Gas

Looks like all the majors are included along with a few regional brands - but I noticed BP was not included. They are the predominant brand around here. I wonder why they are not listed.

I don't see Marathon listed.

BP is junk gas.

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

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KevinR-MedinaOhio

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Lawdevil & CURVN8R

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KevinR-MedinaOhio
Top Tier Gas

Looks like all the majors are included along with a few regional brands - but I noticed BP was not included. They are the predominant brand around here. I wonder why they are not listed.

BP is junk gas.

I have no interest in BP - but I am curious why you say that. The premium gas at BP has been Amoco Ultimate and generally considered a pretty good gas. Of course, this could be just marketing. I have no idea about their latest marketing of "Invigorate" additive.

Interestingly, the Top Tier standards REQUIRE ethanol content of at least 8%.

Lawdevil
2013 Boxster S - Agate Grey,
2016 Macan Turbo - jet black
Cashiers, NC & Atlanta

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I have no interest in BP - but I am curious why you say that.

Perhaps it is anecdotal, maybe it's Internet rumor, but it is something I have always heard from different sources.

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

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KevinR-MedinaOhio

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I have no interest in BP - but I am curious why you say that.

Perhaps it is anecdotal, maybe it's Internet rumor, but it is something I have always heard from different sources.

In that case, it must be statistically correct almost 64% of the time.

Here are a few related articles containing some interesting information:

Bad Gas

Origin of Higher Octane Gas

Gasoline Quality

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

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boxsterd
Does anyone have an opinion on using "no name" gas such as Safeway or CostCo? I find I can save the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee (large) by filling up at Safeway instead of Chevron or Shell. Is using "no name" gas a no-no?

gasolines when I noticed my Boxster threw a CEL (P0430) more often when running discount/supermarket gasoline.

Around the same time a gasoline test in a UK published car magazine (Evo) found that supermarket gasoline while sometimes quite good, indistinguishable from the UK's equivalent of top tier gasoline, was sometimes not very good at all. This was traced to the use of various suppliers of gasoline.

More recently, I was talking to a Porsche tech about gasoline and he told me to avoid using discount gasolines. He told me of a very dramatic demo in a tech class in which the instructor produced two samples of gasoline -- bought from local stations -- one from a supermarket/discount gas station and the other from a top tier station.

The instructor added water to both gasoline samples and stirred then stopped. As the gasoline/water mixture in each beaker stopped moving about stuff started coming out of solution in the discount/supermarket gasoline sample.

This last bit of info will keep me from using discount/supermarket gasoline except in an emergency.

Sincerely,

MarcW.

I'm not surprised, Marc!



"A mile of highway will take you one mile. A mile of runway will take you anywhere."

Have been running on 87 octane no-name for the past 7 years...have not notice any difference.

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RainyDayGarage
Have been running on 87 octane no-name for the past 7 years...have not notice any difference.

I'm told that can seize up caliper bolts

87 octane in a Boxster...ugh!

"A mile of highway will take you one mile. A mile of runway will take you anywhere."

Oh...that is cold :-)

... note the cost and errase the trip odometer. Go drive normally till the tank is empty.
Note your mileage calculate your cost per mile.
Fill Up the tank now with 93 or 95 octane note the cost and go drive normally till the tank is empty.
Calculate your cost per mile and compare with the cheap gas.
I bet that you will get better cost per mile with the higher octane.
The reason is that the higher octane allows the DME not to retard the timing and uses much more of the fuel's energy than when it has to retard timing to avoid pre-ignition with the 87 octane.
Do the exhercise and let us know the results.
Happy Boxstering
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

I have wondered about that and it was on the "list."
Will give this a try with the next tank.

Currently, there is a huge difference between MPG for city and highway driving.
Around Boston (how the car is used 90% of the time) the MPG is around 12.
On the highway (to/from NYC and road trips w/ highway driving) the MPG is about 22-23.

Wonder if the cleaner burn will help.

It should be an interesting experiment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2012 08:17AM by RainyDayGarage. (view changes)

... the difference in grades is just the octane rating.
The higher ratings are for higher engine compressions such as the Boxster's 11:1.
At this compression ratio the injected gasoline would ignite from compression way before the spark plug fires.
That's what causes pinging and knocking, therefore the DME retards the timing.
When this happens, a bunch of the gasoline's stored energy is wasted and why the low MPGs.
If you'd like more information on this, read this tech article I wrote for PCA: [pedrosgarage.com]
Happy Boxstering
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

That makes more sense.

I did know the different pieces (compression, knocking, etc), but did not have it all straight in my head as a logical whole.
Will check out the article and get a clearer understanding.

Thanks!!!

right octane grade. You might be surprised at what you're missing.

Sincererly,

MarcW.

Have wondered about that...so will give Pedros' experiment a go and see if we can detect an MPG difference.

get a particular additive package, if you really care. But it will have a decent detergent package,adn the gas is likely exactly the same as the other majors. Heck, i know people who own gas stations that buy it (hen they are not near their own).

note that maybe the biggest issues in gas are:

1. clean
2. fresh

So a hgih volume place with modern tanks may be BETTER in some respects.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

For instance when gasoline is piped a batch of premium octane (91 using the grade found in CA) gasoline is sandwiched between two batches of low octane (87) gasoline, one at each end so to speak of the batch of premium gasoline. The word is the batches stay surprisingly separate during the piping operation but there is some intermingling at the boundries. The leading and maybe the trailing edges of the entire batch of 87/91/87 gasoline may also have stuff in it, stirred up by the passing of the gasoline through the pipe.

(This is one reason why ethanol couldn't be piped in the same pipes as gasoline/diesel. Ethanol would act as a sponge and absorb all the water that gasoline/diesel would not. Some special pipelines can now be used to pipe ethanol but I haven't been able to learn anything about them other than they exist.)

This comingled gasoline and the leading edge of the 1st batch of gasoline are pulled off by the pipeline company and used to help power its pumps and such. It may not be burned in an internal combustion engine either but burned in a boiler to make steam to make electricity.

The purest portions of the batches of gasoline are pulled out of the pipe and kept separate from the less pure portions. The incentive is to cut this as close as possible because the pipeline company has to buy from pay the pipe liine clients for the gasoline that is comingled to the point -- how this is determined I do not know -- it is no longer qualified to be called premium gas (it is something between say 87 and 91 octane but it is not a pure mid-grade octane either. (This is "made" at the station when mid-grade is selected the station pumps supply equal parts of 87 and 91 to make 89 octane.)

Discount gas retailers of course use a business model based on lower cost gasoline so there is some incentive to buy the cheapest gasoline available. The word is one area that money is saved is of course the additive package. This is a very critical feature of premium gasoline, which among other things has a tendency to go stale quicker than 87gasoline even with a full additive package.

But cost savings might be gotten by buying gasoline from the tanks holding the comingled/intermingled gasoline that is still I guess technically 87 or even 91 gasoline but perhaps not quite as good as the stuff pulled out deeper inside the batch of 91 gasoline, further away from the boundries.

The few times I have been near enough to a refinery while the outlets look to appear to come from certain tanks the refinery is a field of piping/valving that allows this highly flammable liquid to be moved from just about anywhere to anywhere at least inside of the refinery grounds with just the opening/closing of some valves. When a delivery tanker is filled up one can't be sure the gasoline comes from the storage tank right along side where the tanker trucks are filled or from a storeage tank located all the way on the other side of the refinery site.

To get a better understanding of this process, believe it or not I had hoped to one of these days take a tour of a refinery and a gasoline/diesel oil pipeline facility on one of my drives to/from the midwest (I pass several such facilities) but I always was in a hurry to get there and back I never had the time. I still have this on my list of things to do. (Years ago my dad and I got to visit a natural gas pipeline pumping facility and it was very interesting, and stinky. The smell of (treated) natural gas was everywhere. The pumping engines were IC but not spark but compression ignited and burned natural gas, uh, naturally.

'course with each refinery fire -- the one in Richmond CA at the Chevron refinery being the most recent one -- even getting on a refinery site let alone getting any kind of a tour is getting more and more unlikely every day. And even if I managed to get on the facilty's grounds, pictures? Yeah, right. I'd probably have a better chance at touring a nuclear power plant and getting free samples of its fuel too boot.

Sincerely,

MarcW.

...for free....

Interesting. I knew nothing of pipeline co-mingling. Now, bear in mind, its pure speculation to say that Costco buys suspect gas. I suppose with the big brands you dont have to speculate - although i've known a few major corporations to cut corners too.....
Some of those chains are very fussy about quality. Mom and pop gas stations are more of a concern to me.

Thanks for the interesting note!

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

OK, based on what I've read, I don't think I'll be using Safeway or CostCo gas. But what about ARCO? Any opinions of ARCO gas? BTW I will always use at least 91 octane.

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boxsterd
OK, based on what I've read, I don't think I'll be using Safeway or CostCo gas. But what about ARCO? Any opinions of ARCO gas? BTW I will always use at least 91 octane.

not because of anything wrong with the product though I will add that while I haven't bothered to check if Arco is not a top tier gasoline personally I would not use it.

The several times I used it gas prices were very high and the station was very handy to where I lived at the time.

Why I no longer use Arco gasoline is I do not like the fact one either has to use cash or a debit card to purchase the gasoline.I do not have a debit card and cash is inconvenient. Besides there is a charge for using a debit card that raises the price of the gasoline over the prices posted on the signs.

The last time I put in $40 or maybe $60 to buy some gas and made a mistake and selected the wrong pump. I hit cancel before someone could drive in and start using the pump but had a heck of a time getting my money back from the clerk.

Also, while the stations are busy, which is a good sign the gas will be fresh, they are a bad busy with too many people just zooming in and around like demolition derby night for drivers who've fallen off the wagon and can't put down a cell phone to hear the last trump.

Scary. (I never use it but I pass by a Safeway 'gas station' and its pump island drives are the same. Safeway gas buyers are maniacs.)

So I found a nice local/nearby Shell station with very competitive prices, a large drive with plenty of room and while it is busy it is not the scary busy of the Arco stations in my area.

Sincerely,


MarcW.

it is transported and intermingled in pipelines and sold as a commodity like corn, pork bellies etc. The government regulates its chemical properties so that it meets certain standards.
Certain brands are indeed differentiated after they receive their proprietary additives like Chevron with their Techron.
I use top tier gasoline because several mechanics told me over the years that when they tear down and rebuild a motor they can immediately tell by the carbon deposits if a customer has been using top tier gasoline with additives and detergents or cheap gas.
I have several cars that are approaching 300,000 miles and several others over 100,000.
If I did not hold on to my cars so long and traded them every four years I would not worry about it as much. So good gas and frequent oil changes work well for me.
ARCO I had a 100,000 mile Mercedes with a bad pinging problem and the mechanic asked me which brand and octane of gas I was using. My wife was using ARCO premium at the time. He told me to never use ARCO and use only Chevron or Shell. I switched and the pinging went away.

Costco and Safeway-I have used Costco gas and my cars run well on it. I met an employee responsible for sourcing Costco gas for its stations. Their gas is equivalent to top tier gas. It is also very fresh due to their high volume. The stations in my area have eight lanes with two pumps each. These stations are continually filling 16 cars at a time with long lines of cars waiting to gas behind them.
Safeway gas. If it is any thing like the low quality produce,seafood and other stuff they sell I would not use it in my cars.

DFI motors. With what I have been reading about the carbonization issues after as early as 20,000 miles I don't think I would ever put anything other than top tier gas in a DFI motor. My dealer told me he is seeing issues with the DFI Cayennes which have logged more miles than the sports cars. He had one come in with major issues with about 45,000 miles on it and he ran some chemicals through the motor which filled the entire shop up with smoke.
He is recommending maintenance at 25,000 miles to clean out the carbonization. Audi, BMW and others also are having these issues with their DFI motors.