Originally Posted By: Liquid_Turbo
This is going to be a silly question, but which gasoline is best, over long term usage?
I've been researching and haven't been able to find anything. All I've concluded is that Chevron was the first to implement Top-Tier gasoline, which everyone else following suit.
My personal experience with Shell is car sputtered and died once I filled up. They subsequently recalled the batch of gasoline from my particular gas station. Drained the tank and refilled with another brand of gas, and all was well. After that, I never went to Shell again.
My question is, is there an optimal brand of gas for a particular engine? Or is it all really the same?
Edit: I refuse to believe marketing. On Shell's website there is "nitrogen enriched gasoline", which is supposed to be superior for cleaning.
Then there's Chevron's Techron.
Here's my experience, take it for what it's worth.
Back when Texaco was around and I was just getting into racing, before the car had a steady diet of race gas or methanol injection, Texaco consistantly had more knock resistance. Both me and my father noticed this with our cars. They would be tuned to the max with a little knock retard on the shifts but if run on a different brand it was blown headgasket time. As for it's long term usage, I have no idea but it seemed to have more than the rated octane or the others had less.
I have filled up at Shell and the car knocked as if it were 87 octane. We both highly suspected them of running 87 or 89 in the 91 pump.
I run the TL on Shell and Chevron. Shell because it's free sometimes. The TL has a huge appetite for octane in stock form and it pings more on Shell than Chevron which has been verified with a scanner. If I didn't get free gas once in a while I would stay far, far away from Shell.
If your car doesn't require premium I would look for whatever has the best/most detergents. From what I read on here, Chevron and Shell are among the top.
