Weeding Out The Bad Fuel Stations

[walterjay]

I received 87 octane from the airport Exxon 93 pump when visiting Newburgh, NY. Jag goes into 3000RPM limited-limp-home mode due to excess knock events. Other stations nearby that area were similar.

I'd fill up and drive to FL. The car would suddenly limit itself, a view of the scan device showed thousands of knock events over a short period of time. The car requires premium. 27MPG normally. 16MPG on regular.

In the end, I found the Shell stations best. Plus the detergent cleared up a persistent idle misfire.

Sounds like the mob at work

 

[Sumboodie]

Just to chime in, a few years ago, a pal groused incessantly about lousy fuel from a regional chain; Cumberland Farms.
I never had a problem with their fuel and due to their competitive pricing I fueled up there predominately.

His travel routes had him buying gas at the same station....so I whispered into the manager's ear one day.
It all better now.
All you can do is guess how it happened.

Like my "CGT" (Cheapest Gas in Town) station who's gas made my CEL come on. I'd go to other stations and the light would self extinguish. Went back to CGT and the light returned. Other gas = joy.
Experiment over.

Maine?

 

[Kira]

The gas station/convenience stores I use are in No. New York State.

From their "About Us" section:
Cumberland Farms is the largest of EG America’s convenience and retail brands with more than 575 store locations across Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

 

[JohnnyG]

How do you know this? How is the fuel getting here from those refineries? Which countries are these that you're referring to?

Otherwise it is a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense and your whole thread here (like the first one you made) is just some sort of rant and vendetta against this Carroll Fuels.

Just for a little more info, there are a few re-refiners. Neville Island near Pittsburgh PA comes to mind. When SCMaintenance mentions "slop" that's just another term for Transmix, or the stuff that gets mixed together in a pipline as it travels 100 miles to the storage tank destination. Online gravitometers are normally used to determine when the operator makes the pipeline "CUT".

That transmix goes to a seperate tank, and is then trucked off (or pipelined) to one of these re-refiners. The processs they use is not the same as that of a refinery making the original "on spec" fuel. They don't need to have the ability to break down crude oil into it's MANY components, or remove sulfer, etc. so they use a simpler process.

Think of it as "flash refining" or heat refining to seperate the products back to a spec that approaches the original. And no, it's not always the same quality as the original products, but "close enough". Depending on how it is then transported out, it can be further blended off untill it is acceptable, or even re-run if need be.

Keep in mind this is all fungible fuel, so no additives are present at this point. As I said in an ealier response to this Carrol Fuel thread (the other one) additives are blended in at the loading rack, not before.

 

[JohnnyG]

Maine?

Nope, one terminal is in Pittsburgh, there may be others.

Edit: Was in Pgh, now sold.

 

[walterjay]

I have used Carroll Fuels off and on in my transit trucks with zero issues.

 

[y_p_w]

Exactly. Former user GoldDot40 also had some good posts on this topic.

TiredTrucker

 

[TiGeo]

Seems nuts that a modern vehicle would "care" this much about which gas station you filled from unless there was egregious fuel quality issues which has/does happen from time to time. Modern ECUs should be able to handle most variations in fuel quality station to station.

 

[Chris142]

You won't get bad gas in my area. Every station is always packed and get a new load of fuel every day or 2.

 

[kschachn]

OP appears to have abandoned the thread.

 

[mark pruett]

fuel trucks are exactly that. contracted to deliver fuel. the terminal they load at blend the additives into the fuel being loaded. we happen to supply 80% of all fuel sold in houston and surrounding cities. there are trucks ranging from un labled to shell/exxon etc loading every day.

I used to go to college (early mid 90s) with a guy who worked for somewhere similar. According to him, they'd get wholesale gasoline of various octane ratings at the terminal, and blend that according to customer's specs and add the additive package as it went into the tanker.

So, as he explained, your 87 octane Shell branded gasoline could be some mix of higher and lower octane gasolines that were actually refined by Exxon and BP, but that have the Shell additive package.

Worrying about the branding on the tanker is absurd. That's just the guy contracted to haul the gas around and put it into the tanks. It doesn't mean a thing in terms of what's actually in the truck. Plus, those big tankers have multiple tanks- it's not one huge tank, so he might have Exxon, Shell, Sunoco, and some kind of generic gas in there at the same time.

 

[JohnnyG]

I used to go to college (early mid 90s) with a guy who worked for somewhere similar. According to him, they'd get wholesale gasoline of various octane ratings at the terminal, and blend that according to customer's specs and add the additive package as it went into the tanker.

So, as he explained, your 87 octane Shell branded gasoline could be some mix of higher and lower octane gasolines that were actually refined by Exxon and BP, but that have the Shell additive package.

Worrying about the branding on the tanker is absurd. That's just the guy contracted to haul the gas around and put it into the tanks. It doesn't mean a thing in terms of what's actually in the truck. Plus, those big tankers have multiple tanks- it's not one huge tank, so he might have Exxon, Shell, Sunoco, and some kind of generic gas in there at the same time.

Mostly correct.
However it would all come from the same place. A trucking company can't make any money going to multiple places to load fuel.
The only differences would be the additive brand and quantity.

Amd generally, yes, tank trucks have 4 compartments, each seperate from the other.

 

[mark pruett]

Mostly correct.
However it would all come from the same place. A trucking company can't make any money going to multiple places to load fuel.
The only differences would be the additive brand and quantity.

Amd generally, yes, tank trucks have 4 compartments, each seperate from the other.

Oh, no... you misunderstand. The way he described it, they could load several gas stations' fuel into one truck at the same terminal. So one truck might deliver to multiple gas stations, all of which might be different brands/additives.

 

[goblin]

...around Maryland...

BINGO !!!
Say no more.

We were driving northbound from Florida last month, I fueled at a Royal Farms station (700 Annapolis Rd Suite 1, Gambrills, MD 21054, if Google Maps is to be trusted).

Filled up, and waited to merge on Crain Hwy:

The traffic flow was insane, I waited for what looked like 4-5 minutes. Never-ending, and everybody was doing a good 50mph, after speeding to catch up an endless greenlight.

Found an opening, gunned it to merge in, and the car sputtered so badly I thought that was it. It took it a good quarter of a mile to clear, then it went mostly back to normal but my knock detector (I use Torque Pro and the Hyundai add-in shows plenty of good stuff) was showing higher values throughout the tank of gas. Filled up with Premium after that.

I had five out of six injectors die under warranty after a fill up on NJ Turnpike years ago, the techs back then told me that everything inside was orange, but back then there were no sputters or anything - I just drove 150 miles and the car threw codes once in Manhattan.

On that one though, it didn't kill the injectors but I could clearly feel there's something very, very wrong.

No Royal Farms for me anymore, unless it's Premium, and here in CT.

 

[walterjay]

Never had a problem with RF gas in my area.

 

[TiGeo]

Also, RF has KILLER fried chicken.

 

[TiGeo]

There was an instance of the Sheetz near Summit Point WV race track giving out bad gas that screwed up a bunch of race cars (and they paid to fix all of them). It happens.

 

[goblin]

...
Cumberland Farms...

Funilly enough - after the Royal Farms "affair" mentioned above I was reluctant to touch any gas of theirs, but two weeks ago I went to Milford, CT to pick up my FCP Euro stuff, and as every time - I was running on empty. So I bit the bullet, and their Premium was only 20cts higher than their Regular (the standard difference in CT is $1/gal more for Premium). And for the first time in months, my knock indicators settled on zero for all six of them, and stood there.

And now I realize that it was that other farm

So - Cumberland Farms - excellent, decently priced Premium. Didn't see any Top Tier sticker anywhere on the pump though.
Royal Farms - tried once, not in a rush to retry.

 

[CKN]

One of the most bizzarro threads started in a long time......

 

[CDNozzle]

Just stick with TT stations. Like others have said, it's all the same base gas, only the additives are different.

I'll avoid stations that were formerly mom 'n' pop that are now top tier since they use the same tank and [presumably?] pumps. But, it's impossible to know the branding and maintenance history of every single station around you (unless that's your hobby)