What is Quality gas?

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There are some people on here that think that the blessed "Top Tier" is the be all, end all of gasoline.
There are some of us that don't feel that way who have run automobiles hundreds of thousands of miles on whatever is available from a clean, high volume station and have never had a lick of problems. There are also some of us that reside in areas that do not have a plethora of "Top Tier" options readily available.
Since you are asking the question, you may as well find a "Top Tier" outlet closest to you.
 
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


The cheapest gas that comes from a pump that says 87 Octane on it.
 
Top tier is a measure of cleanliness. So always get top tier as it is a certification of higher "quality" across the board (unless you add your own additives).

Octane is a different measure, and is not exactly quality. It may make no difference in your car, or maybe it will. Check your owners manual and see if it says anything about it.

You may also check enthusiasts forum for your car to try to determine that even if the owners manual says nothing; your modern car is smart enough to take advantage of higher octane, and then you need to do math to see if it makes financial sense to you.

On the flipside though, nobody provides a valid downside to high octane gas other than it costs more. So if the costs were exactly the same everyone would just fillup with the 91.
 
Quality and octane rating have nothing in common. You can have a very high quality 87-octane fuel, and a terrible 93-octane fuel.

Clean, free of water and dirt, stored in air/water-tight tanks at the station. That makes "quality" gasoline in my opinion. I couldn't give a rip about whether the manufacturer did or did not pay the licensing fee to be able to use the meaningless words "Top Tier."
 
Originally Posted By: itguy08
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


The cheapest gas that comes from a pump that says 87 Octane on it.


The kind of answer to avoid posting.
 
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
Originally Posted By: itguy08
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


The cheapest gas that comes from a pump that says 87 Octane on it.


The kind of answer to avoid posting.

How is that answer any less valid than the other answers posted?
 
Originally Posted By: wolf_06


What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


One word: FRESH.

The fresher the gasoline, the better.

Raw un-additized gasoline is essentially a fungible product. The only differences among brands (with very few exceptions) is the additive package they shoot into it at the tanker racks.

Obviously, the distribution chain and station tanks need to be clean. But as to the gas itself, it's all about the freshness.
 
Yes, usually the top tier gas stations have high quality gas, but you still need to find one that doesn't let their gas sit too long, like one way off the beaten path.

The cheapest top tier 87 from a high volume station. You don't need anything higher than 87 if your car calls for it, but you want to make sure you don't run cheap 87 either.

Some people believe the higher octanes do have more detergents, like with Shell, so if you want to run a cleaning cycle and load it up with some Gumout all in one and Shell 93 once and awhile go for it, but 87 the rest of the time.
 
Originally Posted By: Volvohead


One word: FRESH.

The fresher the gasoline, the better.

Raw un-additized gasoline is essentially a fungible product. The only differences among brands (with very few exceptions) is the additive package they shoot into it at the tanker racks.

Obviously, the distribution chain and station tanks need to be clean. But as to the gas itself, it's all about the freshness.


Precisely. Generally the busiest place is the freshest one, too. We buy around 3-4k a month in fuel, most from Racetrac and the rest from Wawa. Neither one makes fuel, they get it from the same depot in the area as every other place.

Fresh!
 
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
Originally Posted By: itguy08
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


The cheapest gas that comes from a pump that says 87 Octane on it.


The kind of answer to avoid posting.


Why so? If your car cannot operate well for a long time on the minimum octane it requires and minimum detergent levels from the EPA or whatever the Canadian agency is, than it is defective. Period, end of story.

I've got probably 700k miles in various cars using the cheapest gas of the minimum octane specified by the manufacturer. Never a fuel system issue. Almost all have been well into 100k miles with this treatment. I also GHASP run them down to 1/4 or below too!

Save the quality for oils, filters, and replacement parts - that's where you will notice it!
 
Given:
  • The limited number of available refineries
  • Regional fuel blend constraints

I would assume that the fuel in any given community comes from only a couple of sources and that there is not a big difference in quality, other additive packages.

It's not like you pull into a BP station and are guaranteed to get gas from a BP refinery?
 
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
. . . Generally the busiest place is the freshest one, too. . .


Which usually means they are the cheapest one, too.

A win-win no matter how you slice it.
 
Originally Posted By: exranger06
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
Originally Posted By: itguy08
Originally Posted By: wolf_06
What is considered a quality gas for a car that calls for 87 octane?


The cheapest gas that comes from a pump that says 87 Octane on it.


The kind of answer to avoid posting.

How is that answer any less valid than the other answers posted?



It wasn't the one he wanted to hear.
 
Originally Posted By: raytseng
Top tier is a measure of cleanliness. So always get top tier as it is a certification of higher "quality" across the board (unless you add your own additives).

"Top Tier" is only one means. BP for the longest time was specifically recommended by BMW and by all accounts their additive met the Top Tier testing requirements easily. However, they didn't want to play the game (licensing fees and submitting test results) until recently. Costco's "Clean Power" (now "Kirkland Signature") additive program hasn't really changed since they got Top Tier certification. What has happened since is that they managed to get the infrastructure into all their stations and they've decided to pay the fee.

However, it seems as if most of the major marketers of fuel are paying for this program if they indeed meet the standard. There are quite a few companies that feel that too high a level of detergent additive on a regular basis is detrimental to performance (Valero for one). 76 claims they go a little bit over the requirements for Top Tier because they believe there are drawbacks.
 
Originally Posted By: knerml
Given:
  • The limited number of available refineries
  • Regional fuel blend constraints

I would assume that the fuel in any given community comes from only a couple of sources and that there is not a big difference in quality, other additive packages.

It's not like you pull into a BP station and are guaranteed to get gas from a BP refinery?

There are a lot of people who buy into the claims of the marketers that they're providing something "special" or better than the competition. The reality is that fuel is a commodity and that one refinery's output isn't so special that they'll go out of the way to make sure that the brand on the pump matches the name on the refinery. It would cost money to pipe/truck/haul fuel across the country. I remember that for the longest time, BP only had a single US refinery in Louisiana, while BP stations were all over the country including California. It had highly unlikely that they even made California RFG in this one refinery.

The actual deal is that gasoline is what brokers call a "fungible commodity". Unadditized base fuel is piped into fuel depots all over a region. In many cases, this fuel is comingled so that it's not solely the product of a single refinery. I know in my area there are a lot of people who think that they see that blue and red Chevron sign, so the fuel must have come from the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. Not always and maybe just part of it. A couple of years ago there was a big accident that shut down most of that refinery's capacity, yet Chevron stations didn't start putting up signs saying "NO GAS" (some people will be old enough to remember that).
 
I have the GM LSA 6.2L V8 supercharged engine and have to run 91 octane. With that said, I tried almost every name brand available here locally to me and Shell's 91 octane V-Power fuel seems to have the best results in terms of smoothness, acceleration and overall power. All the other brands like 76, Chevron and Mobil were ok but there was a noticeable difference in this car when I started running Shell V-Power. The engine in my car seems to like the Shell additives.
 
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