I recently learned from a friend, who races cars, that there is a difference in the quality of gasoline additives from different brands. You'll find great info on this site, as well as a printable list of top tier brands, to keep in your car.
Sorry, can't seem to link this, but here is website. Maybe someone here can fix this.......... Jim

http://www.toptiergas.com/

 

http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers.html

 

Top Tier is a marketing scheme, not a type of 'better' gas.

You'll note that neither Jaguar nor it's former parent Ford endorse Top Tier fuels. Must be that they can build engines that are not so finicky, right?

I know of no brand of gas that does not have sufficient additives.

 

I've known a few gas stations that have introduced their own additive: H2O

Cheers,

Don

 

Me too, the most recent event locally was at a Top Tier station. There's nothing in their certification requirements that ensures a higher level of contamination testing than the other guys.

 

I learned back in the 80s the hard way. I was a poor high school/college student driving a five year old, 36,000 mile mercury and buying only whereever gas was cheapest. I rebuilt the carburetor several times, replaced it once with a brand new one and rebuilt that at least twice. I even installed one of those accessory in-line glass sediment bowl type filters and emptied the sludge out about once a year. While in college, Exxon sent me an application for a credit card so I applied figuring I needed to start establishing a credit history. Funny thing was that after I started buying all my gas from Exxon, all my carburetor problems went away and I never had to empty that sediment bowl again. I drove that old mercury another 100,000 miles and 7 years and never had another fuel related problem.

Apparently Jaguar learned the hard way too about excess sulphur in fuels, replacing a bunch of nikasil lined engine blocks, not so much in the U.S. but where standards were even lower.

I can't say that additives make the difference, but the quality and maintenance of the fueling equipment, the cleanliness of the transport vehicles and underground tanks is key. Typically find these factors are better at the Top Tier stations but not universally. You can get a sense if your local Gas-n-Go is an OK place to buy gas, but if you are traveling, it may be better to stick with the Top Tiers.

Nowadays, people can't tell any performance difference between gasolines because modern fuel injection has leveled the playing field. At 30-40psi, whatever gets past the couple of hundred square inches of folded filter material is either forced through the injectors or races back to the tank quite rapidly, never having time to stick to anything and gum up the works. Whether its got a little more or less ethanol or other additives doesn't make much difference either because the car's computer constantly adjusts and tunes the the pulse width of the injectors for optimum performance. Your slightly different gas mileage will be attributed to different traffic conditions this week than last. Mikey is absolutely right. Modern engine systems are just better capable of dealing with variation in quality.

But if you really want to know if your gas is Top Tier, put a carburetor on your car along with a 4-5psi fuel pump, a filter the size of an acorn (as was typical back in the day), and report back in a couple of years.

 

While "top tier" might be used to advantage by marketers, it is still a specific detergency standard. The smart approach for the consumer is to understand the basis of the standard consider whether the standard is of value to them.

To wit:

Top Tier Gasoline

If a reader understands the standard, the spinners can spin until they corkscrew into the ground with no ill effect to the reader.

++

 

A few of my summer toys are equipped with such hardware, most being in my possession for 30+years. Never had any contamination issues.

Joe Average consumer doesn't spend his days pouring over auto-related websites to learn about fuel additives. He buys his gas according to his own particular habits. If there was correlation between gas quality and brands, where's all the cars stalled along the highways or in shops for repairs?

 

Here in Thailand, they sell an increasing amount of gasohol. I was advised to only use this when no alternative was within range. I can't say I noticed any difference on the odd occasion I've used it though... Any thoughts?

 

In the central U.S., most of the gasoline available contains up to 10% ethanol. I've heard all manner of criticisms of ethanol, including reduced fuel economy due its lower engergy density, its tendency to attract moisture that promotes corrosion in fuel system components, that corn is not actually a truly renewable source of fuel, etc. Reportedly, ethanol is beneficial to the atmosphere because it burns more cleanly than gasoline.

The only demonstrable problem I've had with gasoline containing ethanol is that several years ago I began having trouble with my lawn equipment fuel systems plugging up over the winter, which in Middle Tennessee is only about two months long. I typically mow my lawn for the last time of the year just before Christmas, and for the first time in the spring as early as late February. I discovered that ethanol gasoline was gumming up the needle valves in the carburetors of all my equipment (mower, edge trimmer, string trimmer, blower, etc.). The solution has been to either use ethanol-free gasoline (available only at one gas station across town) or to use a fuel stabilizer additive in my lawn equipment fuel can.

I haven't had any detectable problems in any of our cars, but if I were going to leave a car sitting for more than a few weeks, I would seriously consider adding fuel stabilizer to the tank and driving the car long enough to work the stabilizer through the fuel rail and injectors.

Cheers,

Don

 

The procedure here is to run the small engines 'dry', out of fuel. Nothing to gum up if it's not there.

Large engines can sit for at least six months with untreated E10, the jury is out as to whether Stabil makes any difference as the fuel already contains stabilizers.

Although people like to think that gummed up fuel systems are new and the fault of Obam... uhh sorry, 'ethanol', it's nothing new.

Here's the history of Seafoam and why it was developed back in the 1930s:

Our History - Sea Foam Sales Company

Nothing new under the sun.

 

For me, the jury is definitely in with the verdict: Stabil and its competitors work, at least in the carbureted small engines in my lawn equipment (both 2- and 4-cycle). For the past few years since using it in my lawn equipment fuel cans, I've had no problems whatsoever with gummed up fuel systems after the engines sit over the winter (8 - 10 weeks), whereas for the few years prior to that I was having trouble every year.

Whether or not fuel stabilizers offer any benefit in a fuel-injected automobile I can't say for certain, but I've proven to my own satisfaction that they work in carbureted small engines. And if gasoline containing ethanol can promote gumming in a small engine's carburetor, it is certainly possible that it can promote gumming in any system, even a modern fuel-injection system, despite the typical operating pressures. There's a reason cleaning fuel injectors is necessary from time to time, and its not just debris clogging the filters (something else I've proven to my own satisfaction).

Cheers,

Don

 

No argument on small engines, but they've always been a problem as illustrated by the history of Seafoam. I just run them dry, kills two birds with one stone.

Keep in mind that stabil has it's own shelf life. A friend bought a super economy giant size jug of it at Costco, big enough to last several years. In year three his snowblower ceased to run at idle. The stabil had gone off and turned to crystals which clogged the carb. There's irony!