Yes I agree with you that the additives are added when the trucks are loaded and not at each individual refinery. So just as you mentioned, Chevron gasoline is most likely being sold at all the service stations near a Chevron refinery, etc...

 

Its the whole state. They have to pump it for you. I alternate between caring and not giving a crap. When I go to fill the harley though - they all let me handle the pump.

And yes - we do have some of the cheapest gas in the country. Go figure...

 

It's because NJ has the second lowest state fuel tax in the country (only Alaska is cheaper). But there is a cost, the roads suffer due to the low amount of funds in the Transportation Trust Fund.

 

I have covered gasoline differences before. My abbreviated advice is to stick with a name brand top tier gasoline. However, you are of course free to experiment and if you find your car's engine reacts favorably to some discount gasoline and consistently then use that gasoline.

Because of where I live a Shell station is quite handy to me and its prices were -- key word were -- quite competitive.

But beyond convenience I found with my Boxster that switching away from a discount gasoline and switching to Shell gasoline had a converter error (complete with CEL and error code) staying away even though my driving remained very consistent and my "field test" of this spanned several years to eliminate short term weather changes or other factors.

However, several months ago this Shell station raised its prices and is now 20 or more cents per gallon more expensive that stations just up and down the street not even a block from it. I have no idea what got into the station's management but with its price increase I have stopped buying gas there. And based on how empty its driveways are I suspect I'm not the only person avoiding buying gasoline there.

Fortunately there is a Chevron station that now has very competitive prices as does a 76 station just across the street from the Chevron station. I didn't shop at the Chevron or 76 stations before because they have smaller lots and fewer pumps. The Shell station has large drives and double the number of pumps.

But the price difference is compelling so I switched from using Shell V-Power (91 octane natch, as this is Kalifornia after all!) to Chevron 91.

After a month or so running through a bit over a tank a week - my work commute is 300 miles per week -- I happened to notice the Boxster was running pretty darn good. It had been running a bit flat before. Nothing serious I just assumed the miles (currently nearly 292K miles) catching up with the engine even though it has not manifested any signs of the high mileage affecting it.

But the improvement in performance was real. And it was not just due to dry cool air but is present all the time even on the real hot days.

I was at the dealer the other day and spoke with a tech about this and gave him a back of the envelop background on the situation, primarily that I had switched from running Shell all the time to running Chevon all the time.

The tech said it was due to the Techron in the Chevron gasoline.

Now I have used Techron out of a bottle a couple of times and have not noticed any real improvement. But I drive my cars a lot and I like to believe that lots of driving helps keep the engine clean of deposits so periodic doses of Techron are not called for.

As I have mentioned more than once all of my cars perk up after a highway run of 40+ miles. The engine really likes to be run at a constant speed (RPM) for 30+ minutes. But at other times it can take a longer drive. More than once in my various cars my Porsches and other cars prior to the Porsches I have driven 100 to 200 or so miles and then noticed a big improvement in how the engine runs.

So, I was a bit surprised by the perk up from my usual driving, a 60 mile (round trip) commute that unfortunately more and more often finds me in traffic unable to sustain the highway speed (65mph) for a majority of that 30 miles to or from work. In fact I can sometimes cover 10+ miles of freeway at if not pure stop and go a mix of some stop and go blended with sometimes being able to obtain speeds of near the limit.

Anyhow, the tech said he too has noticed this, this improvement in engine performance running Chevron consistently for a few tanks. I told him before switching to Chevron I consistently used Shell V-Power and believed it to be a good gasoline. He agreed, and in fact he said he notices the Shell V-power delivers more power than Chevron gasoline but it doesn't have the cleaning of the Chevron gasoline. What he does is every so often switches to Chevron for a tank or two for the cleaning it offers then switches back to Shell.

Well, I'm not going to do that for one I don't like to add complexity to my life any more than is necessary and I'm not about to pay the premium for Shell gasoline and other Shell stations are not convenient to me. I love to drive but I hate to drive out of my way for gasoline.

So I'm sticking with Chevron for now.

However, for the sake of "science", if I happen upon a Shell station with competitively priced gasoline I might give a tank or two of Shell V-Power a try to see if the Boxster engine continues to delight me with its new found vigor or perhaps perks up even more with V-Power in the tank vs. Chevron.

Oh, I have switched the Turbo over to Chevron too but have not driven it nearly as much as the Boxster of late. I will see if the Turbo engine perks up any. Unlike the Boxster engine the Turbo engine doesn't feel flat or down any on power.

 

After I saw the Shell V-Power with Nitrogen commercials I was sold.

 

I agree. Chevron all the way.

 

Costco for me. Never had any issues.

 

can't pump your own gas anywhere in NJ.

I think this is a bit too much mental masturbation. The following pic show the intake valves of my mercedes s500 after about 60k miles. I used name brand fuel from just about every brand. Mostly sunoco, not a top tier brand. Furthermore, the car was used mostly for short trips, which isn't doing anything any favors.

This was proof enough that I'm not going to sweat what station to go to:



ok, that pic shows up crappy, but there were basically no deposits

 

Sam's club 93 or whatever is convenient. They all have 93.

 

Coupla items..... There are a few other possibilities for differences and that could be the condition of a station's tanks, equipment, and turnover of product. I had a few stations in my old town of residence that just had bad gas. Given my experience in transportation, I tend to believe the problem is at the station. Again, I literally witnessed the tankers pull up to the same pumps and pull from the same storage all with different logos on the side (or without logos and destined to multiple deliveries at different stations!).

It is possible different stations are being served by different depots, but since gasoline is a true commodity and governed by law, and that it was probably pumped through the same national distribution pipelines, I still suspect the issue was with the stations.

Now because brands try and differentiate themselves with additives, and I like "detergents", I do try and mix up the brands as the generic, lowest cost gas usually does not have any additives.

Regarding the pricing rise.... most national brand station owners I chatted with said they can't control the price even though they own the station. Pricing is controlled by "zone pricing" and the big companies have very sophisticated pricing models that consider local demographics among many other factors. Rest assured that even if you and others are avoiding that station, they probably are making more money. If not, a change will come quickly.

I have been a victim of "bad gas", but again, I always attributed this to the station and not the brand. However, after spewing what I "know" about gas distribution, our market-driven economy can produce some bewildering and clever operators. Who knows? Maybe a hauler is mixing a bit of water in the tank after they pull away from the depot. One of the many terminal (transportation) managers I worked with told stories of drivers loading water into their tanks as they made deliveries and therefore sold "more" product. This can be so pervasive that some factories when they receive say a solvent out of a tanker, check its purity before accepting delivery.

As I write this... another memory popped in.... When product is pumped through the national pipeline systems, they don't have different pipes for different products. What they do is pump say gasoline at a given volume, stop, then start pumping say a naptha right behind it without a divider. There is a narrow mixing zone between the two and that "dirty" product is identified as it transitions at the storage depot and piped to a different storage tanker and is sold to whoever can use it... usually a plant that can burn anything to generate heat or work or whatever. So.... maybe its the depots fault by have some "dirt" in their gas when is supposed to be pure. By the way there is nothing "pure" but the systems require a percentage of purity due to the realities of piping through common pipes. Or maybe the tanker was hauling another commodity before filling and that mix with the gasoline compromised its performance in your car.

I am not at all disagreeing with your experiences, I am sure they are real, but I would be hesitant to say X-brand of gas is better or that Y-brand is crap...... because that just is not so (disregarding additives), gas is gas.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

 

All gasoline in this country requires a minimum level of detergent https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.161

A brief discussion on the matter of levels of detergent http://pr.sae.org/saenews/gasadditives.htm

...and more than I ever want to know about the registration process for detergents (prepump and post pump) http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/regist...uels/index.htm

For me, I will try and stick with Top Tier. Sometimes they are hard to find out in the middle of nowhere on a drive. I prefer Chevron for reasons mentioned by others. Shell is next in line. Looking for those large volume dealers.

 

It’s called “splash blending” and that’s exactly how it’s done. It’s marketing. Once a fuel refiner invents a fuel recipe that actually gets you superior mileage or actually improves the life of your engine, you will hear about it in the NEWS, and not just on that refiner’s website, lol.

 

Back in about '65 I pumped gas nights at an Esso station. One day a tanker driver told the owner that he also had 200 gallons of kerosene and the night manager told him to dump it into the high- test tank and winked at me as he told the driver "it will burn fine in the high test gas.

All the best....

 

While the back of the valves are indeed clean, I dare say that is more a function of port injection rather than superior detergent gasoline.

There is a whole other world on the other side of the intake valves. I do not know what gasoline this driver used, but she drove around 25 miles to and then from work at freeway speeds. This is with about 60K miles on the engine, a Boxster S (IIRC) engine. The head was off due to a broken valve spring.



There is of course (though not visible in this pic) the #1 O2 sensor, the converter, and the #2 O2 sensor, which can also benefit from the presence of detergents.

Techron is really good in this regard as it has a liquid deposition phase and vapor deposition phase which means briefly the stuff works cold when it comes in contact as a liquid with combustion surfaces or hot when as a vapor it turns from a vapor back to liquid again.

 

My neighbor is a petroleum engineer. You’re only partly correct and don’t have the full picture. The brands may share the same gas from the refinery at times for logistical reasons, but they add their own “blend” of additives as the EPA only regulates the gas, not all the additives and detergents. Which is how some brands have “5x more detergents than what the EPA requires” and others not as much. So Shell and Chevron may have the same gas going to those large storage tanks you talk about, but they add additives along the line and/or in those tanks depending on facility.