Hey i was thinking about this cuase the last time i filled up i got sh!ty gas milage, is there any truth behind saying that one gas station has better gas than an other? Aren't they both 91 octane? I always hear people talk about they have a favorite gas station because the gas there is better, they get more miles out of a full tank on average....is there any thing to justify this?

 

some gas stations will say you are getting 91 but really only getting 90. also if you go to crappy gas stations that dont get much use then the fuel is old and isnt as good as the fresh stuff. also gas stations add there own mix to make it different. i like shell

 

About a year ago i watched something on the History channel about gas. What i got out of it is gas is made for certain regions. So the midwest gas is made different then the west coast, it is also made different for the season's. So if you got gas left-over from summer and its 30 degrees out you might see a difference. Another interesting thing i learned was this - Lets say 2 gas companies send there gas through the pipe line from Texas to IL. Company "B" has there trucks there first and wants to load-up, so they take the gas that Company "A" sent through and pay a premium.

 

I currently fill up with 93, at all times

 

I probably saw the same show as new2me on the history channel, but yes.

Basically, there's a big pipeline system that almost all the gas companies share. The system on the east coast takes 14 days to get gas from one end in NY to reach LA (louisiana). Instead of the company putting gas in one end, waiting, then extracting 2 weeks later, they can extract same day so they eventually trade around. The only difference between gas is that when gas is extracted from the pipeline, additives to clean your engine may or may not be added. By now all additives are basically the same too so all gas is the same.

The only caveat is that I think Texaco is the only company with it's own private pipeline so Texaco only pumps its own gas (unless there's some shortage which requires it to pump community gas to stay in business).

 

Yes it's true that different gas stations have different quality gas. I was informed that some gas stations with cheaper gas have that cheaper gas because they get it from the most inexpensive seller which also happens to have the most stale, bad gas. I always fill up from reliable sources when possible.

 

An addition to cleaning additives, some gasoline is 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.

this boosts octane, but gives lousy mileage.

 

o ya. if u lived in my town you would definitely see that certain gas stations gas are dif. than others. my roommate has a POS taurus so he just tries to find the cheapest gas in town. the cheapest one he found was this run down POS place with 2 pumps that look like they are from the 60's. and he only gets regular there. because of this his car gets horrible gas mileage and his engine stutters sometimes. i try to tell him its not worth it and hes prolly gettin worse gas mileage out of it, but u cant fix stupid. i always get 93 octane v-power from shell. i just feel safer using it and its still around the middle price in town.

 

A friend of mine had a really horrible ~1987 Nissan Sentra, strictly an A-B car and the engine manual says only 87 is needed.

He did a test comparing 93 and 87 octane once and calculated that his dollar/mile was lower with 93 octane than 87. In the end, it was cheaper to use 93 than 87 even though 87 looks cheaper at the pump, you consume more gas and pay more over time than with 93.

 

yeah, the reason i thought about this is that i usually get either chevron or shell (i live in southern california) and i got a tank of shell close by because for some reason that day it was like 2.40 a gallon when the other stations were like around were like 2.60 or more, and it was right there and on the way. usually i get pretty good gas milage with shell and this time i got really bad milage, and i'm sure it was 91 for those of you who are thinking maybe i got 87 or something on accident. so maybe like some one was saying it was the station trying to dump the left over summer gas or something...