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Old 06-13-2011, 05:39 PM   #1
PAFirefighter11
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Best Gas Brands For Your Vehicle

I know we all have our personal favorite brands for our street cars. I personally use Sunoco or Shell. I know back in the day there were huge differences in which brand you go with. These days it's basically down to the additives, etc., though I did find an interesting post on another forum:

Quote:
I've designed oil refinery processes for 20 years and there is a big difference. Any of the major brands like Shell, Exxon, BP, or Chevron are OK. Some of the off brands are OK and some are not, but I would never put any of the secondary brands in my car.

There is very little difference in the major brands apart from the additives that are blended in. The vast majority of gas is transported from the refinery to local distribution points via pipelines. In several areas of the country several refiners will use a common pipeline to transport their products to remote storage facilities. So brands such as shell, BP, exxon, etc are mixed in the pipeline. There are agreements as to the quality of the gas that goes into these common lines. If Chevron ,for example, puts a 100 gallons of fuel in the pipeline from the refinery at Pascagoula, MS they are entitled to remove a 100 gallons from a distribution point in Sioux City, IA even though their fuel never went to Iowa. So even if you buy shell gas it may have been made by Chevron. The company specific additives are added at the remote distribution points and is the only thing different between major brands.

These distribution agreements are why it is possible for shell (or any other refiner) to sell fuel in places where it would otherwise be uneconomical because of transportation costs.

Most (but not all) of the secondary refiners are not part of this distribution agreement because their fuel does not meet the quality standards.
Has anyone come upon any studies showing testing from different brands? I'm sure someone with some scientific knowledge thought it would be a good idea to do a study like this. All I can find in my 5 mins of searching are personal opinions and no factual statistics.

Thanks...
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Old 06-13-2011, 06:04 PM   #2
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Pretty interesting quote... what's the source?
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Old 06-13-2011, 06:49 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Supraholic View Post
Pretty interesting quote... what's the source?
It's from a guy on another forum which I have closed already lol. He didn't get into more detail from the 1 page of 6 I read.
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Old 06-13-2011, 07:12 PM   #4
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I noticed I get better mpg when I put in Shell or Sunoco as well. I put Citgo, Wawa, or US gas in the beater all day though.
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Old 06-13-2011, 08:43 PM   #5
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Not so much based on "hard facts" as much as internet discussions etc, as well as my limited knowledge of oil refining, ie. gasoline production, and more confidence in certain specific name brands, I only put Sunoco and Shell in the Supra ..hey, maybe I do that because they all start with "S"?...but in my DD ('07 RAV4 V6) I put any available unleaded regular.
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Old 06-13-2011, 10:38 PM   #6
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Shell V Power 93 all the way
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Old 06-13-2011, 11:03 PM   #7
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My twin turbo loves Sunoco.
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Old 06-14-2011, 12:44 AM   #8
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shell 93 only for my car, and ill tell you why, for the longest while back when i only had my beater neon i used to run wawa gas up on erial road, never had an issue with it whatsoever, and was overall pretty cheap. When i bought my teg, i went through the same routine, it only required regular at the time, so i would go fill up at wawa. After 2 months of filling up i had had nothing but problems with misfiring and rough idling. I tried filling up at the shell station with their regular and after 1 tank, not a single misfire, or hestitation, it was a night and day difference. I havent looked back since. I had a chance to do a fuel pump on a grand prix with a buddy of mine right after a guy had filled up with a tank of wawa regular, and when we popped the lid on the tank for the fuel pump it stunk so bad you would have thought someone took a **** in the gas tank, its quite possibly the worst smelling gas ive ever had the displeasure of sniffing.
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Old 06-14-2011, 01:51 AM   #9
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93 sunoco
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Old 06-14-2011, 01:55 AM   #10
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sunoco ftw...
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Old 06-14-2011, 07:52 AM   #11
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WaWa has/had a contract with Sunoco to sell their gas....atleast it was when they first started selling gas so that may have changed.
all i use is Sunoco.
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Old 06-14-2011, 08:29 AM   #12
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My truck gets significantly better mileage from Shell fuel, 89 octane. There is a Shell and Sunoco next to each other down the street from my shop. I've run both fuels back to back several times and the truck goes further on Shell.
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Old 06-14-2011, 08:38 AM   #13
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Can you still get gas without 10% ethanol? I feel like Im getting ripped off every time I see that.

"Hey, we're watering your gasoline down and charging you more for it, and theres nothing you can do about it! **** you!"

Plus the ethanol makes my two stroke dirtbikes run like dog turds.
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Old 06-14-2011, 09:23 AM   #14
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I've never personally noticed any difference in quality of gas or MPGs. I fill up wherever I am when I need it.
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Old 06-14-2011, 09:25 AM   #15
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ethanol hurts gas mileage by about 2-4%, while it lowers cylinder temps and helps big HP cars (that are built/tuned corny) the epa states that E10 (obviously 10% corn vs E85 which is 85% corny) is the MAX for conventional engines so companies started adding it for cost & image reasons. In the end though, a chevy suburban flex fuel gets 17mpg on pump and 13mpg with e85. simple math would tell us over a year of driving 10k miles @ 20mpg we would need 500 gallons of gas costing us (@3.75) $1,875. With E10 added & used we would spend $1,952.13. not a huge difference buy ill take my $100 dollars back thank you!



not a big difference, yeah i know, but if a company wants to use a additive that is 10% of their full inventory costing them a third of what gas does its kind of a sham we dont see price differences for e10 vs 100% gas
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Old 06-14-2011, 09:28 AM   #16
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Quote:
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not a big difference, yeah i know, but if a company wants to dilute thier gas with something 5% cheaper then i want to see that reflect in the prices before i buy it.
That is wishful thinking, but 100%
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Old 06-14-2011, 09:51 AM   #17
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Back when I had my evo X, the test pipe I was using had a CEL fix built into it. (longer, angled bung) BUT, if I didn't run anything but sunoco 93 octane, I would get a CEL for the rear 02. Since the rear o2 works off of temperature (to see if the CAT exists or not) I would assume that the sunoco fuel is burning cooler. Shell fuel would be hit or miss. Sometimes the CEL would not go on and sometimes it would. (I always filled at the same station) Every other major brand fuel would trigger the CEL within 5 minutes from filling up.

However, I also noticed increased gas mileage while using Shell V-power.
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Old 06-14-2011, 10:07 AM   #18
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That is wishful thinking, but 100%
yeah man they gotta cut n make more profit where they can. Honestly if im sitting on that board of directors i dont blame them i would do the same thing. I really want to know the effects of E10 on a performance engine tuned @ 100 percent fuel though. What i said before about cooling cylinder temps may be wrong... after reading a bit im not really sure. It does force a car to burn leaner, but i dont know if it translates to cooler or hotter temps as i have only seen conflicting ideas.

nvm i was right this is a pretty credible source

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using E0 and E10 fuels were analyzed with a differential mobility spectrometer (DMS500) at dynamic engine operation conditions.
Quote:
With the E10 fuel, peak cylinder pressure was increased and exhaust temperature was decreased
pretty good read
http://www.agir.ro/buletine/554.pdf
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Old 06-14-2011, 10:45 AM   #19
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I just use what ever is cheap, but normally comes down to sunoco or wawa truck always runs 100%. I used gulf one time and it seemed to burn really fast. But i get 14-16 mpg city so it all burns fast haha
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Old 06-14-2011, 11:08 AM   #20
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In the tC I see marginally better mpgs from Sunoco than Wawa, but typically not enough to make a difference to the cost/mile. Locally those are the only two places I will fill up. In the absence of those two I will seek out Shell or Chevron. I will actively avoid BP, Exxon/Mobil, and Lukoil because of environmental/political reasons (not looking to start a n argument or debate the rationality of my choice, just making a statement).
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