No vroom vroom with the Camry

The Hy-Vee gas station here doesn't sell 87 octane gas anymore!

Their regular grade with 10-percent ethanol is now 89 octane, just like their mid-grade. I've seen regular and mid-grade priced the same many times, but I've never seen both have the same octane level until Hy-Vee came along. No more 87.

There are some Break Time stations around here that don't sell premium. Instead they sell regular, mid-grade, and E-85 ! Maybe they just have 3 underground tank chambers-dunno. Other Break Time's continue offering premium. The ones that offer diesel don't have E-85.

Reply to
Built_Well
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Interesting that in the USA there are still so many different grades of gasoline sold.

I can remember until the mid 1980s in the UK they used to sell (leaded)

2-star, 3*, 4* and 5* (different octane ratings for cars with different compression ratios). But then when new cars started to be made with engines that took unleaded petrol and had catalytic converters (which happened much later with us than I believe it did in the States) and high-compression engines were phased out, they went over to just unleaded and leaded, each in regular and premium.

I don't think any garages sell leaded now, since most engines can be converted and the small number of older ones that can't can use an additive to each tank of unleaded.

Nowadays almost all pumps on a garage forecourt just sell unleaded (green holster) and diesel (black or blue holster), with maybe one or two pumps also having a nozzle for premium unleaded.

One or two brands of fuel (I think BP - British Petroleum - is one of the few) also have a pump selling premium diesel - at a "gold-plated" premium price!

I've not heard any suggestions yet that we might gradually change over to gasoline with some ethanol in. Even bio-diesel hasn't really taken off over here, though I've heard of a few people running cars on recycled cooking oil - which, to be legal, should have tax paid on it when it is put into a car...

Reply to
Mortimer

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Here it's the opposite. Green holster is for diesel.

By the way, Jaguars are great cars. I certainly didn't mean to offend when I mentioned them in my post about stolen cars :-)

I think you're lucky you don't have ethanol over there.

It just doesn't make sense to waste precious top-soil by dumping it down our gas tanks. Dust Bowl of the 1930's anyone?

I mean lots of folks think soil should be used to grow food, not wasted down our gas tanks. Some have even said it's immoral to use a finite resource like land for ethanol production. I think some United Nations types have even said ethanol gas is a "crime against humanity," especially now with the soaring food prices that are pressuring poorer nations, in part because land once used for wheat production and other food crops is now being used to grow corn, thus increasing both wheat and corn prices, and the prices of other food crops, too.

And there's another consideration. I don't want my '06 Camry hurt in any way by this unnecessary use of 10 percent ethanol gas. How good ethanol is for your car is still a very open question. And now we know that ethanol's production and use creates more greenhouses gases than simple gasoline. It's just a no-win situation. My car could lose, and the Earth certainly does.

And what about the possibility of unusual, devastating plant viruses that could arise from this extreme over-use of land? Do we have another Irish potato famine in store, or something like that? It's not far-fetched. The avian virus that attacked birds around much of the world is a very bad sign.

Corn-based ethanol just doesn't make sense. I guess we can thank Bush and ADM for this hairy-brained scheme, and the new federal law they just passed to increase ethanol production dramatically by the year 2020 or so.

Saints preserve us [chuckle]

Reply to
Built_Well

At least you can get it - Last count, there are 8 or 10 stations in the entire state of California selling E-85.

And the feds are effectively blocking CNG - the EPA and California Air Resources Board won't allow conversions without tons of red tape.

Regular Unleaded (R+M/2 = 87 Pump Octane), Premium Unleaded (91 or

92 Pump Octane), in the 'Name Brand' stations they carry a Mid-Grade Unleaded (89 Pump Octane, fixed ratio blending dispenser).

Problem being there are about two dozen different regional gasoline formulations to cut the vapor pressure and volatiles for smog, so they can't ship one region's blend to another. If a regional refinery or pipeline fails, they have a convenient excuse to spike the prices. The busier stations sell #2 Diesel, but at a rather high price because of lower sales volumes - only the truck stops have it at a decent price because they turn the inventory.

And in selected areas of the midwest, E-85 Ethanol. You don't want E-100 anyway - it's really nice to be able to see the flames, and therefore you know when and which way to run...

Gasoline with multiple octane ratings is really easy now with computers, and even in the old days of all mechanical dispensers and totalizers it wasn't that hard. We had blending dispensers with 4 to

6 grades in the States for decades.

The station had two underground tanks of Regular and Ultra-Premium, and the dispenser mixed them at the proper ratio to get the desired octane level on the output.

About the only place you can still get leaded on the US is airports, because they haven't required converters on small airplanes - YET...

And even then, it's 'Low-Lead'.

Ethanol in small amounts (up to 10%) works fine in fairly modern cars, but if the car is old enough to have a carburetor and a mechanical fuel pump, expect some serious "car dies unexpectedly" problems.

The older rubber compounds used in the fuel system hoses and the fuel pump diaphragm, and the foam filled floats in some carburetors are attacked by the ethanol - they will require replacement with hoses/pumps/floats made with more modern alcohol resistant materials when they fail. After that, no problems.

Other than the fuel mileage hit, because ethanol may be higher octane but the BTU content per gallon is lower.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Man, that is exactly the experience I had with my 07 Camry. I couldn't take it and like HLS, I traded it for an 04 Avalon. That and the freeway cruise control at high speed (vrrooooooommmmmmm... rrrrrrrrr.....vrrrooooooommmmm). jor

Reply to
jor

You might find

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interesting. If you are in the St. Lois area, you are going to get reformulated gasoline and it most liklely will contain ethanol (even premium). Outside of the St. Lois area, I think E10 regular is required but premium does not necessarily have to have ethanol (but it may). Maps showing gasoline requirements:

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From
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: "Do your gasolines contain Ethanol?

"In many areas of the country, oxygenates are required to be part of the gasoline formula. In those areas, our gasolines will contain ethanol, which is classified as an oxygenate

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]. Ethanol is also used in California Cleaner Burning Gasoline and the Reformulated gasolines required in many of the major metropolitan areas of the country. In addition, to meet the Renewable Fuels Standard included as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, ethanol blends will be introduced to many more areas of the country over the next few years." Other interesting references:

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Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

A couple of months back I bought a thousand gallons and it was something like $4.25 a gallon. It wasn't so long ago I could buy a thousand gallons for $0.85 a gallon.....sigh.

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Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Damn Ed....

And that's NON road taxed diesel?

The price of oil is going to kill this country!

Jack

Reply to
Retired VIP

The diesel fuel cost was nothing compared to the cost of fertilizer.......How would you like to dump $100+ worth of fertilizer on an acre and then have it not rain for a month......I used maybe $20 per acre of diesel fuel to plant a crop....

I made a mistake on the diesel fuel. I had enough in the tank in February to plant this years crop, but not enough to make it through the fall. Traditionally diesel fuel goes down in the late spring/summer (after the heating season is over), so I kept putting off buying more fuel. I have a 1500 gallon tank, and to get the best price you need to buy in 1000 gallon lots (at least in my case). Instead of the price going down after March it kept going up. I kept delaying buying more diesel thinking surely it would go down. My tank finally ran dry in May, so I had no choice but to buy. If I had bought in April is was still under $4. Waiting till May cost be several hundreds of dollars. Live and learn.

I also worry about the effect on transportation. Most of the stuff grown in my area is trucked 60 to 100 miles to either larger transportation hubs or end users (Perdue being a big end user). Some stuff is hauled even further (400 miles) but truckers don't like to make long hauls one way and come back empty. Earlier this year I heard that truckers were refusing to go to Florida to pick-up produce because they weren't being paid enough to cover expenses.

Too bad the truckers mostly forced the railroads out of business in my area...

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

I agree about the cost of transportation, that's why I was asking about the cost of non-road taxed diesel. I think the government is lying to us about the rate of inflation, there is no way that inflation is running as low as they say (less than 3% per year).

The railroads here in NW Ohio are going great guns. The old Conrail tracks just south of town, now Norfork & Southern, are running about 4 trains an hour on dual tracks. They're hauling stacked intermodual freight so I assume it's TVs from S. Korea or Ipods from China. My brother-in-law manages an elevator in Toledo and he has been having problems for over a year getting grain cars from the railroad.

Jack

Reply to
Retired VIP

The "original" Norfolk and Southern used to service my area (the original N&S being taken over by the Southern Railroad and then the name was reborn when the N&W merged with the Southern). These days a short line railroad company operates the old N&S tracks, but the route is greatly reduced. It used to include a link across the Albemarle sound, but that bridge was torn down years ago, so there is one way in and the same way out. Service is limited, mostly to bulk loads of rock and fertilizer. I haven't see grain hauled out by train in years.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

=======

Today after work, I stopped at the gas station to buy some fuel. Retired VIP, the price of the red-dyed off-road diesel is $4.52/gallon, only 15 cents cheaper than the highway #2 diesel ($4.67).

You probably know the highway diesel is ultra-low sulfur, 15 ppm max. The off-road diesel pump said it may exceed 500 ppm. This gas station has everything, even a pump for kerosene. The undyed and untaxed low-sulfur kerosene is $4.19 (500 ppm max.).

Regular grade petroleum, ie., gasoline, was $3.98, mid-grade $4.08, and premium $4.18 (all E-10).

Again, it's the gas station in the city limits with the Midwest Petroleum sign on Range Line street just south of the I-70 ramp.

Reply to
Built_Well

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