Gas In The Car

With all the different gas stations around, does it matter what brand you put in your car or what grade? There are always 3 types, Unleaded, Super unleaded, Premium unleaded. There are Shell stations, Big Foot, Thornton's, etc. Is one gas better than the others? What to use--what to avoid?

Thank you.

Reply to
Indy Girl
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snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (Indy Girl) muttered darkly in news:21464-41232E26- snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3135.bay.webtv.net:

Another newbie. Doesn't know how to use Google.

This debate has been beat to death in every group in existence for many years.

Click here:

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Try different search terms to narrow your search.

Reply to
Tegger®

Thank you, to the 2 polite responders, and to the other one, well I'm sorry I bothered you. Being a widow and not knowing anything about cars, I was not sure where to go for an answer.

Reply to
Indy Girl

Read your manual and find out what gas is required would be my advise.

Personally I stay with the 'known' brands and away from the small 'mom and pop' stores just to insure the gas if fairly fresh.

Don't spend more money than necessary. If your car says run it on Regular...run it on Regular.

btw what car do you drive? We can give a definite answer based on what you are driving.

Scott in Florida

Reply to
Scott in Florida

Scott I have a 93 Toyota Tercel. No manual came with it when my sister and brother-in-law bought it for me last year. The last 2 days it has been chugging and sputtering like it wants to die. I don't go far but I have to be able to take my daughter to & from school. I don't have the money to be going to a mechanic all the time and have very few people to call for help.

PLZ respond here or to me personally.

Thank you, renee in Indy

Reply to
Indy Girl

As I mentioned before, I use 50/50 mid and premium. I get good gas mileage and few engine problems (3 cars over 200,000 miles). If you can afford to do this, fine.

Your manual will say 'use regular gasoline' (I have 4 Toyotas, 2 Tercels, they *all* say that!!). If running regular gasoline does not cause knocking or pinging ("marbles in a can" or a sound like two pieces of ceramic banging together) by all means use regular.

*BUT* I'm surprised in all the posts, no one mentioned one thing. As deposits build up in an engine (and they do, and even faster with regular gas. It has to do with the fact that regular burns faster and thereby less completely, leaving more deposits behind) the compression ratio of the engine rises. As the compression ratio rises, the need for a higher octane gas makes itself apparent! (Knocking and Pinging!)]

So, as long as you don't hear these types of noises, keep doing what your doing. Actually, it really has to do more with performance than anything else. I've been telling my Mom for years to increase the octane of her gas, and she doesn't, and her '86 Camry keeps moving along!

Another *But* , and maybe somebody can tell me if this is right or wrong, I haven't done a lot of research/reading on it, but it seems that if the compression ratio rises, and the engine starts pre-igniting, etc, doesn't this put a load on bearings, wrist pins, rods, etc?

Or am I just all wet?

Reply to
HachiRoku

HachiRoku muttered darkly in news: snipped-for-privacy@ae86.GTS:

If the gas burned "less completely", you'd end up with high hydrocarbons in your exhaust before you got deposits. It burns just as completely as any other octane.

If your engine is developing significant deposits these days, then you are either taking *really* bad care of the car or using some *really* terrible gas like they might sell in Tanzania. Or you are driving a '39 Dodge flathead with non-detergent 30wt oil.

You can mill 1/16 of an inch off the head without raising the compression ratio excessively. Your combustion chamber deposits will result in nowhere near that amount of reduction.

Reply to
Tegger®

Damn, man, stop telling me how misinformed I am.

I got all of these ideas I have presented here from various car magazines I have read over the years. I like to believe I am reading good articles by knowledgable peopple, but it looks like I have been lead by the nosering into a lot of bunk.

Reply to
HachiRoku

HachiRoku wrote: snip

Why would you doubt everything that you've read over the years in trade magazines (most of them experts in their field - plus your own experience) just because one guy in some newsgroup trashed it all?...

There's not very many people posting here who I believe in implicitly and Tegger ain't one of them.

Reply to
Gord Beaman

Gord Beaman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Just curious here Hachi, but just HOW OLD is the thread you're replying to?

Is it this one?:

<

How very kind of you. You really seemed to like what I posted at the time, so much so that Philip got jealous.

By the way, your sig is not compliant. You need a space after the "--", (as in "-- ") otherwise intelligent newsreaders cannot recognize it a sig.

Reply to
TeGGeR®

WHAT?! I didn't say that!

IIRC, there was a guy that wanted to jump up some car and posted a question about the stuff. Might have been from NZ, IIRC. I told him not to waste the money and look for something else. I believe he was wanting to hop up a Starlet.

Where did you pick up this thread, Gord? It isn't even on my server any more!!

Or is this just one of those posts that got lost in CyberSpace and finally decided to land...?

Reply to
Hachiroku

My God! That was OVER a YEAR ago, about 5-6 weeks after I joined the group! We were talking about Octane, and I mentioned I had read somewhere, or somebody had told me that higher octane burns slower. OMG!!! Where has this message been for a year!!

Reply to
Hachiroku

Come to think of it, I hooked up an old hard drive I hadn't used for a while from another computer. I opened PAN, my newsreader, and went to respond to a current post, and it hung, so I restarted it and hit Send Pending Messages.

But that was still like, Friday or Saturday!

Reply to
Hachiroku

Hachiroku wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@ae86.gts:

No, Gord did. Shoulda been clearer when I was responding.

Yeah, like those wacky mailmen who store two years of mail in their basements before they're found out?

Reply to
TeGGeR®

Gee...I didn't notice the date at the time that I replied to your post (last night)...I see now htat it's dated June 2004!...musta been one in that old HD maybe?

Reply to
Gord Beaman

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