Gasoline Brands?

[The_Stig]

I know it has been talked lots before about differnt octanes for differnt cars and engines, but what about Brands?
Which brand of gas do you guys find works best in your vw or Audi? I have always used co-op gas because its close to my house and i get the store coupons, but what about you guys? Just an interesting question for a boring tuesday.

[RONDAL]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Chevron 94...
but since i can't get it except for on my trips home back to BC i settle for Petro Canada. I found the VR didn't run well on Shell.

[stefan]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Base fuel *should* be the same across the board, but sometimes you get decent additives from one vendor that another doesn't use. If you ever get a real problem with fuel, i would think it's probably the station more then the brand. Small town, low volume areas are more prone to contamination. Some times you get contamination because of a shipping screw-up.
The base fuel can be from several different sources. Shell gas could be from refiners other then Shell. Some juggling gets done based on demand.

[RONDAL]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Base fuel *should* be the same across the board, but sometimes you get decent additives from one vendor that another doesn't use. If you ever get a real problem with fuel, i would think it's probably the station more then the brand. Small town, low volume areas are more prone to contamination. Some times you get contamination because of a shipping screw-up.
The base fuel can be from several different sources. Shell gas could be from refiners other then Shell. Some juggling gets done based on demand.

i agree and this is especially true if you are stupid enough to buy gas from places like co-op and super store. They are like the mutt of the gas world, buying leftovers from everyone to fill their orders.
Some engines just dont respond well to certain additives as well, and while base fuel is generally the same, different stations 91 octane is not always the same.

[Kor]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

All the gas comes out of the same pipelines and out of the same tanks yeah. The difference is just additives. Co-op or safeway or whoever don't use any additives at all, they just sell you the gas as-is and they buy the leftovers or buy from whomever is selling cheapest that month. So they might actually have gas from the Shell refinery one month and Esso the next, but just without the additives.

The additives are closely kept secrets sort-of, but they are all proven beneficial and I think are all similar in ingredients just in different proportions. Since you are often getting them for free if you fill up at a name-brand station, I would say you should do so when you can.

The exception to the additive rule is that in Canada all gas has winter-additives put into it in the winter (not just the companies who advertise "winter gas") to keep it stable at really low Canadian temperatures.

This info all comes second-hand from my Dad who is fairly knowledgeable, one of his past jobs in the oil industry (long ago) was once working with gasoline additives. I'm sure if I asked he still remembers what every company used to put in their gas in the early 90's.

[The_Stig]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

So any prefrence with shell, husky, petro-can, esso?

[Khyron]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

I run injector cleaner once a year, so I use whatever has the best savings at the time, be it superstore, coop or petro-canada. Last fill was 15 cents off on top of the 7 cents at superstore, before that was coop 3 cents groceries+6 refund. A busy station with good turnaround is more important IMO. Just don't gas up if the tanker is filling or you know it's just been there. It all comes from Imperial/Petro/some major supplier.

The only gas that I ever noticed an issue was with my sport bike when I filled up at a mohawk - I chalked it up to the ethanol and didn't use it again.

[jrockmk2]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

petro unless i feel like running on 93 setting then husky

[buddy16]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

For me a really good place to go for good quality fuel is UFA, it is located at
4635 - 1 Street SE
Calgary, AB
Their premium gas seems to get about an extra 50-100 Km over what i would get at Petro-Can or any other stations i have been to.
Although it may be out of the way for people in the south ends of the city , and you have to get a membership card, i would still recommend it to people who are close by.

[buddy16]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Chevron 94...
but since i can't get it except for on my trips home back to BC i settle for Petro Canada. I found the VR didn't run well on Shell.

As far as i know chevron is about the same as UFA, it is just in British Columbia...

[Kor]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Yeah it should be mentioned that gasoline additives aren't just cleaners! Its frigging complicated. They can be things like:

- Emissions reducing additives! Go environment!
- Oxygenating additives (its like adding oxygen, like what nitrous does)
- Knock reducing additives (like lead, which is no longer in gas)
- Lubricants
- Cleaners
- Stabilizers
- Compounds to neutralize contaminants
- Dyes and Odors

Also octane can come from different chemicals and so one company might use one chemical to produce a 92 octane and another company could use a totally different chemical.

Also gasoline is actually a mixture of compounds in the refinery, and additives may actually skew the proportions of the mixture if a company wants its own formula to be different, I think.

Basically all gas starts the same but the additives can actually do a lot. Personally, I don't think its fair to say "run non-additive gas from no-name retailers, its exactly the same". Likewise I don't think that once a year using some injector cleaner is the same thing (might be a good idea, but not the same thing.) For sure, you have to pay for additives a lot of the time since no-name retailers offer discounts. But it may (or may not) be worth it. Whether you can notice the difference of using gas with additives or not is up for debate, but it may be something like, every 400,000 km you get an extra 10,000km of engine wear. Or maybe you emit a bit more CO2 into our atmosphere. Of course you would never notice that yourself.

Greedy or not, oil companies do spend money not just to differentiate their product or create marketing spin; they are in the business of making fuel and employ real scientists and chemists and create fuel compounds for the future and for all kinds of vehicles. They make fuel for planes, race cars and even look into alternative energy sources. They are interested in lowering emissions since governments and customers are. Safeway is not an oil or gas company and so none of these benefits are really passed down to Safeway's product unless there is some compelling reason to do so. On the other hand these technologies do trickle down to gas station gas at Shell or Esso or wherever.

Anyway I know people hate the gas companies and I am not a fan either. Might get flamed but from what I know about gas, how its made and what goes into it, I would say that the best gas comes from the company with the biggest research budget and biggest reason to trickle down that research to consumers. Generally this is not Superstore or Co-op.

[Khyron]

Re: Gasoline Brands?

Additives are almost always added at the tanker truck driving to the gas station. If there is an Imperial refinery near Calgary and a Shell refinery near Edmonton, they will share gas with each other to save shipping. There is virtually no debate on this - gas is gas, mixed with everyone else up until this point. Whoever is contracted to ship to Walmart/Co-op/Safeway will be in the same lineup as the Shell and Esso trucks.

Once it gets in the truck, they mix in their custom additives which can be as little as 1 quart to 8000 gallons.

Anyway, the bits I've read from chemical engineers with patents on fuel additives have said the best advice is to switch brands every now and then as while an additive might clean one type of deposit, it leaves another. Switch and the previous deposit can be removed while whatever new deposit gets left.

Consumer reports was trying to do a story on it but gave up as any differences were less than those caused by humidity/air temps.