Can Discount Gas Crimp Your Ride?

Gasoline prices hit near-record levels recently, and the government says the average will stay above $3 all summer, sending motorists shopping for lower-price fuel and making them wonder if they're hurting their engines burning the cheap stuff.

Their anxieties have lately been fueled by a $35 million Shell marketing campaign, warning that discount fuel is the petro-chemical equivalent of the road to hell.

And those anxieties are likely to go unresolved, because there seems no easy answer to the simple questions: What is bad gas? How can I avoid it?


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chewy - 6/15/2007 3:41:08 PM

+3 Boost

No, I doubt. If the "discount" gas was as bad as Shell makes it out to be in commercials, cars wold break down after 10,000 miles on it. But they don't.

Shredmo - 6/15/2007 3:48:22 PM

+2 Boost

I look for a clean gas station, with pay at the pump. I don't worry about brands or price for that matter, as my time is worth more than the potential $1 that I could possibly save.

I always use premium, as my vehicles have forced induction. Using a gas station that carries premium, IMO, sort of filters out the bad apples, even if you are not using it.

yrralis1 - 6/15/2007 6:08:43 PM

+2 Boost

Supposedly the "top tier" gasolines lack impurities which leaves engine deposits .

http://www.toptiergas.com/

That's what I have read here and neither believe nor disbelieve it . I have no idea whether it's simply profit motivated hype or actual fact so my method of fueling my cars is as follows :

My lease car gets the cheap gas .
My purchased car gets "top tier" .

gsh23 - 6/15/2007 8:10:55 PM

0 Boost

maybe its just a cali thing, but dont all gas stations have premium (91 octane)?

chewy - 6/16/2007 2:16:04 AM

+2 Boost

CA gets 91 for premium. But not 93.

EnnNorak - 6/16/2007 10:34:46 AM

+2 Boost

From personal experience I can tell you that cheap dirty gas can clog fuel injectors and using regular gas in a high compression engine will cause pinging when accelerating up a hill or otherwise putting a high load on an engine. I usually buy a car with a compression ratio of over 10 to 1 so I use premium fuel all the time. My Audi manual specifies premium fuel for the car. There should be a federal standard for "premium" as consumers rely on the marketing term "premium" and don't generally check the octane claim on the pump.