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Report Your Local Gas Prices Here (retired discussion, please see the new one)
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Rocky
You better worry about your injectors pal. That might be a little to much octane on some of your rides.
Rocky
What would too much octane do to the injectors? I personally never had a problem with injectors, though I remember my brother's wife had a problem on her 1985 Buick Century when the car got really old. I think she had something like 185K+ miles on it when it became my brother's "fishing car."
To much octane creates to hot of a spark and can fry injectors along with other internal engine parts with to much octane. Dad had a co-worker that ran nothing but premium for a good number of years that fried them in his truck. Of course these were 1980's injectors, but still.....The STS is designed to run on premium, but can hadle regualer with a loss in hp output.
Rocky
But yes put premium in your other rides like the LaCrosse and Park Avenue atleast every 10-20 fill-ups according to dad and the Delphi engineers.
Of course, I run an older car that needs a bit of help - it's compression is fine, but a bit on the low side, being 40 years old now. In any case, octane booster is a waste of money on anything that has computers and/or a MAF, since it compensates anyways. You can't really get around it's self-adjusting, so it'll run 98% as well with 87 as 91. Of course, if you DO have carbs, all bets are off - most classics love premium.
I thought all gasolines had a minimum detergent 'package' now. As for the super premiums having a greater package of quality I suspect it's to compensate for the tendency of those gasolines to leave more residue in the slower burning environment due to their higher octane rating. Some mechanics say that using higher octane fuels leaves more residue; therefore those using premium in their regular-using autos should run a tank or two of regular to give the cylinders a chance to purge the residues left by the premiums.
Whether adding a tiger in a bottle octane boost does the same, I don't know.
I do know that adding the brand I have tried makes a difference as you drive the car after leaving the pump in the way it runs. I use mostly name brand fuels now along with Meijer store's and Kroger store's brands-no alcohol. But I used to use more of the cheaper station fuels. I'm about due for another bottle of TEchron. I'll give a full report.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Rocky, with the engineers' advice you were given, it's no wonder GM is in a heap of trouble!
BTW, in central VA, gas is kind of see-sawing around. Sheetz, the price setter north of my town is up to $2.79 for 87, and undoubtedly the others near Sheetz will follow by the weekend.
Meanwhile, closer to town, Hess is at $2.69, and the Exxon right near my home is the same. Just across the road from the Exxon, off-brand Liberty is $2.72 -- go figure!
I still can't believe I saw $2.48 just last week in SC near Charleston!
Rocky
It's all rubbish unless you have one of three things:
1:Your car has been sitting for a while and really needs cleaning out. Dump one to two bottles of injector cleaner in the 3-6 month old gas after topping off, and run like normal afterwards. It'll run worse for a few fillups, then return to normal.
2:Throttle-body injection or electro-mechanical injection. These 20+ year old cars cars have very little way to actually compensate for octane as they also had very primitive computer systems. Or they compensate far too slowly or too little for the aging engine.
3:Carbs. No need to explain here.
EVERYTHING ELSE that has computers in it and an O2 sensor that's working - it'll override your silliness, barring crazy things like putting in two bottles of 104 boost or simmilar.
I personally suspect that the reason people see a difference is that their older cars have malfunctioning parts. A dead O2 sensor or half-dead MAF will get it stuck in one (usually pretty poor) mode and then you'll notice premium making a change it its behavior. This isn't usually good or bad - just different, and since we tweaked with it, our mind likes to attribute any change to the thing we just did.
But properly running, modern engines work fine on whatever the manufacturer recommends. That, and all but the worst no-name gas in BFE has plenty of detergents in it.
Now, MBTE versus Ethanol additives in the fuel - that's a completely different story.
Rocky
Rocky
The one wacky full-serve Exxon continues along at $3.49 for reg, $3.69 for 89, $3.89 for 91, and $3.99 for diesel, and people are continuing to buy at those prices. Unbelievable.
Rocky
It's my opinion that using a good cleaner once in a while may remove some things like that which detergents won't keep off. Note that I occasionally use midgrade mixed in with my regular.
My opinion is that it takes away some buildups. What impressed me about Techron was that they don't tell you to keep using it. They say use it once, and maybe a second tankful for problem car. But they don't want repeated use of the product.
Fuel price: New Kroger gas opened at $2.85. That's the price of most area stations closeby. I expect them to drop because they have a long-established Meijer store and Walmart both with gas to draw patrons from with the new Kroger Gas station in front of the grocery.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Rocky
Gas here in Dumas Today $2.79 at the Allsups Phillip station on the N side of Dumas. $2.89 at the Diamond Shamrock station aka Valero.
As I recall, interest rates were also sky high, and unemployment was rampant. That was not a good timeframe in restrospect, and not a good era to compare to today to make the point that these are the golden years. It's something akin to comparing today to the Great Depression and saying how good we've got it, just on a lesser scale.
Of course, things could always be worse! While gas prices are high, at least the stuff isn't being rationed, like during the two fuel crises. And interest rates aren't too bad, and unemployment is fairly low.
Rocky
Your are correct that the recession in 1981-82 was bad; in fact, it was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Interest rates were sky high just before that, in 1979-80. A co-worker bought his first house in 1982 with 15% interest. A year later, my first townhouse had a 12% mortgage rate. On the flip side, my wife had a short term CD that paid 17% IIRC in about 1981!
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that gas wasn't rationed during the 2nd oil shock. And was that the case even in the first one? (I know there was talk of it, but did it actually occur? I didn't own a car at the time.)
Everyone have a happy holiday
I was born in 1970, so I don't even remember the first fuel crisis. However, around 1980-81, I seem to remember something going on with fuel. Maybe it wasn't rationed, but I seem to remember a lot of gas stations running out and having to close down. And I do remember some fairly long lines, but probably nothing near as bad as what we saw bback in the '73-74 era.
In 1981, my Grandparents bought a Dodge D-50 pickup to have something cheap and economical to run around in. Their other cars were a '72 Impala, a '76 GMC crew cab pickup, and a '53 DeSoto Firedome that Granddad had bought with the intent of fixing up to use as a spare car, but he never got around to it. And with the way fuel prices were getting, it probably wouldn't have made a very good run-about! In retrospect though, it would've probably done about as well as the Impala, and definitely better than the pickup!
In 1982, the Impala gave way to a Malibu wagon with a V-6. Both Grandmom and Granddad hated it. Also in 1982, they took me on a long cross-country trip that summer vacation in the GMC. It was roughly a 6-week trip, and that truck never got much more than 10-12 mpg with the camper on back, but the fuel prices didn't seem to bother Grandmom & Granddad too much.
I guess that Detroit knew things would improve somewhat in 1983, as they started putting bigger engines in some of their cars. They also reinstated a few models that had been dropped previously, such as a full-sized Pontiac and a 2-door Caprice. And they started putting 307's and 305's in the RWD intermediates. IIRC there was a time around 1981-82 where you couldn't get anything bigger than a 267 in a Malibu or Monte Carlo, or a 4.1/252 V-6 in a Century/Regal or Bonneville/Grand Prix, although I think you could get a 307 in a Cutlass.
At the time though, in the early 80's, even though there was a recession going on I was really too young to see its effects. Plus, my Mom had a decent federal gov't job, and my grandparents were all retired with decent pensions, and had paid-off houses, so they were relatively unaffected.
I vaguely remember my Mom buying a house in southern MD for $54K in 1979, and selling it in 1980 for $58K. She hated being that far from everybody she knew, and both Grandmom and Granddad got sick around that time, so we moved back. I remember gas was about $1.10 per gallon, and Mom trading her '75 LeMans for a much more fuel-efficient '80 Malibu. We drove up to see my grandparents every other weekend as I recall, which really racked up the miles quickly.
87 - $2.899
89 - $2.999
91 - $3.069
93 - $3.099
diesel - $2.759
kcram - Pickups Host
i still think that is way i like having more than 1 car.
gas back up to 3.15x x=9. it seems to ping pong between 3.099 and 3.1599.
One summer, I borrowed my father's Plymouth Duster to drive from Cincinnati to Toronto, driving at night. We filled up in Cincinnati, topped off in Dayton (50 miles), and the next gas station that was open was 15 miles south of Detroit (almost 200 miles). I was praying that I had enough gas to get to Windsor, ON as I did not expect to see an open gas station.
What bothered me was that we filled up at that gas station. At the next exit, there were THREE open stations ... all 20 cents per gallon less.
From what I remember about 1979-80, there were gas lines at times but no rationing. Those lines would sometimes materialize overnight. I was mostly riding the bus to work in Louisville in '79, so I could gloat to a certain extent.
Rocky
I paid $2.95 for slop early this morning at the Valero station on the far S' end of town before I went to work.
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
I'm running up to Laurel after work though to hit the discount liquor store. Gas prices are usually a bit less up there, so I'll probably fill up while I'm up there.
Yeah I know Whoopie.
Rocky
Most other places are in the $2.75 to $2.79 range.
Come and get it (just make sure your a/c is working in our brutal summertime heat and humidity)!
$3.20 cheapest
$3.30 Regular
$3.40 Premium
It's really expensive here in New York City.
Gas is about $2.85 over here in W. Georgia.
Oil is around $75/barrel in market today.
$3.06 western suburbs of Chi-town
$3.12 Northwest of Chi-town
$3.20 in Chi-town (downtown even higher)
What part of E. Alabama and W. Georgia are you at?
Here's some more "good" news:
Fuel prices
:sick: