Maybe all gasolines are not the same

For many years I always figured all gasolines were pretty much the same. I have always used the highest octane in my 95 Piglet regardless of brand and got good mileage and perfomance.

The other day I made a special effort to try the "new" Shell Nitrogen Enriched Gasoline.

After my first shut-off I got "pre-ignition" (Should be called post-ignigitonI think), and this continued for about the first 100 miles whenever I turned the engine off. Since I have a peanut tank I refuled with the same stuff and it did it only one time more. Since then my bike runs really great and no more pre-ignition.

I am wondering if this stuff atually does clean out the carbon on valves etc.? If so the pre-ignition may have been caused by unburned carbon coming loose?

I swear by it now Check out this link for more information:

Are all gasolines the same? - United States

fuel the same

i hauled fuel for short no of years,,,,the same pipe,,,from ship to terminals had lines off of it which went to chevron, mobil ,shel ,,,texaco ,,,at that time ,,,76,,,etc,,,, so ,,,fuel is all the same,,,but some of them add their own additives,,,there is the diff,,,, and,,,,if you kno which stations in your area handle unbranded,,,,same boat,,,, no additives,,,but usually cheaper,,,, same goes for pipelines accross U.S. we delivered to all of the stations from canada to calif,,,, some took fuel from same tank farm,,,to more than one brand of station,,,, what is more important ,,,you need to pulll up the stations that are only owned by U.S companys,,,may be some of them are more expensive,,,but i prefer to spend my money here with my fellow citizens,,,, it is not that hard to fuel at your own picks,,,i travel coast to coast,,,and canada every year,,, last year i spent 100 dollars more than other years for gas,,,, that is not much in 20000 to 30000 miles. pops

Pops is right about the sources & additives - gasoline coming from the same refinery going up the same pipeline (or by truck) will end up in in stations with several different brand names, with or without additives added by the local distributors. And due to environmental regulations, there are winter blends for certain areas, summer blends for others & for example, what's available in this area of North Carolina is not the same as what you get in Georgia, even though the same 2 pipelines service both areas. And on a trip I just came back from there was no premium in South Carolina @ a couple places I stopped - the source for S.C. is the same though - local distributors must have been out of the additives.

I've been to the "tank farm" in Charlotte & you'll see semis lined up with numerous brand names - they all get filled up from the same big tanks & overhead racks. Also, while Texaco & Chevron distributors add the "Techron" additive, which does do a good job of cleaning & I'm told some Shell stations have it too, nobody else puts it in their gasolines - at least not in this area. Very few stations in this area have ethanol mixed in, but go to a State with major corn/ethanol production & you can bet there will be ethanol in your gasoline - the percentage is supposed to be noted on the pump, but often it's not.

I do remember back many years ago when gasoline was the same all across the country & dating myself, I remember diesel @ 17.9 cents/gal., regular @ 19.9 & "Ethyl" @ 21.9, but those days are long gone What you get now depends on where you are & what time of year it is.

ethonal

ethonal is now taking a beating up here,,,people who have to use it say they are getting 10 percent less mile per gall,,,, so they burn MORE GAS for same miles,,,and it is a fact it takes more energy to produce ethonal than gas or diesel,,, AND it is destructive to combustion engines,,,life is shortened ,,,, some legislators here are now drawing up a bill to either have choice at pump or no ethonal,,,,pops

Ethanol is a very poor engine fuel & mixed with gasoline mileage will go down dependent upon what the percentage is. Although it will raise the octane rating, ethanol contains less energy than gasoline & it does take more energy to produce it than it produces. In "energy density" Watt Hours per Liter terms, gasoline contains 9700 Wh/L while ethanol contains just 6100. And while the "stiochiometric" (theoretically ideal) air/fuel ratio with gasoline is 14.7:1, with ethanol it's 9:1.

I did quite a bit of testing with "gasohol" & found that by advancing ignition timing & changing carb jetting I could get the engine to make as much power & in some cases a bit more as with 100% gasoline, but the fuel mileage certainly dropped (according to the percentage of ethanol in the mix) & I also had to replace some fuel system parts such as fuel lines & needle/seat assembly. Manufacturers now say all fuel system parts are compatible with ethanol, but I don't buy that & would have to inspect, as I've seen what continuous ethanol use does.

And a good mileage example is comparing an Indy 500 car with a NASCAR car - both make about the same HP, but with different V-8 engines & the Indy car is all "high-tech". The NASCAR engine is old pushrod, carburetor technology, the car weighs over twice as much & has the aerodynamics of a brick. Under green-flag racing conditions the Indy car gets 1.8 mpg on 100% ethanol & the NASCAR car gets about 5 mpg on 100% gasoline. So although the Indy car is far more advanced in many ways, it uses approximately 2.5 times as much fuel.

You can run on "gasohol" if you have to, but I sure wouldn't do it by choice. There are a lot more bad things to be said about ethanol, including the environmental impact of making it & I hope your legislators do give you the choice of using it or not.

Regarding the Shell "nitrogen enriched" gas; I went through a few tanks of it during the winter in my company car. After the weather warmed up I switched to e-85. (I work for state government and the governor insists that we use it) I got 24 mpg after using the Shell gas. Prior to that I only got 18 mpg on e-85. I concluded that the Shell gas possibly cleaned up a sensor or something and helped with the e-85. I'm running Shell in my Softail now but have never had problems with pinging or dieseling. The same car, however gets 33 mpg with 100% gas and 29 mpg with the e-10 that almost every station in TN sells now. 100% gas is almost impossible to find here. I noticed the same dip in mileage on my Harley with the e-10 and had to retard my initial timing 1 degree to keep it from kicking back on warm start-up. That started after all I could get was e-10 so I can only conclude that it was related to the fuel and it didn't matter what brand of e-10 I ran.

Same thing in AZ. "Good for the environment" is not only B.S. as is "Global Warming", but it's BAD for humankind.

FACT: So much corn is being used to produce fuel, that people around the world are starving to death because we don't have enough left to help feed them!

Thank you Algore, you pinko hippie commie facist ******! :roflmao:

Politicians & bureaucrats aren't smart enough to pay attention to what engineers are doing. VW is affiliated with Audi & the new generation Audi turbo-diesels have been dominating the top prototype sports car series, where the rules allow all kinds of different designs & whatever you think will work better you can try. What Audi learned @ the racetrack, VW is applying to the street - Audi is too, but their cars are a lot more expensive.

If Detroit had any sense they'd do what the South Koreans do - buy the best of whatever type product, take it apart, figure out how it works, then copy it & improve on it if you can. Diesels in American pickups & semis are the best in the world, but nobody in the U.S. has been working on car diesels that I know of & Audi / VW is way ahead of everybody in that area.

I mentioned "energy density" expressed in Watt-hours per Liter (Wh/L) before - ethanol = 6100 Wh/L, gasoline = 9700 Wh/L. Diesel = 10,942 Wh/L & the stiochiometric (theoretically ideal) air/fuel ratio is almost the same as gasoline - 14.6:1 for diesel, 14.7:1 for gasoline (9:1 for ethanol), so you get more energy from diesel. Add Audi's cylinder head & turbo technology & now you're really getting more power from the same amount of fuel - I've seen some magazine road-test articles where they were getting a realistic 45-50 mpg - 52 mpg cruising in one case.

But to the Gov't., it's not about efficiency & if every vehicle on the road got substantially better fuel mileage, tax revenue would drop substantially - unless they raised the "highway use taxes", which you know they will. And of course a way to subsidize farming in the "corn belt" is to encourage ethanol production, even though it's horrendously inefficient & scientists are now learning an environmental disaster too.