Premium Gas

Now THAT is optimism!

 

Sorry that's BS! I don't know North American Premium so can't really comment but Aussie Premium is, in my experience a superior fuel. Especially for longevity. I've attached a photo of the label on the petrol flap on my 2010 Gen III.

 

Exactly, in California you have two negative factors, heat and lower grade fuels. Older motors will certainly generate more power with premium fuel and less chance of knocking on hot days. Again premium fuel is cheap insurance if you intend to drive it to the wheels fall off.

 

And in the UK the lowest quality fuel available IS Premium 95 which is what Toyota recommend.

 

RON 95 is about equal to AKI 90 (AKI is Octane rating used in US and Canada, RON is used in Europe and most Commonwealth countries)

Once you try to compare Octane between systems, you need conversion tables

 

So 95 RON is the same as your Premium 90-91 and our Super Unleaded at 97/98 RON is the same as your 93/94?

So your regular at 87/88 is 91/92 RON? We don't have that, just 95 RON or 98 RON.

Clear as mud again

Octane rating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

And here in Aus we have 91 95 and 98 RON so we get one more than the Poms, but, unfortunately 91 is increasingly polluted with alcohol. That stuff really stinks. I hate being behind E10 users. Worse than diesel.

 

lol you always try to out do us. Got to make up for your cricket I guess.

So you can smell E10 petrol then? or is that just on older cars without catalysts? I thought all cars have had catalysts since the early 90's. Or is it to do with the type of catalyst? I know some of the grey imported cars from Japan would have a rotten egg smell because our petrol had something in it their's didn't, or vice versa.

 

Something has got to make up for our cricket and basketball. You guys even beat us in swimming now a days.

I don't know what it's like in other countries but yes, many cars seem to spit the alcohol out unburned. Not many without cat converters now a days. I know about the rotten egg smell. There was a generation of Mitsubishis and Fords here that had crap converters and spewed out sulphur dioxide. It was really unpleasant climbing a hill after one of those had been there. Our EPA is useless.

 

We Amercians need to be careful, everything we are saying about "no need for Premium" is for the USA market.

In the US market, we have essentially 10% ethanol in all grades. There are essentially equal detergents in all grades ( years ago they used to put extra detergents in Premium).

Probably >50% of U.S. Prius owners live in Reformulated Gasoline (RFG) areas where EPA sets the recipe for gasoline and that recipe is a bit lower energy content and for RFG there is no difference in energy content between Regular to Premium. In RFG areas, E0 is totally *not* available.

That leaves some (not me) U.S. Prius owners who live in non-RFG areas where there might be some E0 available at higher cost. Also the energy content of the non-RFG is a little higher than RFG. Also there could be minor energy content variations among grades since the EPA is not mandating exact recipe in these areas. However, energy content is not disclosed so there is no way a consumer can control that except getting E0 and/or some independent testing of each tankful.

 

Thanks for that explanation. Helps us to understand what's going on.

Your fuel quality is being driven by your corn lobby apparently. Here E10 is driven by the sugar lobby. Not quite as powerful as the corn lobby yet, thank goodness. Consequently our southern (non sugar) states don't yet mandate E10, but it is available. Ironic that your EPA is the administrative driver for this environmentally degrading policy.

 

^^^You mostly nailed it Feri...we have strong corn ethanol lobby, so we probably went over-board on it.
Congress not EPA takes responsibility for mandating ethanol, in my view.

 

Archer Daniels Midland Company, Peoria, Illinois is a gigantic company in the ethanol business. When Bob Dole was a U.S. Senator he "bought" a condo from the President of Archer Daniels Midland. Does that tell you something?

 

Premium is definitely not a scam. Some high performance cars are actually tuned for 93 oct gas, if you use lower grade gas, the car can go into "limp" mode. Case in point, the Nissan GTR. Google "gtr limp mode california". GTRs were having issues with the California 91 oct gas, so much so that Nissan issued a software fix detuning the engine to deal with California's shitty gas. Obviously the "fix" results in degraded performance.

I also once had an issue with my SVT Cobra, I suspected a western PA CITGO gas station was selling regular for premium, as my car could not hold idle after spirited driving when the engine was heat soaked, it took mixing in some gallons of 100 oct Sunoco (it was available back then, not anymore) to get rid of the problem. I avoided CITGO for years, but it was probably just that unscrupulous operator.

 

^ certain cars, typically sports cars, are not "tuned" for higher octane; they have higher compression ratios, which necessitates higher octane, because it resists pre-ignition better.

And they don't go into "limp mode" with lower octane; the car detects pre-ignition starting to occur, and reacts by retarding timing, a bit, 'till it quits the pinging.

I'm guessing your bad experience was bad gas, likely bad premium, maybe bad regular, but it was likely some sort of contamination or adulterants, not the octane, that messed up idle.

 

If you put by mistake 87 octane gas in a 2013+ Nissan GTR, you will be OK so long you drive gently. If you press it during a hot summer day it will likely go into limp mode. Heck, this would happen with the shitty 91 oct California "premium" gas, imagine what 87 oct would do. I'm on my second GTR, I have seen all the stories on the GTR forums, even though it has never happened to me, we have 93 oct gas in my state

 

We can fill up with 83 here in the Rockies when I get up to 10,000ft above sea level! Otherwise 85 is common everywhere. "Premium" only goes up to 91 here at life about 7000ft.

 

Our minimum RON here in Ireland is 95 and I don't that we can get 98+ here anymore.

Whenever I'm in UK, I always try to get the 98 and have found better mpgs from it in our CRV. Have never tried 98 in the Prius

 

Since my EGR gummed up on Asda's finest I always use Shell VPower 98 unleaded. Obviously it doesn't make the car go any faster but it sure does run smoother and feels less strained. It also has more cleaners in it so should avoid future EGR issues. I've heard that Shell 95 is just as good and to be honest I can barely detect any difference between the two, but with my limited miles and short journeys now I'll stick with paying a little extra for VPower.

There's a definite difference between Asda 95 and Shell 95.

 

Hi Grumpy, i use mostly shell Vpower here too. Whether it's the same formulation as yours I don't know. I didn't have any problems but I cleaned the EGR as a routine maintenance thing at 160,000 kms (I think) There was definitely carbon blocking but it was nice and dry and easy to remove.