Fuel additives?

There are some effective fuel additives -not everything is snake oil! There are few caveats, however. No additive will increase the mileage of a car in perfect working order and the increase in mileage is typically in the 1% to 5% range.

Here is the how's and why's:

Over time deposits from the gasoline can form on various parts of the engine.

1) Fuel injectors can get clogged. Even a small bit can effect the spray pattern making for larger than desired gasoline droplets. These larger dropplets may not completely evaporate by the time the sparkplug fires and may not completely burn, or burn after it's ideal time robbing the car of some power and mileage

2) The back of the intake valves can become coated with deposits which will randomly soak up and release gas during different intake cycles, slightly leaning or enriching the fuel/air ratio from the desired. Additionally the deposits can act as an insulator blocking the flow of heat from the cylinder through the valve which can slow the evaporation of the gasoline dropplets. Both these effects decrease mileage.

3) The combustion chamber itself can get deposits which, because of their jagged nature, can act as nucleation sites for pre-ignition which again throws off the timing. In sever cases it leads to the dreaded octane requirement increase.

All these effects can be reduced/elminiated by a single gas tank treatment. But it has to be the right treatment and contain the right ingredient: Polyether Amine or PEA. Most gas tank treatments do no contain this ingredient, and those that do often don't advertise it! Odd in the extreme, but then again marketing is not to get one informed, but rather to get one to buy.

The treatments that do contain PEA that I know about, and there may be more, are:

1) Amsoil P.i. AMSOIL - P.i. Performance Improver (API)
2) Redline SI-1 Red Line Oil: Fuel Additives
3) Gumout Regane complete ( GUMOUT ) and Gumout Large Vehicle Cleaner ( GUMOUT ) No other Gumout products contain PEA.

There are many SAE papers on the effectiveness of PEA, here is one of the earlier ones: http://tinyurl.com/58ar8w

Rumple

 

You'll get more MPGs using additives cause your wallet will be lighter.

 

I only add things to the fuel when the engine starts missing, which mine did at about 40,000 miles. I never bought any fuel from a "cheap" gas station and stuck to one brand from mostly one station.

When the
Daedalus, which is what my daughter calls my Prius, began missing I added some Lucas. Just once and no more problems.

Latter her Prius which she calls the Prometheus had the same problem the cure was the same treatment. So in my opinion unless your car is missing a beat avoid the additives.

 

My indie shop mechanic recommends adding gas treatment on every oil change (time frame-wise, not that it is related). He does not sell gas treatment product, just to be clear. I think he has seen more engine internal parts that I ever will.