What happened to Top Tier gasoline?

Shell Stations in my area no longer label their pumps as TopTier and the Mobile Stations never did. When I asked them about it they said they had never heard of it!

My position is if it doesn’t say it on the pump I go elsewhere. Fortunately, my trips to Costco coincide with my need to fill up.

 

Why are you spending more on fancy fuel? The whole point of the Prius is to be cheap to run.

I'm at 152k miles, issue-free, running the cheapest 85 octane hog-piss available at any given time. I average 44-48 MPG summer, 40-44 winter, going well over the speed limit, and not even looking at the "eco" gauge or whatever.

It's not a Prime, but I'm pretty sure it's the exact same ICE. Fuel quality ratings are mostly BS anyway, there are only so many refineries and unless it's corn-free, they're kicking out the same crap to every gas station.

 

Ironically, my cost for the TopTier is nearly identical to the cheap stuff, but that’s beside the point. There is plenty of accurate and reliable data to disprove your claim, and I’m sure you are savvy enough to find it if you were so inclined. That inclination is lacking so I’ll just say it is kind of like preventive maintenance: you can follow the maintenance schedule and get by, or you can perform preventative maintenance and be assured that the odds are you will pretty much have a trouble free vehicle for much longer. It is a personal choice, and we both (ironically) believe it is based on accurate information. Just out of curiosity, have you checked the condition of your throttle body lately?

 

I saw a top tier sticker on a Sunoco pump the other day and it made me stop and think how long it had been since I'd seen one.

I went there because there was flooding in the area this weekend. I'm favoring the gas stations higher up the hills for a week or so.

 

Not sure why I would worry about fuel quality in relation to the throttle body on a modern fuel injected motor... but just for laughs I gave it a peek. Looks pretty damn good for 152k miles, having never even been inspected in all that time. Let's see yours?

Keep rolling with your superiority complex over the fuel you buy, sounds like it makes you feel better. The fact is, it's irrelevant. Spend your time and your money how you like but for a reasonable human, the only fuel factor worth fussing over in a basic car like this is ethanol content.

 

Enough said.

 

The only thing entering the throttle body is air, and crankcase gases.
EGRs recycle through the intake manifold.
Fuel enters through the intake manifold.
There should be no unburned fuel in a modern engine, your o2 sensor will change injection/timing settings like every 1/50th of a second. It would not pass emissions if that were the case.

If your crankcase gases are full of unburned fuel, you have major issues that are not related to fuel.

Any crud in the throttle body on a healthy motor is a combination of vaporized oil and very fine dust.

Again, how is a BS fuel quality rating relevant to a throttle body?

 

The Atkinson-esque intake valve timing in a Prius pushes some air and unburned fuel out into the intake manifold at the start of every compression stroke.

 

Still irrelevant to a throttle body

 

You realize you’re trying to advise an individual who has trouble mating red to +, and black to -, and then wants to know why Toyota didn’t prevent him from doing it, right?

 

The cables on a GX470 are black and black, thanks!

Still doesn't explain how fuel gets into a modern throttle body, or at all how top tier gas is relevant to dirt inside of one.