I've been meaning to pose this thought for some time now. Every once in awhile, someone will post that their car is not running correct and they got a tank of "bad gas". In over 40 years of buying fuel, this has never happened to me and I question the legitimacy of this statement. I work in the petroleum industry(to a small degree) and to the best of my knowledge, they don't produce or store gas one tank at a time. The refineries have continuous production and the product is stored in 40,000 barrel tanks. From there, it is picked up and delivered in tankers transporting in the neighborhoood of 60,000 litres. There are threads here where someone will post that they filled up at such and such a place and when they drove away, their car stopped and attribute it to "bad gas". If this were so, there would be cars stopped all over the place since everyone buys from the same storage tank. Unless you are buying your fuel from some guy on the corner in a trenchcoat, I tend to doubt this whole "bad gas" scenario.

 

I have gotten bad gas once in 16 years of driving. Only thing I experienced was pinging in the motor. My 77 was pinging at all rpms. That was about 15 years ago and since then switched to Mobil, Shell, Sunoco. Since I have stuck with these three never had a problem. I would imagine with today's cars if you got bad gas the ECU would just cut power do to the bad octane?

 

Many years ago during one of the many gas crisis s , word was getting around that you can add water to gas. The problem was, you could do this but it had to be in solution or mixed in very good , but if it separated you were screwed. So some stations started doing this and cars were conking out a few miles from the station. Don't see this any more.

 

That is part of my point. The refineries have quality control and severe penalties for misrepresentation. If they advertise 91 octane, you can probably be assured 99.99% you are getting 91 octane. In this day and age of mass social media connections and everyone having cell phone cameras, what idiot is going to drag a garden hose across a filling station lot and start hosing down his tanks. And then what - stir it in with a 2 X 4?

 

In over 40 years of driving, I have never come across any "bad gas".

 

Let me preface my remarks by first saying that I've been driving for over 30 years & I cannot convincingly argue that I've ever really experienced "bad gas" I'm saying this upfront because I'm not the type to throw statements out because it just sounds like something to throw out. Of course the main problem I see is that there's a wide variance in what people attribute "bad gas" to even mean.

Having said all that & despite my general apprehension, I think the OP has taken a rather extreme viewpoint here because for some reason the OP has decided that since we all use essentially gas from central storage units...............that there must be some magical distance that a car will continue running until it stops because of bad gas. This is rather strange because it presupposes how much gas we have in the tank when refilling thereby affecting when, how or if symptoms get severe enough to show, assumes all cars are in similar condition, assumes all cars react identically to whatever may be going on with the gas in question.

These assumptions aren't reality & would be the presumption that a particular food is fine............unless a wide number of individuals all get sick in precisely the same way, & in precisely the same elapsed time from consumption of contaminated or what some may call bad food. I'm no doctor but it's common knowledge that not all people are affected identically by bad food. In fact some won't be affected at all. So does this mean that everyone must get sick in the same way & at the same amount of time after eating for the OP to concede that contaminated food occasionally exists??

 

I don't know if I sorted through all the "lawyer speak" correctly or not, but I think you are misreading what I am trying to say. It has nothing to do with one car reacting differently to another - distance or otherwise. My point is that bad performance of some people's vehicle is too often attributed to "bad gas" when I personally believe that in today's market, there is no such thing as "bad gas" unless intentially and blatantly produced.

 

Ok, so what you're saying (i believe) is that you assume that everyone who has suggested that their car may be afflicted by "bad gas" because of a multitude of scenarios, reasons & personal experiences.................must be wrong.
And despite your years in the petroleum industry you have nothing to truly back up your position other than your "belief" that bad gas doesn't exist. Ok, I "believe" I'd need a helluva lot more than just your belief to dismiss what lots of people have said. But I'm done with this here.

 

You really need to take a Valium and chill. Also, quit implying things that I did not say in my posts. You say I have nothing to back up my "beliefs". I have common sense to back it up. The way I described the fuel distribution system is not my "belief" - it is undeniable fact. Tell me what part of what I described is wrong. Rather than get insulting, tell me by fact where what I described is wrong. Are you trying to imply that out of a 40,000 barrel vessel, a bunch of "bad gas" is going to congregate in one area of the tanker and then wind up in one person's tank?

 

I have never had a tank of "bad" gas either.

However, I have had a very few tanks that would ping some when I was not used to pinging. I suspect it was good gas, but perhaps loaded in the wrong tank, or I used the wrong pump or something?

 

Here in FL it does happen at a local level. I was a victim after heavy rains and flooding. It took FIVE tankfuls before I actually got my car running 100%. This was in 1977 and pump building standards/drainage were not same as today!

We would hear of cars driving couple blocks then getting stuck (when bad filled up the carb)

 

I've had the odd tank of gas now and then over the past 35 years that I thought of as "bad gas". Pinging, low performance, that sort of thing. Personally I figured someone accidentally dumped few gallons of diesel in the tank, hooked up the wrong hose, maybe dragged down that tank to the bottom and there was some sludge leftover that wound up in my tank. I don't think it was my imagination, and I don't think that's happened to me in the past 10-15 years.

At least in Wa State, and I think it was nationwide, there was a "tank purge" a decade or so back - here in Wa, we had small dealers go out of business because it was mandated they replace their tanks with new ones and they couldn't afford it.

Soo .. it makes sense that if that was the case of old leaky tanks causing "bad gas" and all the old leaky tanks are now gone, and all the small dealers that might have gas sitting for months in old tanks are now gone .. maybe the "bad gas" is gone too.


Edit: just Googled it - the national deadline for EPA replacement of old tanks was 1998. Here's some detail (big EPA propaganda sheet) if you're obsessive about it: http://www.epa.gov/oust/pubs/25annrpt.pdf

 

Is there a difference between the gas we get now that has up to 10% alcohol added and the gas they advertised as "Gasohol" back in the late 70's or early 80's? Is the alcohol additive different now or the mix different? I kind of got a 'bad tank' many years ago in my motorcycle when the gasohol thing started. More than likely though, it was just a bad choice on my part. I had a fiberglass tank, and on a highway trip I filled up with the gasohol. When I got back to town, I couldn't shut the speed down, the throttle slides were stuck open from the dissolving resin in the fiberglass tank! What a mess that was to clean out.

 

Too. I would also add that in my 30+ years of driving, and 20+ years of fleet management, I have yet to have "bad gas" after seasonal machine sitting; snowmobiles sitting all summer, boat sitting all winter, etc.

Maybe I'm "doing it wrong"?

 

Nope never had bad gas either. Lot of things that I could have blamed on bad gas though. I guess I'm just smart enough to know the difference.

 

I have come across bad fuel twice, first was the refinery making a bad batch. It was a bit of diesel and very high ethanol fuel mix, after the tanker pumped the fuel into the tanks there were around 10 cars that stalled and could not be restarted withing a quarter mile. My company car was one, needed the tank drained all paid for by Mobil.

The other time was a country station which had water in the tanks, probably from leaking underground tanks.

It does hapen from time to time, i stay clear of the cheap fuel companies.

 

Bing Bing Bing Bing! We have a winner - a man of honesty! That was the whole point of my original post. Time after time, there are posts on here about someone's car falling on it's face at the track or elsewhere or simply just getting beaten and the poster claiming it wouldn't have happened but they must have gotten a tank of "bad gas".

 

You seem to be saying it's impossible to get a batch of bad gas. I don't think that's the case at all. I DO think that as we get more and more modern and regulated that we'll find hardly any instances of "bad gas". That still doesn't mean that some water, a bad mix, some diesel or some other mistake can't be made and you wind up getting 5000 gallons of contaminated gas.

Now - if you're saying "Ah always make the good wine, and this year I musta had bad grapes 'cause my wine came out bad" I agree. But that's a different story. If someone loses at the racetrack and blames it on bad gas, then yeah, he's probably an idiot.

For the sake of argument, let's say that I bought some gas. My car started running rough and had poor acceleration, did some pinging. Halfway through that tank I filled up again at a different location and immediately most of the problem went away. Was it all in my imagination or I made up the story?

It sounds to me like several people here have "never had bad gas or anything they'd attribute to bad gas has ever happened to them" and others say they've had instances of something they attribute to "bad gas". I dunno. I've never had a broken leg either, but evidence seems to suggest that people DO break their legs.

..and finally, if there's no such thing as "bad gas" why does every car come equipped with a fuel filter, and one of the first things you do if your car is stumbling and losing acceleration is to change the fuel filter?

Damn. That is one dead horse.

 

Ahh but your missing the key piece of info in your list there.

THE GAS STATION. I don't know anyone that was stupid enough to think the bad gas they bought was the refinery, unless its a freak accident as mentioned above. Its the gas stations that cause the problem. I bought a nice tank of gas last year that cost me a fuel pump and 8 injectors. Heck it took me 5 months to get the truck running again since I don't use it but to take the garbage can to the road. So I didn't associate the gas I bought with it quitting. When I pulled the injectors out finally after replacing various sensors (dodge rams are known for sensors conking out like that) there was about 2mm worth of rust sticking OUTSIDE the injector tip. After replacing the injectors it ran for about 2 days then the fuel pump died.

Also with ethanol now you can age good gas into bad gas in no time. So having and or buying bad gas is actually easy to do. But no I don't blame the refineries.

 

Exactly! Never in my life did I consider blaming the refinery. In fact, until you mentioned it, I'd never even thought about anyone ELSE blaming the refinery.

No matter how old I get .. I'm still that old.