Would you rather fill up with premium grade (highest octane available) gas from Chevron, Mobil, or Shell...or fill up with a less expensive premium grade gas from Costco or Sam's Club along with a good fuel additive (every other month or so) such as Chevron Techron, Lucas, or Red Line???

 

Never used techron and I don't look at gas station names.

 

I only run ethanol free gas in all my vehicles, with a can of Seaform about every 6 months.

 

Costco buy gasoline from all of the big oil companies. I typically put Shell premium in my LS7 but I've used Costco premium and could not tell any difference.

 

I only buy 93 octane Techron gas from Chevron. I have been doing it over 40 years, never had a fuel system related problem. Shell is good but their additive leaves deposits in the cylinders. Techron does not. Money does not matter to me when it comes to my cars, they get the very best on everything.

 

I have had my 2012 Grand Sport with cammed LS3 (stock 10.7:1 CR) for 3 years and have used nothing but Shell 93, my LS3 screams in perfect synchronicity from the moment it fires up. Never any issues with Shell 93 V-Power ever

 

I use cheap **** from Sam’s club. My car makes the power it’s supposed to make an never any knock indicated with a tune with advanced timing

 

Costco is top TIER here , use it often .

Sunoco is 94 here, older cars love it.

 

We have a chain called QuikTrip (QT) which sells top tier gas and is usually the cheapest around with the possible exception of Costco or Sams Club. I mostly buy from QT because they are very convenient to me while Costco is usually a nightmare to get in and out of and further away. I do use Techron occasionally but I would do that no matter what brand of gas I buy. Techron allegedly will prevent or delay fuel level sender failure. Given how common that is in all brands of cars and how expensive it is to fix in our vettes I figure it can't hurt. I take a really dim view of most miracles in a bottle and would never use most of them but Techron has enough science behind it that I'm confident it will do no harm used in moderation. I have no qualms about E10 except in boats or other vehicles that may get parked for half a year.

 

Gasoline sold in California at retail is made up of 90 percent petroleum based gasoline (as specified by the California Air Resources Board) and 10 percent ethanol. I love California........................

 

ALSO, you'll usually only find 91 octane in CA. My LS3 hasn't had any obvious issues on 91,

 

Me too, it’s like .60 cents a gallon cheaper no joke. No issues here, runs the same as always on the stock tune.

 

I use Sam's gas and run a PEA based fuel cleaner like once a year.

Costco ipays for the top tier gas label.

Even the cheap stations of gas have better additive packages today than the best did when the C6 was new. Don't worry about it.

 

Sorry, but most of that post is incorrect. While true that additive technology is improving, neither the EPA nor Top Tier standards are changing. So pretty much everybody translates the improving technology into reducing their additive bill, rather than leaving their additive bill where it is and giving you a better performing additive package. The current EPA standards were adopted in 1995, which is near the end of the C4 run. So you must go back to 1995 to find common gas that performs worse on engine cleanliness than current EPA gas. The car makers didn’t think the EPA standard went far enough, so car makers, not gas companies, started the Top Tier standard in 2004, at the end of the C5 run.

Also, the use of EPA standard gas with a can of Techron (or other additive) now and then is not as effective as consistent use of Top Tier. The best analogy I can think of is your laundry washing machine. Do you suppose using half the recommended dose of detergent most of the time, with an occasional triple dose will keep your clothes as clean as using the recommended dose all the time? And keep in mind that on your triple dose day, the extra detergent might not get completely rinsed out of your clothes. It’s possible both with clothes and cars to build up deposits from residual detergent.

Finally, while I admit that I don’t know what “ipay” is, I can tell you that Costco and other Top Tier brands do not simply pay for a label. Almost all the cost of Top Tier is the cost of the better performing additive packages that are required to meet the Top Tier cleanliness standards. The fee paid to Top Tier is trivial, and simply covers the cost of administering the program. So if the gas is not Top Tier, you can be 100% certain that its additive package does not perform as well as a Top Tier package does.

Note that none of the above says your engine will be ruined by EPA gas. It is a good standard, just not a great one. I’ll guarantee basis having seen the torn down test engines with my own eyes, that if you run an engine in a test cell for the equivalent of 50,000 miles on Top Tier versus EPA gas, the internals of the engine run on EPA gas will not only be measurably dirtier, it will even be visually dirtier to the eyes. Ruined? Of course not. Running as close to showroom-new condition? Also, of course not.

 

I use 93 octane from either Shell or Chevron for the most part. As stated the top tier brands and most of the others all use some form of cleaner in the gas already so I don't feel the need to add more. If you use let's say Chevron with Techron regularly why would you add more? I still use the old school Marvel Mystery Oil about twice a year. It has lubricating characteristics to it, which in todays modern fuel systems, ie, fuel pumps and injectors can only help extend the life of these parts.

 

That's a lot of words that don't mean a damn thing.

The testing for top tier gas is easy, you can look up the standard. It's based around an old Ford motor with a design flaw that causes the valves to get dirty.

A modern, well designed engine like an LS isn't prone to valves getting dirty anyways. Let alone with modern additives.

Project Farm tested this all and found no measurable difference.

 

Project Farm does some good stuff with simple, short term demos, and I don’t have any ideas for making his simple experiments any better. They have their place. Trouble is, simple short term demos can be misleading. Assuming they give different results, which they do, would you rather believe a short term test on a lawn mower engine with quick visual looks at a few items, or a 50,000 mile test on a real auto engine (which by the way, at least in the tests I’ve seen were not done on a Ford engine or any engine with known problems), with careful measurement of both weight and composition of deposits? The reason that both car companies and oil companies do very expensive, long term testing under controlled conditions to evaluate engine cleanliness is that they’ve found by hard experience that simple, quick, cheap tests do not give consistent or reliable results.

As to intake valve stems, they are less of an issue with direct injection anyway, since in most DI engines, fuel does not contact the intake valve stem. But that leaves injectors, plugs, combustion chambers, valve faces, and piston crowns, all of which collect deposits.

There are quite a few Top Tier skeptics on the forum and you are obviously one of them. But I’ll stick with what I said in post #14 and this post, because I’ve seen carefully controlled, long term tests on real car engines with my own eyes, and I trust them over quickie lawn mower engine tests and/or internet scuttlebutt.

 

I use top tier 91 octane. I have tried adding a bottle of STP octane booster a couple of times with no noticeable difference, so I plan to continue with plain 91 octane. If 93 octane was available in my area, I would buy it.

 

Sunoco always has at least 93 and they're location is convenient. Once a year I add a bottle of techron.

I got in the habit of adding techron annually after some experienced issues with level switches in the tanks getting dirty and it seemed to help.

 

Use Top Tier. Costco is top tier, sams is not. I will use a non top tier(no additives) in the event I'm not near a top tier station but not often.