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TOPIC: Off brand gasoline?
#978008
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#978011
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
Wonder what they're considering to be an "off-brand"?
 
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#978016
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
Any brand that didn't make this list, I suppose.

http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers/
 
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#978018
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
BikerRon wrote:
Any brand that didn't make this list, I suppose.

http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers/


So if you buy at an independent Mom/Pop station you have no idea if they are buying from one of the names on the list. IMO that list is compromised of companies paying at the door to be on the list. Other than the major names Shell,Exxon etc on that list I have never heard of most of them and would not consider them as carrying the top brand gasoline's but to me that don't mean the gas is garbage. If I needed gas I would still pull in and fill up.
 
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Last Edit: 2016/07/09 06:06 By davej.
 
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#978020
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
Who knows what's what is in the ground tanks of those old family owned stations.

If the pump label reads 'Ol Snort Premium' and you need some gas, go for it.

I've never heard of most brands on that list, either. Regional brand names are popular depending where one's from.

I didn't know Sinclare was still around till I went to Illinois a few years back.. They left my area back in the '70's.

Had my Texaco/Chevron card with me and it was considered useless after crossing the Texas state line.
 
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#978049
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
I guess I am inadverdently hanging in on that list for the most part. I've traveled a lot, and I work in an industry (and state) that is highly in tune with the oil and gas industry. I have heard of (or used) nearly every company on that list, except the Hawaii based and Mexico based companies on the list. I've ran "other brand" gas a good bit too. Only had one "bad gas" episode EVER since 1985. It's an over blown risk. Additive packages and whatnot, who can tell the difference outside a laboratory? I run additional detergent/solvent in my carb equipped machines anyway (MMO) so all this strikes me as much about nothing.
 
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#978054
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
A point of clarification. All brands get their fuel off the barge and from the refinery as 87 octane so no matter where you buy your 87 octane regular gasoline it is the same. The difference comes when you go to a higher octane. The different brands have different additives that they use in conjunction with their octane boosters. As an example when I used to fly ultralight aircraft powered by Rotax two stroke engines we found that they ran best on Amoco 93 octane premium. These were industry wide tests which Rotax itself took a part in. It just so happened that Amoco's additives and octane boosters agreed with Rotax two stroke engines and it was actually a noticeable difference when we had to use a different brand for whatever reason. Fuel consumption, power(take off distance & rate of climb), carbon deposits, and EGT's were all affected by the change.
 
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#978069
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
In April 1967 I moved from Miami to Lake Placid, FL. A couple of days after being here I drove into a Texaco station "on fumes" and had it filled up. About a half mile from the station the engine quit! I had an empty soda bottle in the car and I pulled the fuel hose off of the carb; I put the hose into the bottle and cranked the starter for about a minute. The bottle was a bit over half full and over half of it was water!

I walked back to the station with bottle in hand. They were totally surprised and called their distributor (who was about 30 miles away). I waited until the distributor got there and watched. The man took a measure stick and put about a foot of water detection paste on the bottom, then dipped it into the tank. The paste is beige color and if it touches water it turns red. The stick came out with about 8 inches of the bottom RED! He took a pump with a hose that reached the bottom of the tank and pumped until there was no more water, then went on his way

The distributor told me that it was up to the station and the station said that it was up to the distributor! Neither would give me credit! I had paid with a Texaco card and when the bill came I deducted that amount from the total and paid it, with a letter explaining what had happened. A month later I got a bill with that amount plus interest! I did not pay it and wrote another letter. Another month and I got a bill with the balance due and more interest! I cut up the card and put it into the envelope with a check, and never since used another drop of Texaco gas!

As a pilot if I have landed at an airport where the only gas available was Texaco; I have gone to another airport where the have something different.

I WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH TEXACO!!!
 
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Last Edit: 2016/07/09 13:15 By Clifford. Reason: typo
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#978082
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
When the tanker driver delivers the gas he is supposed to "stick the tank." The stick is calibrated and he goes to his tank chart for that tank size at that station and he is able to read the number of gallons of gas in the tank. That way he knows that he won't overfill the tank even though it was the manager who ordered the number of gallons and should be monitoring the fuel level. At the same time the delivery driver applies the water indicating paste to the last 6 inches or so of the stick in order to ascertain the amount of water collected on the bottom. If it is over a 1/2 inch then something needs to be done about it. Modern operations use a digital system with electronic gauges that transmit fuel levels for each tank into the office at the station. The driver then goes into the station and gets a Veeder Root (popular brand) reading telling him the volume so he doesn't overfill. The driver should still stick the tank to test for water and inform the station manager if the level is too high. But some are lazy and don't go the proper extra step and over time the water level builds to an unacceptably high level and car engines start crapping out. The problem arises mostly when the station is independently owned and Habib decides to save money and wait awhile to call out a pumper truck to pump the water out. The fuel pickup pipe at the bottom of the tank is generally high enough above the bottom of the tank that a little water on the bottom doesn't get sucked up and into your tank. The bigger stations who use their own fleet of tankers or are under contract to bigger delivery companies have a system down whereby the water gets extracted on a regular basis by a crew on the delivery truck that is trained to do the job. Fuel is not pumped into the underground tanks during delivery but is gravity fed so there is no way for the typical tanker to pull liquid back out but some of the tractors are equipped with a PTO pump and the driver is trained in the extraction process. I guess you can tell that I drove a fuel tanker way back when in a previous lifetime. And I was the go to guy for water extraction or fuel extraction on what we called a cross drop. Diesel in the gas, vice versa, regular in the 93 (do a calculation and pump it over into the 89 tank, etc. One more bit of advice. Don't fuel your car if you see the tanker making a delivery. The fuel mixes with the water at the bottom of the tank and takes awhile to settle back down to the bottom of the tank again so if your pumping that fuel into your car then you could have a problem even though the water level isn't really that high in the tank. Clifford wrote:
In April 1967 I moved from Miami to Lake Placid, FL. A couple of days after being here I drove into a Texaco station "on fumes" and had it filled up. About a half mile from the station the engine quit! I had an empty soda bottle in the car and I pulled the fuel hose off of the carb; I put the hose into the bottle and cranked the starter for about a minute. The bottle was a bit over half full and over half of it was water!

I walked back to the station with bottle in hand. They were totally surprised and called their distributor (who was about 30 miles away). I waited until the distributor got there and watched. The man took a measure stick and put about a foot of water detection paste on the bottom, then dipped it into the tank. The paste is beige color and if it touches water it turns red. The stick came out with about 8 inches of the bottom RED! He took a pump with a hose that reached the bottom of the tank and pumped until there was no more water, then went on his way

The distributor told me that it was up to the station and the station said that it was up to the distributor! Neither would give me credit! I had paid with a Texaco card and when the bill came I deducted that amount from the total and paid it, with a letter explaining what had happened. A month later I got a bill with that amount plus interest! I did not pay it and wrote another letter. Another month and I got a bill with the balance due and more interest! I cut up the card and put it into the envelope with a check, and never since used another drop of Texaco gas!

As a pilot if I have landed at an airport where the only gas available was Texaco; I have gone to another airport where the have something different.

I WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH TEXACO!!!
 
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#978084
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Re:Off brand gasoline? 1 Year, 7 Months ago  
Wow, Curmudgeon666, I'm impressed. You finally wrote something worth a shit!
 
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