Chevron gasoline

[Brett Dikeman]

Cat ^. .^ ~ wrote:
> Has anyone used Chevron gasoline much?

Techron additive is favored among many listers- Chevron claims they're 
the only company to use  polyetheramine, not sure I believe that, but okay.

As for gasolines- the dirty truth of the industry is that the gasoline
base is not brand-specific.  Shell, Chevron, Mobil, Exxon, Hess...they
all buy gasoline from each other to keep distribution costs low.
Whoever can get the gallon of gas to the station cheapest wins, 
basically.  If you think that on that big supertanker there are 
"Chevron" compartments and "Texaco" compartments, you're fooling 
yourself.  The only way in which brands differ is by the additives and 
octane boosters put into the gas
at the last second- this used to be "slosh mixed", ie added at the depot
with gas.

The best advice is to not show the slightest brand loyalty.  Fill up
where it's convenient, not by brand- because that's virtually pointless.
  If your car doesn't run well on a particular brand of gas, there's
something wrong with your car.

This also seems to bode well chemically- someone on a corvette group
found that rotating brands worked best at keeping deposits down, as each
brand's additives removed some/most deposits, but left its own.

By the way, it doesn't make a huge lot of sense to drive to your 
favorite gas station over another, even if it's cheaper.  I've had 
people tell me "oh the gas down the other end of town is 5 cents 
cheaper".  Okay.  Let's say I've got the 200q20v running on fumes, which 
I think leaves room for around 19 gallons of gas.  The station is 3 
miles away.  City mileage is 15mpg, roughly.  So I'll use about 2/5ths 
of a gallon of gas to get there and back.

   That gallon of gas is maybe $2.20.  So I use 88 cents of gas to get 
there and back.  5 cents off 19 gallons of gas is 95 cents savings. 
Wow, I just saved 7 cents off a $42 fillup- a savings of a little over a 
tenth of a percent...and I wasted almost half a gallon of gas and 15 
minutes of my time to do so.  Bravo!

Oh, and running an octane higher than what's recommended for your car? 
Also pointless.  You know the difference between 87 and 
"Super-duper-clean-burn-power-packed" 94?  7 points octane rating, ten 
cents, and a fancy marketing campaign.

Brett
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/