Why Isn't BP Top Tier fuel?

[Vilan]

To quote GMorg from one of the threads that was listed above...

"The base fuel is the base used in this test. Notice that the description lists the amount of junk as minimums. ("No less than 48 mg/kg sulfur", for example). The detergent package that is tested must prevent that junk from collecting. The entire link is about how the standards are demonstated via testing. You must show that your additive keeps things clean and that without your additive things get dirty. The base fuel standard is to prevent a company from using some super-clean base that doesn't dirty an engine anyway and then claiming that their additives work."

 

[psudaytona]

I have noticed that out of my local stations that the BP gas makes the car run better and I really seem to get better mileage. Yeah, its more expensive but for the quality I think its worth it.

Sunoco is OK, not great though. Quality seems to fluxuate. Citgo around me is SUCH GARBAGE gas IMO. Engine seemed to burp its way for that whole week. Yuck.

 

[Bamaro]

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for what its worth, down here in south florida, NONE of the top tier brands have ethanol in them. if they did there would be a ';contains ethanol" sticker on the pumps. and ive never seen one in my life down here.

so maybe the ethanol top tire requirement is a regonal thing.

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There is no requirement for top tier fuel to contain ethanol! This has been rehashed here again and again. People who keep repeating this trash need to learn how to read!

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1.3.1.2 Base Fuel. The base fuel shall conform to ASTM D 4814 and shall contain commercial fuel grade ethanol conforming to ASTM D 4806. All gasoline blend stocks used to formulate the base fuel shall be representative of normal U.S. refinery operations and shall be derived from conversion units downstream of distillation. Butanes and pentanes are allowed for vapor pressure adjustment. The use of chemical streams is prohibited. The base fuel shall have the following specific properties after the addition of ethanol:

1. Contain enough denatured ethanol such that the actual ethanol content is no less than 8.0 and no more than 10.0 volume percent.

 

[Quest]

My biggest concern RE: Top Tier fuel grading is the prohibition of using emissions-control damaging additives such as Manganese in MMT, etc. which is something that our local Esso gas station still has.

Dun care much about ethanol contents for it helps us in this soggy PNW region (absorbing moisture, gasline antifreeze, etc.)

 

[Vilan]

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for what its worth, down here in south florida, NONE of the top tier brands have ethanol in them. if they did there would be a ';contains ethanol" sticker on the pumps. and ive never seen one in my life down here.

so maybe the ethanol top tire requirement is a regonal thing.

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There is no requirement for top tier fuel to contain ethanol! This has been rehashed here again and again. People who keep repeating this trash need to learn how to read!

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1.3.1.2 Base Fuel. The base fuel shall conform to ASTM D 4814 and shall contain commercial fuel grade ethanol conforming to ASTM D 4806. All gasoline blend stocks used to formulate the base fuel shall be representative of normal U.S. refinery operations and shall be derived from conversion units downstream of distillation. Butanes and pentanes are allowed for vapor pressure adjustment. The use of chemical streams is prohibited. The base fuel shall have the following specific properties after the addition of ethanol:

1. Contain enough denatured ethanol such that the actual ethanol content is no less than 8.0 and no more than 10.0 volume percent.

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That is for the base fuel that is used to test the additive package. Go back and read the whole section very carefully, it's not spelled out very clearly. The additive package that companies use must be tested in a base fuel with ethanol and etc etc to prove that it works, but the actual fuel that they sell is not required to have it.

 

[Master ACiD]

so what they are saying is that in the test fuel (not the pump fuel) , you need 10% ethanol, but in the actual pump gas, you dont need any ethanol? also there are adds in the test fuel which are absent from the real pump fuel.

thats stupid. why not test the actual fuel? why make a special test fuel that no one will use because its only for testing. glad i dont use top tire gas. dont pay for that stupid stuff.

 

[Vilan]

Those extra adds in the test fuel are minuses, not bonuses. The test fuel needs to have ethanol added (and sulfur, and aromatics, and other nastiness as described there) to prove that their detergent package will keep engines clean even when the gas quality isn't so good. Otherwise companies would test using ultra-clean gas and "prove" that their detergent works.

If your detergent package can keep an engine clean when it's in the test fuel, then you know that it'll also keep it clean when you're using regular pump fuel. At least I assume so... I'm not sure what the impurity allowances in sellable gas are, but I'm assuming they're the same or lower than this test fuel.

 

[Master ACiD]

unless i am missing something here, and i very well could be. thats just flawed then. forgive me while i potentially jump the gun on this issue.

the gas companys could make an add pack which passes this unrealistic test perfectly fine for dealing with things like sulfur and ethanol. in the real world we dont have huge levels of sulfur in the gasoline so any add that deals with it is going to look good on the test but do nothing meaningfull in the real world.

why not just test the real pump gas on a typical engine in some double sequence torturous benchmark and then weigh the valves and pistons for deposits. heck you could just weigh the entire cylinder head and not even disabbemble it. if this test isnt good enough, im sure they have some kind of specialised test for intake and combustion chamber deposits that could be used.

this whole thing reminds me of those prolong engine oil commercials of years ago where they would run some low compression small block at 2500 rpm's with no oil and then shovel very coarse gravel onto the exposed valve train.
or the one where they froze the air cleaner in liquid nitrogen and got the motor to start. or the test where they ran some zmax car around the track for 10 miles and managed to not blow the motor.

i really believe those are all totally unrealistic tests, just like this artificial sulfur and other additive test is.

 

[jmac]

because the quality of real pump gas is variable! Why can you people not get this? From station to station, from day to day, from tanker to tanker, from pipeline slug to pipeline slug.
And around the country many localities are forced to use 10% ethanol gas in all grades, as ethanol may interact with or hinder an detergent additive, it is included in the test sample along with impurities that can be encountered in pump gas. So you want to test with a variable baseline fuel? The best way to have a completely invalid test.

 

[Master ACiD]

pump gas isnt that variable. the epa sets limits on things like that so that we dont have bad gas killing engines. if by variable, you mean seasonal and regional then yes i would agree. but you portray it to be changing nearly hourly, or atleast pumpt to pump.

remember some years ago shell has accidently sold gas with sulfur in it which damaged some fuel sending units? this is the exception to the rule.

 

[jmac]

pump gas is variable in that there are allowable limits to amounts of contaminants allowed as picked up through the distribution system. This is not to say that refiners, etc. do not strive to produce and distribute high quality gas. If you are setting up a test though, you have to specify a standard to test with, in this case a standard fuel baseline. There would be no point in testing the effectiveness of a detergent additive package if you used the absolute cleanest burning fuel that produced minimal deposits. Rather you would want to test with a baseline fuel that at least represented the worst case for contaminants as allowed under the epa regulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of that additive package.

Maybe this needs to be said, that quality is always a variable. This statement makes no claim on how narrow or broad that variability is, but it is always there.