do gas stations use any kind of filtering system?

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my 2 brothers have always told me to never buy gas from a station if you see the fuel truck there as all the sediment on the bottom of the tanks get kicked up and you will get it when you pump the gas. just wondering if this is a true tale or a wives tale and if there is a filter used pre pump? it got me thinking because i just filled up and there was a truck there.
 
they all have filters. most have water seperators. the gas is awalys picked up off the bottom of the tanks so if theres sediment down there, its going to get sucked up weither ot not the gas is stirred or not.
 
That can be arguable. The sediment settles, the pumps pick up the fuel without disturbing the sediment. Tanker truck comes in, dumps fuel, stirs up all the silt, puts it into suspension. Filters will catch the big stuff, but the small stuff makes it through. I'd try to minimize the amount of sediment I recieve.

Alex.
 
I'm here to tell you something has changed in buying fuel. Maybe the tanks are newer or they really are filtering better. Here's why I say so.

My first car in high school was an old 62 VW bus. The fuel filter would clog before it ever made it to 20,000 miles and cause misery trying to get up to speed (and it didn't need a lot of gas for that 40 horsepower motor). Granted, it was old and the fuel tank could have been rusty. I then bought a 72 AMC Gremlin brand new. It did not cross 10,000 miles by much and the filter clogged. The next filter went longer than 10,000 miles, but not by much. I've had filter clogs off and on up through the mid 80s. If I forgot to change the filter, it let me know.

Well, today I own a lot of cars, most antique, but I run them often. Never do I change the fuel filters and nothing has gone wrong. Even on my newer fuel injected cars nothing has gone wrong. Call it luck or cleaner fuel being dispensed, something has changed.
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Spin on filters in the gas pumps are about the size of a MC FL1A. Based on the dispensing speed, I can't image they filter anything but the large particles. They must do something, recently, gas was being dispensed at about 2 gal/minute, owner said "filters must be clogged"
 
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Spin on filters in the gas pumps are about the size of a MC FL1A. Based on the dispensing speed, I can't image they filter anything but the large particles. They must do something, recently, gas was being dispensed at about 2 gal/minute, owner said "filters must be clogged"



You're right! Even if they don't filter everything, to be clogged they got something that would have certainly been in the fuel tank.

I guess those filters they use don't have by-pass valves in them like some auto filters. Otherwise some of those guys would never change them!
 
Around here in canada, we do see gaz filters that looks like huge oil filters besides the fuel pumps at some gaz stations... I wonder if we can extend fuel filter change intervals if we take our gaz at one of these gaz stations??
 
I gas up at a Costco station because they tank up four to six times a day and I figure that that amount of volume spreads the junk around to more people and there is less chance of getting a big slug in one of my cars. I have never been to this Costco when there were not at least ten people there filling up and usually there are lines at every set of pumps.
 
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I gas up at a Costco station because they tank up four to six times a day and I figure that that amount of volume spreads the junk around to more people and there is less chance of getting a big slug in one of my cars. I have never been to this Costco when there were not at least ten people there filling up and usually there are lines at every set of pumps.



You know, there's some logic in that! Plus you get fresher gas too. No one wants stale gas!
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I gas up at a Costco station because they tank up four to six times a day and I figure that that amount of volume spreads the junk around to more people and there is less chance of getting a big slug in one of my cars. I have never been to this Costco when there were not at least ten people there filling up and usually there are lines at every set of pumps.



You know, there's some logic in that! Plus you get fresher gas too. No one wants stale gas!
frown.gif





That's my feelings on the high volume stations. I doubt that there is time enough to allowed anything to settle out. I'm not sure ..but I think that gas pumps (the actual sump pumps) are running full time ..and you're merely tapping off of the line pressure. That's how it worked years ago. I turned on the pumps at the breaker box ..and there was nothing electrical to the dispensers ..except the light that you turned on as you watched the Sunoco blue and yellow "windmills" spin around.

Our WAWA (convenience store) gets a load about ever 8-12 hours. I'm pretty sure I was told that the ordering is totally electronic based on usage to assure JIT without running out.
 
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