Where
do you buy your gas? Do you have loyalties based on location, cost, or
brand? Do you choose to purchase your fuel with any thought to how its
additives can help to keep your engine clean? I recently attended a
presentation at the Phoenix Automotive Press Association, given by Jens
Mueller-Belau of Shell Oil. It was fascinating. We ate pasta and
learned about dreaded engine "gunk," and how gasoline detergents can
help clean the gooey carbon deposits left behind as part of the
engine's fuel combustion process.
A while back, six of the
world's top automakers (BMW, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen
and Audi) determined that current EPA minimum detergent requirements
don't go far enough to ensure optimal engine performance. Even though
minimum additive performance standards were first established by EPA in
1995, many gasoline brands have actually reduced the concentration
level of detergent additive in their gasoline by up to 50%. So they
established the concept of endorsing specific companies that provide
Top-Tier fuels to ensure optimal performance in their vehicles.
Currently,
many gasoline retailers provide fuels with lower-quality additive
packages that can build up deposits on fuel injectors and intake
valves. Others can build up deposits in combustion chambers and may
lead to intake valve sticking. These lower levels of additives might
meet the minimums required by the EPA, but they can still have negative
impacts on engine performance and vehicle responsiveness. That's the
"gunk" you may have heard about in fuel advertisements.
That
might sound like a lot of technical mumbo jumbo, but in a nutshell,
these six specific vehicle manufacturers are saying that if drivers
want their high-performance cars to function at their best, then they
must feed them Top-Tier fuels designed to provide optimum performance
and keep their engines clean.
Don't be confused; I'm not talking about octane. Some high-performance
vehicles do require fuels with higher octane levels and these can be
purchased at any gas station; Top-Tier fuels offer additional detergent
additives meant to reduce carbon deposits on fuel injectors and intake
valves and only certain retailers certified as Top Tier. These
cleansing additives are present across all octane levels and can
benefit the performance of any car by reducing gunky buildup that may
have been left behind after using cheaper fuels. Check out the photo
from a study done by Shell that shows the difference in the amount of
deposits left by standard, low-additive-content fuels, as compared to
the cleaner valves that burned Shell gasoline. (Be sure to click on it
to see the detail of the gunk!) These gooey deposits formed after only
5000 miles of driving with low-cost, low-additive-content gasoline.
Yuck!
Gasoline
retailers must meet the high Top-Tier standards with all grades of
gasoline in order to be approved by the automakers as providing Top
Tier Detergent Gasolines. Currently, the following retailers offer
high-detergent fuels that are certified to meet the requirements of
BMW, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and Audi: QuikTrip,
Chevron, Conoco, Phillips, 76, Shell, Entec Stations, MFA Oil Company,
Kwik Trip/Kwik Star, The Somerset Refinery, Inc., Chevron-Canada, Aloha
Petroleum, Tri-Par Oil Company, Shell-Canada, Texaco, Petro-Canada, and
Sunoco-Canada.
More information can be found at toptiergas.com. You can also learn more by taking a fun and educational quiz offered by Shell's own spokesman, Dr. Fuelgood.
By Brandy Schaffels
Contributing Editor
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