Since the other gas thread has turned into a political $#it$how, I figured I would post this here.
Ronnie, I feel for you living in California. I just did a 10 day road trip from Central MN to Lake Tahoe and back with my folks. (they don't care to fly)
We left MN when gas was just popping over $4/gallon. And it rose about $.10/gallon per fill the whole way out. South Lake Tahoe was in the $5.50-$5.85 range. But Yosemite region took the win at $6.59/gallon near the park! Glad we filled in the foothills on our way in.
What we found was that the stations were speculating as well. Since fuel could vary almost $1/gallon from one side of town to the other while out there. Many were obviously not pricing based on cost, but demand.
We used GasBuddy the entire way to help save on our 3500 mile round trip. And also found out when using Google Maps in Apple Car play, you can "add a stop" to your route, and pick fuel. It will report gas prices like GasBuddy right on your dash for those that are reporting it! Nice tip.
I would have to say, that getting back to home was very welcoming, as we put on our last tank of fuel at Costco in Fargo at $3.99/gallon. It's good to be home. Kudos to the Costco fuel station in Carson, NV! 10-12 lanes of fuel, 3 cars deep with stoplights showing those in line which pump was open, so that you could drive down the center and grab the open pump. They moved folks through fast!
That Costco in Carson NV sounds impressive!
Most folks at my local Sams are attentive and will move to a pump that is open. This Sams has the longer hoses for fueling off side, haven’t tried that yet, will have to try that someday when it is not busy. For the most part Sams prices are cheaper than all the other stations in town, I think the cut off is $150, I’ve had to make a second purchase to finish the fill up once or twice, I try and get fuel before I drop below a half tank.
Boat fuel is at a different station that sells 85 & 91 non ethanol. While it is a chain ConocoPhillips store it has more of a Mom & Pop store. I walk in and hand them my cc and they unlock the pump for me and I can pump the 85 & 91 in the correct amounts to get 86 which my boat requires. I go back in and they run the purchase. So far the biggest purchase I’ve made there was for a boat fill up and two 5 gallon cans and that was right at $200. On average I get boat fuel twice a month, I’m at 21 boating days so far this season.
Fuel quality segue …. Had a check engine light in my diesel truck recently, (I postponed my Oahe trip because of this) something to do with the adaptive fuel system had reached its limit, long story short I believe I got a bad tank of fuel and since getting a new tank of fuel the light has gone out and not come back. Spoke with my generator tech friend and he told me how they’ve had some issues in this area before with bad diesel, and when he was in So Cal there were a lot of folks that got a bad batch once and their onboard generators were leaving a sheen on the water, and the generators were not running correctly. He brought a can of good fuel with him and ran one of the generators off of that for a test and no more sheen on the water and the generators ran fine. He had the bad fuel tested and the cetane rating was in the low 30’s, for reference over the road ultra low sulphur diesel fuel is supposed to be in the 52 cetane range. Red dyed off Road diesel is supposed to be in the mid 40 range.
Lastly, my friend was at his office-John Deere- and a customer had a lawn mower that wouldn’t run correctly, same customer had been in before but the problem could not be duplicated. Everyone else was busy so he helped this man, apparently there is a fuel solenoid on the carburetor, he told me when he pulled the solenoid there was this thick gelatinous substance on the end of the solenoid, I told him what he saw was phase separated ethanol laced fuel. He tested the solenoid and it was intermittent, cleaned it with brake cleaner and it functioned normally. That mower is 1.5 years old, and now said customer is happy.
All that to say, it is possible to get bad fuel from a station / pump that has very high turn over.
